It was at one time difficult to imagine that the best and most convincing attack ads against an incumbent Republican president would come from the Republican Party itself, but this is the time of Donald Trump and nothing is as it once was.
The Lincoln Project, a group of Republican strategists and legal analysts, released a new ad on Saturday night sure to make Trump squirm. Their message centers on Trump’s rhetoric about being “the law and order candidate” while his former national security director Michael Flynn is charged with felonies, his longtime friend and unofficial campaign advisor Roger Stone had to have his seven felony convictions interfered with by the president, his campaign manager still sits in prison, his foreign policy advisor was convicted of felonies, and his longtime attorney and “fixer” Michael Cohen finishes his own sentence.
The ad pulls no punches, calling Trump’s presidency “a billion dollar criminal enterprise.” It is certainly the case that Trump’s friends, and particularly those who broke the law to help get him into the White House, have benefitted from Trump’s position of power. Trump’s children, his companies, and his personal bank account have swollen with the power of the office, which is strictly forbidden by the U.S. Constitution.
Trump is, in short, far from being a “law and order” president, unless you dare to deface a statue of a slaveholder in support of a civil rights movement known as Black Lives Matter. In that case, Trump thinks you should spend at least 10 years in prison. But for helping Russia to interfere in a U.S. election or serving as an unregistered foreign agent while working in the White House, Trump thinks you should be free to do it again in 2020.
That’s not law and order. That’s selfishness and criminality.
Featured image screenshot via YouTube
