Like many an autocrat before him, Donald Trump loves projection. And why shouldn’t he? He’s used the method to great success! Who could forget when, during his 2016 campaign, he assigned Hillary Clinton such labels as “monster,” “unbalanced,” “unstable,” and “dangerous,” at one point even saying, “She’s really pretty close to unhinged.” Now, you might not have been a big fan of Clinton’s in 2016, but, if anything, she was perhaps a little too hinged—which is partly why she struggled to convey an authentic persona to voters. By contrast, when it comes to Trump, hinges, as it were, are not even in the political toolbox.
It’s been more than two weeks since the former president’s criminal conviction—and instead of, say, reflecting on his past misdeeds, the former president is still using the moment as a prime opportunity for projection. In fact, from the very moment Trump got indicted in the New York hush money case, he started attacking Joe Biden and his allies. “This is all done by Biden and his people. This is done by Washington. No one has ever seen anything like this,” Trump baselessly rambled not long after his guilty verdict, even though his hush money case was brought by the state—not the federal government. The former president’s broadsides are hardly limited to Bidenworld; he has also attacked the judge, jury, witnesses, and prosecutors—before, during, and after the case. “This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt,” he said late last month.
None of this projection is surprising. “That’s been sort of Trump’s…method of operating,” Liz Cheney told Anderson Cooper back in December as Trump, the guy who tried to overturn a free and fair election in 2020, accused Biden of trying to destroy democracy. “It is a real threat to his political success if people recognize that—that he himself is trying to unravel democracy.” Cheney was right; to keep the wool over his supporters’ eyes, Trump has employed three tactics: intimidating his enemies into supporting him by projecting onto them his own qualities (remember “Lyin’ Ted”?); labeling unwinnable enemies RINOs (Cheney and Adam Kinzinger); and painting himself, the aggressor, as the ultimate victim.
Trump’s recent conviction is perfect fodder for that last one, which is why so many in Trumpworld consider it a boon. Many pundits have theorized that his legal troubles might galvanize the MAGA base. One adviser to a Trump rival called the series of criminal indictments “a solar-eclipse-like event” that blocked out other Republican contenders trying to gain traction.
Still, as I’ve argued before, what works with GOP primary voters may turn off swing voters. New polling from Politico Magazine/Ipsos suggests that the political fallout of Trump’s conviction could be greater than initially anticipated, with 21% of independents saying that the guilty verdict has made them less likely to back the former president. (This finding cuts against polling in late May that indicated the conviction was essentially a nonfactor—which means that, at the very least, swing voters may be somewhat malleable through November.)
Polling aside, the ex-president also has another problem: Nearly two weeks after Trump was convicted in New York, Hunter Biden was convicted on highly unusual federal gun charges. “Many Trump allies had been secretly rooting for an acquittal,” as the Times noted following Hunter’s guilty verdict. “The talking points wrote themselves: It would have been yet more evidence that the United States justice system was rigged in favor of the Bidens and against the Trumps.” In other words, it’s going to be hard for Trump to project around his criminal conviction when it’s happening to the other side too.
Added to Hunter’s inconvenient conviction is the fact that both a Democratic senator (New Jersey’s Bob Menendez) and a Democratic congressmen (Texas’s Henry Cuellar) are being prosecuted by Biden’s DOJ. Wouldn’t a rigged system avoid prosecuting people from the president’s own party? Isn’t Hunter’s conviction a testament to the fact that the system is actually not rigged against Republicans? Of course, instead of attempting to answer these uncomfortable questions after Hunter’s conviction, Trump went mysteriously silent.
Biden, meanwhile, has been loud and clear. When the president broke his silence on Trump’s attacks on the justice system, he said, “It’s reckless, it’s dangerous, it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this is rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.” This was right on the money, because if we’ve learned anything from eight years of Trumpism, it’s that our institutions are not as strong as we need them to be.
This may not always be true, but right now, Democrats are the standard-bearers of our institutions. They need to stand up for them, and they need to elevate democratic norms. Biden isn’t a wannabe autocrat, just like Hillary Clinton isn’t unhinged. Trump, however, is both of those things; that’s why he accuses his political enemies of also being them. Every accusation is a reflection. And if democracy is to survive, then Democrats need to keep holding up a mirror to Donald Trump.
