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Along with the news of former President Donald Trump’s impending indictment in the classified documents probe has been the flurry of reactions from across the political spectrum, with most of them lining up along party lines.
Understandably, the prevailing sentiment in Republican/conservative corners is that we’ve officially reached “banana republic” territory here, something Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) talked about during a Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham Thursday night:
“If the President in power can just jail his political opponents, which is what Joe Biden is trying to do tonight, we don’t have a republic anymore. We don’t have the rule of law, we don’t have the Constitution. Our Constitution is built on the basic rule of law and due process, and nobody should be in doubt of what’s happening tonight. Joe Biden and his cronies are trying to take out their chief political opponent. This has never happened before in American history, Laura. We are in dangerous, dangerous waters, and it is because of Joe Biden.”
Watch:
Hawley: If the president in power can jail his political opponents, which is what Joe Biden is trying to do tonight, we don’t have a republic anymore. We don’t have the rule of law or constitution. pic.twitter.com/kORIHivlVg
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 9, 2023
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), whose working knowledge of what constitutes an actual fact would fit in a thimble with room to spare, saw the Hawley/Ingraham video clip and decided to weigh in and prove his many critics right in the process:
The below assertions on Fox are incorrect. Some facts:
1. Presidents don’t jail or indict anyone. Grand juries indict.
2. The Trump Indictment is just that, an indictment. Trump is entitled to presumption of innocence. A jury would decide if Trump is guilty and goes to prison.
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) June 9, 2023
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), apparently not appreciating people having their intelligence insulted, responded accordingly by pointing out that Lieu’s claim that this was on the grand jury and not Biden’s “cronies” (as Hawley referred to them) was complete BS. Further, Cruz also noted in so many words that by the standard currently being set Biden himself could theoretically be guilty of the same “crime,” too, considering his own classified documents scandal:
Lamest “rebuttal” ever.
Stalin didn’t “indict” people either. His henchmen did. Just like Biden’s.
Dictatorships & banana republics try to imprison their predecessors & opponents.
Especially for a “crime” that BIDEN HIMSELF committed, keeping classified docs in his garage!
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) June 9, 2023
To put it mildly, the double standards on display right now from federal officials and the Biden White House are through the roof, as RedState Managing Editor Jen Van Laar explained in detail here with receipts to boot.
There were no indictments against Hillary Clinton over her private server scandal, and Biden completely skated even after he tried to downplay the fact that classified documents had been discovered in multiple places including his unsecured garage, with him claiming it was okay because the garage also contained his Corvette, and was “locked.”
Is there any “there” there related to the charges against Trump? If what we’re hearing about the transcript of the call at the center of the indictment and the actual indictment itself is accurate, then Trump could be in trouble.
But that being said, as Hawley and Cruz both indicated, we’re traveling down a very dangerous path here – especially considering Biden’s role in making sure this all happened against his main political rival, because if Trump has to go to jail based on what he’s alleged to have done, Democrats are going to rue the day because rest assured that Republicans are going to respond in kind going forward and vice versa, and if we think things are ugly now, we haven’t seen anything yet.
This isn’t good for America, like at all. And I can’t help but think that we wouldn’t even be at this point if Trump had just a little bit more discipline and we didn’t have a President who didn’t see anything wrong with weaponizing every department at his disposal against his political opposition.
Related: Chris Sununu Just Nails Why Trump Indictments Won’t Matter at This Point in Heated Exchange With Jen Psaki
