Tuesday afternoon, for the first time ever, a former president was arrested on federal charges, for keeping secret U.S. documents and obstructing justice as the government sought their return. Barrels of ink and virtual ink have been spilled about how consequential this unprecedented national moment is. But please, keep it in context.
Just seven years ago, for the first time ever, a man with no political experience and a well-established propensity for lying and abusing others in his business and personal dealings was elected president, following a campaign in which he told more falsehoods than anyone ever did running for that highest office in the land, and made bigoted remarks about millions of people, and called journalists enemies of the people.
Once president, he was rightly impeached for dangling vital military aid and pressuring Ukraine’s president for “a favor,” namely to gin up an investigation on the man who then was set to challenge him in 2020. As president, he systematically abused power, used the office to enrich his own businesses and associates, weakened us in the world, mishandled a pandemic that took hundreds of thousands of American lives, and gave this editorial page 99 solid reasons not to be reelected.
And after soundly losing reelection, when he should have left office peacefully as every other president has done since George Washington set a precedent by stepping down gracefully in 1796, Donald Trump refused to accept the will of the people, stoking anger over an invented mass conspiracy and ultimately sparking a lethal insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. That had never happened before — nor has it ever happened before that a defeated president who encouraged mass lawlessness has run for a second term on the explicit promise that he will pardon lawbreakers and seek revenge against his political enemies.
What unfolded Tuesday at a Miami courthouse was unprecedented, as would be holding Trump to account for his crimes. But it’s a small thing to break historical records after all the wreckage Trump has left in his wake.
