The Psychological Roots Of Trump-Impunity Politics

His loyalists feel aggrieved and accountability figures dupe themselves into thinking bark equals bite.

(Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

In the several day before a panel of New York appellate judges gave Donald Trump a special reprieve on Monday, the Trump world—and the adjacent world of anti-anti-Trump Republicans—were as distraught as I’d ever seen them. 

Monday was the original deadline for Trump to post his full, $460-plus million civil-fraud appeal bond, and he didn’t have the scratch. Attorney General Letitia James was poised to seize his properties. Trump and his histrionic brood were incensed over the supposed unfairness of it all. 

But it was the supporters one or two circles removed who may have advanced Trump’s interests more than anyone with real skin in the game. Their angle wasn’t to trash talk judges or prosecutors or the state of New York, but to warn whoever might listen that the specter of Trump facing accountability under the law would ignite a great MAGA rising and return Trump to power. If you want him to lose, in other words, it is in your best interest to grant him amnesty. 

Thus the sad-trombone spectacle of right-wing commentator Erick Erickson agreeing with Republican spin doctor Frank Luntz that New York Attorney General Letitia James “create the greatest victimhood of 2024, and you’re going to elect Donald Trump. If they take his stuff… he’s going to go up in the polls just like he went up every single time they’ve indicted him.”

On the surface, this is just the m.o. of modern right-wing politics. Punish us for crimes, we’ll punish you for nothing. Beat us, we’ll cry cheating. You wouldn’t like us when we’re angry, etc. 

But I want to dig a little deeper into it, because I think the psychology underlying it contains keys to beating the whole movement back. And the lesson needs to be taught widely because (as the appellate decision in New York suggests) too many people outside the MAGA cult believe these threats are credible and act accordingly.

ERICK THE PSYCHING

Some of the right-wing operatives who say this stuff are pure cynics. They know their threats are idle, they know Trump is not most popular when he’s cornered, they know their promises of tit-for-tat retribution are artifacts of thoroughgoing lawlessness. But many of them are heavily immersed in MAGA thought (communities experiencing MAGAness?) and are simply giving voice to feelings of vicarious anger and fear and loss. Their tribal leader is being held to the rule of law, and if he’s vulnerable to that then their place atop the American pecking order is in jeopardy.

It’s more pleasant to believe a soothing fable where Trump is righteous and the forces of accountability are petty, vengeful and destined to lose. 

This is why Trump—in his inimitable and solecistic way—described the civil-fraud judgments he faces as “a form of Navalny,” referring to the recently murdered Russian dissident.

It means a lot to them to believe Trump is being treated unfairly; it means a lot to them to believe they aren’t in thrall like simpleminded cultists to a charlatan. And in a world where Trump’s just an innocent victim of retribution, decent people of all political stripes might actually rally to his side. 

What’s actually happened is that affiliates like Erickson have punked themselves into a state of angry defensiveness over a trust-fund con-man’s right to keep his gaudy properties. It’s hard to imagine something less dignified!

In the real world, accountability has never helped Trump. When he was first impeached, nearly 60 percent of the country believed he should be removed from office. When he was impeached again after inciting an insurrection against the federal government, his approval rating collapsed. When he was first indicted, he warned of (and tried to foment) civil unrest, but nobody took the streets for him. Same when he was indicted a second time. And a third. And a fourth. His favoribility ratings dropped back to post-presidency lows when the news was thick with his many indictments, and only narrowed slightly much later in equal-and-opposite measure to Biden’s numbers, which fell through the media feeding frenzy over his age.

And if Trump’s properties had been seized yesterday, it wouldn’t have made him a martyr. There is no mass pro-fraud sentiment in the public. There is instead a widespread sense that Trump is a crook and a faker, and the fact that he’d finally faced consequences would have galvanized his opposition and weakened the brittle margins of his support base. 

Accountability may make Trump more popular among staunch Republicans—this is Luntz’s clumsy sleight-of-hand—but if anything it lowers his ceiling among conservative voters and the general population. A prosecutor who indicts Trump amid a crowded primary election may inadvertently drive transgressive, antisocial, own-the-libs voters away from candidates like Ron DeSantis and into Trump’s camp. But the same indictment will also remind the kinds of Republican voters who want the party to nominate someone non-corrupt that Trump is beyond the pale. Why is Nikki Haley drawing 20 percent of the vote in primaries, weeks after suspending her campaign? It’s not because Donald Trump is getting more popular.

APPEAL THYSELF

Trump may derive actual power from the sense, fed by judges like the ones in New York, that he’s actually above the law. In some mathematical sense, it should clarify for the rest of us that the only surefire way to drive him out of public life is to vote against him resoundingly, but in a more practical and human way, it feeds a sense of hopelessness. What’s the point in resisting if the rules don’t apply to him?

By contrast, it gives the cult something to celebrate.

Whether it’s what they thought they were doing or not, that’s what the New York appeals court accomplished on Monday. Unlike any other civil defendant appealing a verdict, Trump will not have to post the full judgment against him, plus interest, to defer the seizure of his assets on appeal. He can instead post about one-third of it—$175 million—while New York takes a flier on the rest. The judges also, unfathomably, stayed business sanctions against Trump Organization figures who perpetuated the fraud scheme. And they didn’t explain the reasoning behind any of it.

I can’t say what the judges were thinking when they made this decision. Are they corrupt? Are they fearful? Are they appeasing the business community? But it’s become abundantly clear from a number of earlier episodes that many accountability figures in the country fear the MAGA bark and try to stave off a bite by taking it easy on him. 

It will be hilarious if Trump finds it impossible to post this lower bond, too. In the unlikely event that’s how this plays out, we can thank the judges for inadvertently revealing Trump to be much broker than we thought. But he’s the last person in America who deserves any kind of forbearance. The large majority of Americans are wise to who he is and the insecurities underlying his threats. It’s long past time their public servants recognized them as well.