Ordinary Republicans have been unmoved by his racist ideology and the white supremacists drawn to their party.
Supporters of former President Donald Trump demonstrate outside his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. FBI agents searched the property Monday, reportedly looking for classified White House documents Trump took with him when he left office in January 2021.
Donald Trump never ceases to find new, convoluted and contradictory ways to rationalize his actions and behavior.They’ve explained away credible accusations of sexual assault against him and decided, unlike presidents and presidential candidates before him, he didn’t have to release tax records. His base has given no credence to his business failures and bankruptcies and tossed aside an avalanche of lawsuits against him. Ordinary Republicans have been unmoved by his racist ideology and the white supremacists drawn to their party. The former president said there were “very fine people, on both sides” at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017; and supporters chose to cover their ears as neo-Nazis chanted dangerous slogans of the alt right. The rally, in response to the removal of a Confederate statue, led directly to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and to democracy itself.But if one truth has come from his mouth, it’s this in 2016, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose voters.” Even the seizure of multiple boxes of classified documents from his Florida home last week didn’t change that. Trump supporters have remained solidly behind him even as he twisted himself into a pretzel. The feds, he says, have ganged up on him — the National Archives, the Department of Justice, the federal courts and the FBI. That defied the fact that FBI agents had a legal warrant, and that Trump is under investigation for the potential improper removal of classified documents, obstruction of justice and violations of the Espionage Act. It defied the fact that agents removed highly sensitive classified documents Trump said he didn’t have; and that in June his lawyer signed a statement that said all classified material at Mar-a-Lago had been returned. In January, 15 boxes were removed, some containing classified documents. When more were discovered last week, Trump accused FBI agents of planting them. Then he said the classified documents had been “declassified.” Trump’s representatives also said he had a “standing order” while in the White House, never mentioned during his tenure, that automatically declassified documents upon their departure from the Oval Office and their arrival in his residence upstairs. It doesn’t matter. Two of the three criminal laws cited in the warrant don’t hinge on classified information. A New York Times report cited two sections of the U.S. Code that “make the taking or concealment of government records a crime regardless of whether they had anything to do with national security.” “The Espionage Act makes no reference to whether a document has been deemed classified,” the story said. “Instead, it makes it a crime to retain, without authorization, documents related to the national defense that could be used to harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary.” In the face of potential treason, several Republicans stepped up to the podium or went on Sunday news shows to defend the former president. Some said documents marked top secret, secret and confidential weren’t just “declassified,” but that a former president could deem them unclassified “retroactively.”
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