Trump’s contempt for Americans on display for all the world to see

Baltimore – Nearly overlooked in the bombast of President Donald Trump’s address to the U.S. Congress the other night was a gesture of sheer contempt for all those Americans who used to believe in the U.S. judicial system but lost it as Trump maneuvered through it over the past four years.

“We have ended weaponized government,” Trump declared, “where, as an example, a sitting president is allowed to viciously prosecute his political opponent like me.”

Then, with a mocking nod toward Democrats gathered in front of him, he added, “How did that work out? Not too good, not too good.”

Let’s get Trump’s cheap shot toward his predecessor out of the way first. It wasn’t Joe Biden who went after Trump, it was prosecutors in three states and the District of Columbia who had enough evidence to believe he had committed crimes.

As the entire country knows, their cases slipped away not because Trump was found innocent of charges.

In New York, he was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records. (He was also found liable of sex-related charges in a civil case there and handed a multi-million dollar fine, but apparently, Trump believes we’ve all forgotten about that one.)

He ran out the clock in Georgia when prosecutor Fani Willis let her private life get in the way of common sense. In Florida, he had a judge named Aileen Cannon running preposterous interference for him until, once again, he could run the clock out. We’ve never gotten a verdict in those cases.

And, most preposterous of all, special prosecutor Jack Smith never got a chance to make the case against Trump for provoking the armed rioting of Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol.

To see Trump return to that same setting this past week was a cruel mockery of history. And to hear Trump cavalierly hint at all those dangling criminal cases in his 100-minute address to Congress was a measure of just how powerful Trump believes he is, and how weak he finds members of Congress from both parties.

He laughs at them, and they applaud him anyway.

Let’s not forget, that many of those who listened to him the other night – including those who cheered him – were lucky to escape with their lives during the January 6 insurrection.

For Trump, bringing up old legal business, even for a fleeting moment, is proof that he owns these people. The Democrats have lapsed into political paralysis, and the Republicans have sold their souls to the devil in the White House.

Why else would Trump dare remind everyone how he narrowly, and repeatedly, escaped prison? Not only does he want to show the country that he somehow emerged triumphant against long legal odds – he wants to do a little victory dance belittling all those who once believed in a fair and honest judicial system.

This kind of brazenness also tells us that we shouldn’t count on either party to save the country by standing in Trump’s way.

That’s why it’s been heartening, over the past few weeks, to see the rise of an angry new voice – the people’s – gathering at town hall meetings to say the things that their elected representatives have failed to express in any effective way.

They’re angry about losing their jobs. They’re angry about some guy they never even voted for – Elon Musk – who bought himself a president and now grabs himself access to the most important levers of power. They’re worried about the effect of lunatic tariffs.

And they weep as a nation that once stood for protecting the underdog now buddies up to the murderous Russian Vladimir Putin and turns its back on outnumbered Ukraine. And watches as old, treasured allies begin to turn their backs on America.

Those who talk of beating Trump four years from now have it all wrong. At the rate he’s doing damage, the America we’ve known will be too long gone.

Look to those gatherings that have lately sprung up – the ones where ordinary citizens stand up and express their pain and their outrage, and the ones where their congressional representatives dare to show up and feel the emotion.

Those elected officials are the ones who are vulnerable in two years. They’re the ones who have already shown us their cowardice. They’re the ones who have shown us they care more about their jobs than they do about democracy.

They’re the ones who have to be the immediate targets of voters’ anger. They have to be shown that they either show some gumption, or they’re going to be voted out of office.

Donald Trump is already too big to be reached. And he knows it. He knows it so well that he threw his contempt in everybody’s faces the other night, and dared everybody to do something about it.

Michael Olesker

Michael Olesker, columnist for the News American, Baltimore Sun, and Baltimore Examiner has spent a quarter of a century writing about the city he loves.He is the author of several books, including Michael Olesker’s Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re Home, Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore, and The Colts’ Baltimore: A City and Its Love Affair in the 1950s, all published by Johns Hopkins Press.