A couple of months ago, Donald Trump complained that Americans are “living in a Pro Criminal Atmosphere.” Around the same time, he declared with confidence, “You’re not going to teach a criminal not to be a criminal.” A day later, the former president echoed the line at an unrelated event.
“A criminal is a criminal,” the Republican nominee said. “They generally stay a criminal, and we do not have time to figure it out.”
About a month later, the GOP candidate’s campaign spokesperson said he “believes anyone convicted of a crime should spend time behind bars.”
Evidently, Trump and his team aren’t quite done failing this rather obvious test of self-awareness. At an event in Milwaukee, for example, the GOP candidate claimed, “Kamala [Harris] and Joe [Biden] are crime creators. We are crime fighters.”
Trump: Kamala and Joe are crime creators. We are crime fighters pic.twitter.com/B5TD8nsQH9
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 1, 2024
Hours earlier, the former president pushed the same line via his social media platform, except he put the message in all-capital letters and added an exclamation point (he loves exclamation points).
All of this might be a more effective election season pitch if Trump weren’t a criminal.
This need not be complicated. As recently as May, a jury found Trump guilty of 34 felonies. This is not to be confused with a different jury finding Trump liable for sexual abuse or the case in which a court found that Trump oversaw a business that engaged in systemic fraud.
He’s also still facing several dozen other pending felony counts, across multiple jurisdictions. (He has pleaded not guilty.) What’s more, the former president has also surrounded himself with other criminals. “With Lincoln, they had a team of rivals,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley recently noted. “With Trump, you have a team of felons.” In case that weren’t quite enough, during his failed presidency, Trump had a habit of issuing scandalous pardons to politically aligned criminals. And if elected to a second term, the Republican has promised to issue even more pardons to politically aligned criminals, including those who violently clashed with police officers. With this in mind, as the former president boasts that he and his team “are crime fighters,” it’s probably worth reminding the Republican operation that a little self-awareness goes a long way. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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