By Chris Satullo
Let’s play the game Which Number Is Higher?
Felony counts for Donald Trump in 2023 (so far) – or home runs for Aaron Judge in 2022?
Felony counts for Donald Trump in 2023 – or Grammy nominations for Taylor Swift, lifetime?
Felony counts for Donald Trump in 2023 – or combined Oscar and Emmy nominations for Tom Hanks, lifetime?
Well, the Yankees slugger did give The Donald a run for his money with his record 62 dingers last season. But, even if you combine Taylor’s and Tom’s totals (46 plus 19), they still don’t top Trump’s gusher of felony counts in the hush money and documents indictments he’s been hit with so far in 2023. The tally: 74 in all.
And it’s still early. Trump hasn’t yet been forced to board his personal midnight train to Georgia, to face even more counts for his fraudulent, bullying attempts to overturn the 2020 election result in the Peach State. And the Jan. 6/coup indictment is just days away.
But as his legal perils pile up, so do the mysteries surrounding the reaction of Republican voters. MAGA World surely doesn’t seem to be taking in the mounting evidence that its once and possibly future candidate is a reckless, cheating, lying threat to the Republic.
Each successive legal setback – going back to his skein of failed Stop the Steal lawsuits, his loss in the E. Jean Carroll civil suit, and Manhattan’s successful criminal prosecution of the Trump Organization – only seems to cement Trumpists’ loyalty, to lock in their love.
In a recent CBS News poll, nearly 4 out 5 likely GOP primary voters agreed with Trump that the federal documents indictment is a political witch hunt. One out of 7 even said the well-founded charges that he illegally kept and mishandled classified documents containing nuclear secrets increased their support for him.
Combing the Web last week for possible explanations of this phenomenon – so baffling to inhabitants of the fact-based universe – I came across a little axiom that’s come to be known as Wilhoit’s Law.
Here is what it states:
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
Talk about an a-ha! moment.
(Before unpacking that statement and what is suggests about MAGA World, though, please indulge a slight, delicious detour that says something about the digital hall of mirrors in which we all wander. Most online sources, including Wikipedia, credit that acerbic axiom to a political scientist, Francis “Frank” Wilhoit, who died in 2010. Which is interesting, because Wilhoit’s Law was first articulated in 2018 in a discussion thread on an obscure political blog. Turns out, the axiom isn’t the miraculous product of posthumous scholarly pondering. It’s an exasperated, spur-of-the-moment formulation by a musical composer from Ohio, also named Frank Wilhoit.)
Anyway.
Wilhoit’s Law, whatever its origins, does capture a lot about MAGA World. To be fair, I wish still-alive Frank had specified the red-hats as his target, instead of smearing the remnant of authentic, principled conservatives. But Wilhoit’s Law distills, down to their essence, many jaw-dropping examples of double standards, hypocrisy and what-about-ism.
How to explain people who can joyfully chant “Lock her up!” about an opposing presidential nominee during the GOP convention, then splutter with partisan outrage that their guy could merely be indicted – not locked up, in fact allowed to remain free on no bail in what can only be described as deferential, preferential treatment – on far more serious charges?
How to explain people who hyperventilate about the supposed “weaponization” of the Department of Justice by Joe Biden, who actually hasn’t said a word about Trump’s legal woes – then cheer wildly when Trump promises to deploy all the forces of the executive branch in wildly unconstitutional ways to exact “retribution” on all the people who’ve ever annoyed him? While they also do some provisional flirting with Ron DeSantis, who declared jihad against Mickey Mouse because Disney Corp. dared question his fiats?
How to explain people who elevated “character” to the indispensable Oval Office credential when Bill Clinton behaved abominably with an intern – but now babble about “God working in mysterious ways” when their guy behaves even worse with woman after woman after woman after woman?
How to explain people who fly Thin Blue Line, pro-police flags outside their beach houses to defend bad cops who murder already-subdued black suspects – but then gaslight and defame the brave police who defended their nation’s Capitol against a violent mob wielding bear spray, riot gear and zip ties?
Yes, it’s plain hypocrisy. It’s classic psychological projection – calling out in others the very sins you commit. It’s the what-about-ism that comes as natural to Fox News nighttime hosts as breathing.
But Wilhoit’s Law nails the problem beneath the problem, the root cause of all these all-too-common behaviors.
Trumpists believe that only they are the real Americans, the legit in-group. At the same time, they feel threatened and scorned by other people who have the gall to claim the same constitutional rights and protections that Trumpists consider solely their birthright.
MAGA fans know these other Americans hardly at all, but Trump, Fox News and their favorite podcaster tell them daily that these Others are demented, evil and out to get them. So, MAGA World is petrified – and enraged by any sign that the law does not bind the Others in a way that protects “Real Americans.”
Trump, who has a gift for this, has convinced his cult members that his legal troubles speak not to his utter lack of morals. Instead, he urges them to view his indictments as the first wave of the Others’ evil onslaught against all of MAGA World, the flipping of the script so that the law will protect the Others without binding them, while the “real Americans” will get bound (literally) but not protected.
Hey, in that kind of (faux) emergency, blatant hypocrisy is more than justified. As are insults, harassment, vandalism, violence and even civil war. After all, from time to time, the tree of liberty must one nourished by the blood of the hateful woke. Whatever it takes to protect the in-group – while containing, silencing and punishing the evil out-group – is justified.
Never mind that, for MAGA World, the “outs” are a fuzzy tangle that somehow links together Harvard profs, welfare moms, George Soros, drag queens, Moana, Silicon Valley moguls, Rachel Maddow, Honduran immigrants, LeBron James, Big Oil, Prius drivers, Stephen Colbert, The Weeknd, Big Pharma, Barbie, and Big Bird. To name only a few.
Faced with such powerful enemies, certain truths become self-evident: Hypocrisy is virtue. The double standard is the new Golden Rule. God loves a good troll. Suspend the Constitution; put Wilhoit’s Law in its place. Hooray for “Marshall” law! The only way to save America is to tear it apart. Let’s get us a nice little civil war.
And God bless Donald Trump, God’s anointed and most foully persecuted avenger.
—
Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia