American politics in recent years have become increasingly more polarized, and of course the different leaders of our nation are not exempt from this partisanship. Every president seems to be demonized by one party and made into a saint by the other. But no President in recent memory has been quite so divisive as the 45th, Donald Trump.
Trump ascended to the presidency after a very close election against Hillary Clinton (Clinton won the popular vote, but Trump won in electoral votes). Trump ran on the campaign slogan “Make America Great Again”, or MAGA (a reference to Ronald Reagan’s campaign slogan in 1980). Ultimately, MAGA would be more than just a slogan, but would transform into a populist movement; “MAGAs” would become a shorthand to describe not only Trump’s diehard supporters but the republican base as a whole.
However, this article does not aim to speak about the views of MAGA or Trump’s presidency. Rather, it is about events at the end of his presidency, on January 6th, and its repercussions.
Following the loss of Trump to Joe Biden in the 2020 election, there was a widespread belief among far-right groups that the election was rigged against Trump, and on January 6th over 2,000 people stormed the Capitol building, presumably to disrupt the electoral process. The attack would ultimately fail, and Biden remains in the Oval Office at the time of writing.
Trump would later be indicted with four charges, listed below.
- He was accused of paying undisclosed hush money to an adult film star, Stormy Daniels, whom he had an affair with in 2006, to convince her to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement on the affair.
- Trump brought about 15 boxes worth of classified documents, after leaving the Oval Office in January 2021, to his home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. FBI agents searched his home in August 2022, finding the documents stored in public locations.
- He was accused of voter fraud in Georgia alongside dozens of allies, allegedly harassing lawmakers and vote counters to deliberately miscount votes, in the crucial swing state.
- And finally, he was charged with conspiring in the aforementioned storming of the Capitol building. Or at the very least, his actions and discourse directly led to the events and he was conscious of such.
So far, none of the trials have moved past an indictment, but the mugshot of Trump was released very recently.
Trump has spent over 40 million dollars on legal expenses, and as his trial dates loom closer, it is unclear what the result will be. But a prisoner can still be elected president under American law, and as the Republican primaries rapidly approach in under a year, Trump is polling far(over 40% at the time of writing) ahead of his primary competitor, Ron DeSantis.
(from ABC's 538, on 9/20/2023)