How the 'virus of Trumpism' is corrupting the Supreme Court and Congress: analysis

20 May 2024

Despite facing four criminal indictments and a variety of civil lawsuits, former President Donald Trump, according to polls, stands a good chance of returning to the White House in January 2025. And many prominent Republicans are rallying around him.

In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on May 20, political science professor Austin Sarat (who teaches at Amherst College in Massachusetts) and former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut argue that "the virus of Trumpism" has had a corrupting effect on the U.S. Supreme Court as well as Congress.

"Last Thursday, the New York Times published a photo showing an upside-down American flag flying outside Justice Samuel Alito’s home three years ago," Sarat and Aftergut explain. "A traditional symbol of distress, the upside-down flag had been adopted by various 'Stop the Steal' and QAnon Trump admirers and was carried by some of the January 6th insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol."

Sarat and Aftergut continue, "Alito's version was flying eleven days later, on January 17, 2021…. Remarkably, Alito still declines to recuse himself from considering Trump's pending claim of immunity for alleged crimes in his conduct leading up to the January 6th Capitol siege, along with that of convicted insurrectionist Joseph Fischer."

During Trump's hush money/falsified business records trial in Lower Manhattan, Sarat and Aftergut lament, the former president's "MAGA acolytes" in Congress showed up at the courthouse to voice their support.

Sarat and Aftergut observe, "Ohio's Republican Senator J.D. Vance, who made the pilgrimage last Monday, forthrightly admitted that he was there to say what Trump 'is prevented from saying…. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), during his visiting last Tuesday, went after the prosecution's key witness, Michael Cohen. Sens. Vance and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) added their voices to the surrogate attack on Cohen."

Sarat and Aftergut continue, "The dangers to the rule of law are impossible to overstate. Instead of lending their voices to support American institutions, Trump's loyalists are using their official position as lawmakers to attack them…. If Trump is reelected, he won't be held in check by a Congress populated by representatives like those who showed up in Manhattan last week, or by a Court with Justice Alito and his fellow ideologues in the majority."

Austin Sarat and Dennis Aftergut's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.

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