I’ll say this for Republicans: They know how to follow a script. When news broke on Thursday evening that former President Donald Trump had been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, the GOP reaction was almost unanimously on message.
From the halls of Congress to the Florida governor’s mansion and across the internet, prominent Republicans denounced the indictment. In their telling, the charges brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg are “outrageous,” a “national embarrassment” and an “unprecedented abuse of power.” The fact that none of them have any idea what those charges are is a secondary, if not tertiary, concern.
Still, it’s easy to track the logic behind the claim that the charges against Trump were filed “for pure political gain” as Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin tweeted. We likely won’t know exactly what Trump is charged with until his arraignment on Tuesday, when Bragg’s office will unseal the indictment. (NBC News reports that it includes more than 30 counts against Trump, but how many crimes he’s accused of committing and their magnitude remain unknown.) In this liminal space between the grand jury’s vote and the charges being made public, almost all Republicans opted to hedge on the side of Trump being unfairly persecuted rather than appear insufficiently loyal.
In this liminal space between the grand jury’s vote and the charges being made public, almost all Republicans opted to hedge on the side of Trump being unfairly persecuted rather than appear insufficiently loyal.
For some, the cries of foul play were steeped in bitter irony. Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Bragg had “weaponized our sacred system of justice against President Donald Trump.” McCarthy had already directed Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and other committee chairs to look into Bragg’s investigation because — and I’m paraphrasing here — something something federal tax dollars. But as Bragg’s office rightfully pointed out in a…
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