But we begin tonight with the real meaning of law
and order.
As the reality has set in that their soon to
be official nominee is a convicted felon,
Republicans have reacted in the calmest and most rational possible
way.
No, I'm messing with you.
They, they waked completely out.
I disagree with the jury's verdict here.
A jury can only act within the constraints that a
judge puts on it.
And this case was rigged from the very beginning.
I think that what happened in New York,
if you applied it across all 50 states,
would be the definition of fascism,
throwing your political opponents in jail.
How do we work together to protect ourselves from the
illegal prosecutions and from persecutions?
And then what do we do to,
to fight back? How do we how do we make
them suffer if they're going to
illegally prosecute us? You tyrants are about to awaken a
machine you don't want.
You are pushing people to the edge.
The same party that is offended by the wrong pronouns
is pushing the party that owns 90%
of the guns. You people in your cities with your
white shoe,
consultants, country clubs who thought prosecuting Trump was a good
idea.
You have never met America.
Yeah, that's not unhinged at all.
Can somebody please check on Mr.
Higbee? I'm. I'm not sure he's OK,
but what has emerged is one of those clarifying moments
when you realize what the real game is.
To explain, listen to how Republicans and their media outlets
were talking about the issue of crime
right up to the very moment Trump became a convict.
This is going on all across the country,
crime everywhere. Now they say there's no crime wave.
But do you feel safe if we're not going to
be a nation of laws in this country,
man, we don't have anything.
I am so fed up with the crime going on
in this country that would so easily
be resolved if we went back to good old fashioned
consequences and law and order.
Turns out what Republicans really mean when they fear monger
about crime is that they want police and prosecutors to
be tough on crimes committed by people.
They look down on black people,
undocumented migrants, women who want abortions,
black voters in Texas and Florida who haven't had their
rights restored under the old Jim Crow laws in those
states,
and of course, their political opponents who they have deemed
their enemies.
In fact, throughout the history of this country,
law and order was directed primarily at people in those
demographics.
Runaway slaves and blacks targeted by Jim Crow,
at indigenous people who wouldn't willingly give up their land,
at Mexicans in Texas who wouldn't give up theirs to
Alabama slaveholders remember the Alamo.
And of course, poor people and union workers,
black and white, because capitalism.
In the early 20th century,
before women won the right to vote,
they were routinely arrested and jailed for trying to vote,
as were untold numbers of black people denied the right
to vote,
and many were lynched for trying to exercise that right.
The lynchers faced literally no consequences,
as all white male juries regularly acquitted them in just
minutes,
if they were charged at all.
Men like Donald Trump and his Klan rally attending father
Fred could do almost anything,
not pay taxes, refuse to rent to black people.
Men of the Trump's demographic and wealth routinely did things
like burn entire black towns to the ground with impunity,
which they did literally dozens of times commit marital rape,
which Trump's first wife Ivana once accused him of doing.
This is the kind of freedom and privilege that men
like Donald Trump got used to,
and they are outraged. Outraged
that he is now being subjected to the same criminal
justice system that locks up more people than any country
on earth,
disproportionately people of color. A system wherein people are killed
in the streets,
in routine encounters, or in their own homes.
People like Airman Roger Fortson in Florida more than in
any other developed country on earth.
How dare that system be used against a rich,
privileged white man like Donald Trump?
If they can do it to him,
any rich, white, powerful man might have to pay for
their crimes.
The horror. The criminal justice system is supposed to be
directed at people like you,
not him. Even worse, the system now includes something it
never did before.
Brown immigrant judges and black district attorneys and attorneys general.
How dare they be Dane
to hold Donald Trump to any legal standard,
much less the same standard as Michael Cohen.
After all, Michael Cohen is not a multi millionaire former
president.
Who is he to be treated the same as Trump?
How dare this system treat Trump the way it treated
the since exonerated Central Park 5 or how Trump bragged
he would treat a woman.
No, not grabbing yet another woman by the you know
what?
Like he did E Jean Carroll inside that Bergdorf.
I'm talking about Hillary Clinton.
Remember? Lock her up. I do,
although now apparently Trump remembers it differently.
Hillary Clinton, I didn't say lock her up,
but the people would all say lock her up.
Lock her up. OK, Then we won.
And I say, and I said pretty openly,
I say, all right, come on,
just relax.
But we're not misremembering it,
Don. Your whole campaign was about locking Hillary Clinton up.
Now, Trump supporters also really want to lock up the
president's son,
Hunter Biden, who coincidentally went on trial today on gun
and tax charges brought against him by holdovers from the
Trump administration at the Justice Department.
You know, the same DOJ that literally locked up Michael
Cohen for his part in the scheme that Trump was
just convicted on last week.
Well, according to Donald Trump and Republicans,
weirdly enough, it seems Joe Biden has now weaponized the
justice system against his own son.
Make it make sense. But back to my revelation.
It seems clear that what Republicans want is for the
law to go back to the way it was historically
when men like Donald Trump and men like them could
literally get away with murder.
They want that world back.
Donald Trump's own sense of personal impunity is so strong,
he's even now calling on his favorite justices on the
Supreme Court to intervene before he is sentenced in July,
four days before the Republican convention.
The Supreme Court has no business meddling in a state
prosecution.
But the pathetic reality is that given what we've seen
from the aggrieved conservative men on the court,
the idea that they do it anyway doesn't feel much
like a fiction.
But what makes it even more insulting
is that Trump and Republicans have recruited some dignity free
black men besides Clarence who are willing to pretend that
his impunity would ever apply to them.
These people think so little of black Americans that they
believe Trump's criminal record is the thing that will endear
him to black men who,
when they get convicted, do not have a cult army
to demand that they not be locked up.
They simply lose access to everything from jobs to the
ability to rent an apartment or travel,
or in red states, the ability to vote,
something Donald Trump has been assured by the James Crow
governor of Florida that he will not lose either.