Pushing Back on Trump's Most Absurd Argument about his Conviction

No, Biden is not why Trump is in so much legal trouble

David Sacks, a Right Wing venture capitalist/podcaster, declared after January 6th that he could never again support Donald Trump. Sacks has spent the intervening years trying to make himself a powerful contender in Republican politics by playing footsie with every Right Wing Republican not named Trump. Sacks was even the “mastermind” behind Ron DeSantis’s disastrous campaign announcement on Twitter Spaces. None of those efforts really worked out for him, and his desire for clout and attention exceeded his previous ironclad commitment as a Never Trumper.

Not only did Sacks support Trump, but he hosted a multi-million dollar fundraiser for the insurrectionists in his San Francisco home.

Sacks posted a long message on Twitter clarifying all of the reasons for his callous flip-flop. He never truly addressed Trump’s culpability for January 6th, which was the original cause of his opposition to Trump. Instead, Sacks relied on something he called “lawfare:”

A bedrock of the political stability we’ve enjoyed in America over the last 250 years is that we don’t accept attempts to jail political opponents in order to win an election. Yet Biden has pushed for selective and unprecedented prosecutions of his once and future opponent from the moment he assumed office.

I bring all of this up for two reasons. First, Sacks cares about lowering his tax bill and stopping the Biden Administration’s antitrust efforts so that he can hoard more wealth. The rest is just window dressing.

Second, the false idea that Joe Biden weaponized the criminal justice system to stop Trump is common rhetoric for many Republicans, and it even bubbles up in focus groups at times. You know how the conversation goes.

“Donald Trump tried to overthrow the election, spread conspiracy theories, mishandled COVID, and used the White House to enrich himself and his family.”

“Yeah, but they are all corrupt. Joe Biden is using the government to stop his political opponent.”

For people who pay close attention to the news, know how the legal system works, or are familiar with the ethically rigorous manner in which Biden has conducted his presidency, the whole idea seems ridiculous. However, most voters pay little to no attention to the details of the Trump investigations and are cynical about politics and politicians.

The intensity of these conversations has — of course — gone up since Trump was found guilty. Here are a couple of ways to defuse this bullshit argument.

1. No Evidence of Interference

After winning the majority in 2022, Congressional Republicans’ first act was to set up a special committee to investigate whether the Biden Administration had weaponized the government against Donald Trump. This became part of the GOP’s campaign platform after the F.B.I. raided Mar-a-Lago to recover the classified documents that Trump repeatedly refused to return.