I went back this stunning week to the first columns I’d ever written about Donald Trump, eight years ago, in the summer of 2015. It was for me a powerful experience. Columnists think aloud pretty much in real time, trying to apprehend and express what is true and important. I’ll speak of some of what I read and then go to the criminal indictments.
In early July, just after his announcement, I saw him this way:
“Donald Trump is an unstable element inserted into an unsettled environment. Sooner or later there will be a boom.” He “has poor impulse control and is never above the fray. He likes to start fights. That’s a weakness. Eventually he’ll lose one.
“But Donald Trump has a real following, and people make a mistake in assuming his appeal is limited to Republicans. His persona and particular brand of populism have hit a nerve among some independents and moderate Democrats too, and I say this because two independent voters and one Democrat (they are all working-class or think of themselves that way) volunteered to me this week how much they like him, and why. This is purely anecdotal, but here’s what they said:
“They think he’s real, that he’s under nobody’s thumb, that maybe he’s a big-mouth but he’s a truth-teller. He’s afraid of no one, he’s not politically correct. He’s rich and can’t be bought by some billionaire, because he is the billionaire. He’s talking about what people are thinking and don’t feel free to say.”
“He is a fighter. People want a fighter.” But “Mr. Trump is not a serious man … Blowhards don’t wear well.” I didn’t see him lasting.
Three weeks later I talked with a Trump supporter in northwest Georgia, an old acquaintance who told me how she saw it:
“Why Trump? ‘He’s very wealthy and can turn around the economy. He’ll get things moving. The Donald will kick a—.’ She knows other supporters locally and among friends of her son, an Iraq vet. ‘ … He’s igniting their passion. He’s telling them ‘I will make this country great again,’ and they believe him.’ ”
“Does it bother her that Mr. Trump has never held elective office? She paused half a second. ‘It bothers me a little bit.’ ” But “get it done” is more important.
I grappled with what I saw as a spreading movement. “His rise is not due to his supporters’ anger at government. It is a gesture of contempt for government, for the men and women in Congress, the White House, the agencies. It is precisely because people have lost their awe for the presidency that they imagine Mr. Trump as a viable president.” The GOP establishment is “waiting for Mr. Trump to do himself in — he’s a self-puncturing balloon. True, but he’s a balloon held aloft by a lot of people; they won’t let it fall so easy.”
In that column a theme arose that was important to me. I felt Trump supporters, who included family members and old friends, were being patronised and disrespected by political and journalistic establishments. They shouldn’t be dismissed as nihilists. “They’re patriots, and don’t experience themselves as off on a toot but pragmatic in a way the establishment is not.”
In August 2015, a second look at his appeal. “When citizens are consistently offended by Washington, … they become contemptuous. They see Mr. Trump’s contempt and identify. What the American establishment has given us the past 20 years is sex scandals, money scandals, two unwon wars, an economic collapse, an inadequate recovery, and borders we no longer even pretend to control. They think: What will you give us next, the plague?” Mr. Trump voices their indignation.
“I don’t know what happens with Mr. Trump, but Trumpism? That’s here now — outlandish candidates backed by indignant, enraptured people who’ve lost their judgment. Congratulations to the leaders of both parties: The past 20 years you’ve taken us far. We’re entering Weimar, baby. The swamp figure is up from the depths.”
I have been startled at how much I said then that I’d say now.
Here we get to the criminal indictment, and my real-time read on what it means.
The charges aren’t about press clippings, personal letters and autographed photos of foreign leaders. The federal criminal indictment charges Donald Trump with illegally keeping, hiding and showing to others national-security documents including information on U.S. nuclear programs, potential vulnerabilities of the U.S. and its allies to military attack, and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.
You can’t get more serious, more breathtaking, in a charge against a former president. The documents have to do with the most essential of our security interests. They are about how we keep our country safe from military attack.
It is said Mr. Trump’s base never wavers and always rallies, and historically this has been true. When he’s accused of being a trickster in business they don’t care — it’s extraneous to presidential leadership. They don’t care if he’s an abusive predator of women — again, extraneous, old news. But endangering our national security, including our nuclear secrets? That is another matter.
This won’t solidify his position with hard-line supporters. Deep down they know “What about Hillary?” doesn’t answer the questions: “Why would Trump do this? Why would he put America in danger? Who did he show those papers to?”
As to soft Trump supporters, the charges do nothing to keep them in his camp. They reinforce the arguments of former Trump Republicans now backing other candidates: He was our guy but in the end he’s all danger and loss.
What were Mr. Trump’s motives? Why would he refuse to give the documents back, move them around Mar-a-Lago, mislead his own lawyers about their status and content?
Because everything’s his. He is by nature covetous. “My papers” he called them.
Because of vanity: Look at this handwritten letter. Kim Jong-un loves Trump. See who I was? Look at this invasion plan.
Because he wished to have, at hand, cherry-picked documentation he could deploy to undercut assertions by those who worked with him that he ordered them to do wild and reckless things.
My fear is that Mar-a-Lago is a nest of spies. Membership in the private club isn’t fully or deeply vetted; anyone can join who has the money (Mr. Trump reportedly charges a $200,000 initiation fee).
A spy — not a good one, just your basic idiot spy — would know of the documents scattered throughout the property, and of many other things. All our international friends and foes would know.
Strange things happen in Mar-a-Lago. In 2019 a Chinese woman carrying four cellphones, a hard drive and a thumb drive infected with malware breezed past security and entered without authorisation. She was arrested and jailed for eight months. Another Chinese woman was arrested soon after; a jury acquitted her of trespassing but convicted her of resisting arrest. In 2021 a “Ukrainian fake heiress and alleged charity scammer” gained access, according to the Guardian.
Who else has?
Mar-a-Lago isn’t secure. Those documents didn’t belong there. It is a danger to our country that they were. This story will do Mr. Trump no good with his supporters. It will hurt him — maybe not a lot but some, maybe not soon but in time. I mean the quiet Trump supporters, not big mouths and people making money on the game, but honest people.
The Wall St Journal
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