Talking Points: Trump’s Crimes

When possible it is critical to convey the moral and legal failings of Donald Trump because the public is not paying a lot of attention to his crimes and malfeasance. These have somehow become so “baked in” to people’s perceptions of Trump that they have become normalized in many voters’ minds. Here is how we talk about it.*

• No one is above the law, not even a former president. There should not be one justice system for you and me and another for the rich and powerful. That is not the American way.

• He is being held to account by impartial law enforcement professionals, most of them Republican appointees. He has been indicted by people in part selected by Trump’s lawyers. He will be judged by a jury selected in part by Trump’s lawyers. None of this is politically motivated. 

• Trump is demonstrably guilty of the many crimes he is accused of, which now number 88. We know, for instance, he falsified business records to pay hush money to a porn star he was having an affair with. This is an illegal act designed to sway the outcome of the 2016 election, which it probably did.

• We know he has been found liable for sexual assault and has bragged about assaulting women. These cannot be our values.

• We also know, based on testimony from his own former aides as well as from emails and texts and video and audio recordings of Trump himself that he tried to illegally alter the outcome of the 2020 election as well as tried to hide hundreds of top secret documents from the FBI who had a legal warrant to have them returned.

• We know he has been found guilty of committing business fraud and is being forced to play half a billion dollars in fines. 

• All of this is a pattern of behavior that reveals an essential truth: Donald Trump is selfish and weak and places himself above all other things, including the law and what’s best for this country. These cannot be our values

*talking points originated in Dan Pfeiffer’s substack