June 25, 2023
If there’s one word the news media uses most indiscriminately for Donald Trump, it’s “unprecedented.”
Trump’s recent indictment for secreting classified documents has been characterized as unprecedented for making him the first current or former president to be indicted by a federal grand jury. Only weeks before, when a Manhattan grand jury indicted him for lying about hush money for Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential bid, the Trump moment was unprecedented by being indicted and seeking re-election. Trump is the first president in US history to be impeached twice – over Ukraine and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Unprecedented. Attempts by GOP Congresswomen Elise Stefanik and Marjorie Taylor Greene to expunge Donald Trump impeachments-unprecedented. “It was unprecedented for a previously unelected politician who had never served a day in the US military or government to become president, ” as is his “political power.” It goes on and on. The news media are self-conscious about it. They just can’t help themselves, taking pride in the sacred role to provide context.
There’s even a three-part TV mini-series documentary called “Trump Unprecedented.”
Context matters, of course. But what context. Trump lives to be unprecedented. He emerged from his “The Apprentice” reality TV years with what The New York Times in 2015 called “political pundit consensus…His abrasive, celebrity-driven, Don Ricklesian candidacy is unprecedented.”
Trump flaunts his unprecedented banner wherever he goes. Any time Trump’s experiences are characterized as unprecedented, no matter what they’re about, he struts back into the limelight, microphone and podium at the ready. Unprecedented means no one has achieved that level of notoriety and achievement. It’s typically framed by the left, the Dems and the media as: see how incorrigibly bad he is. If you’re MAGA, it’s framed as: see how singularly special he is.
Here's a quick test. Trump has now been indicted twice. Trials await. He’s been impeached twice; neither time convicted. From those sentences alone, who triumphs? Trump or his accusers? Trump’s reputation as a martyr to the right is reinforced.
Trump being charged with crimes adds little to what the public should already know of his mendacity, corruption and con artistry. It needs to be reported, of course, but emblazening it with unprecedented enhances his celeb cred and misses the relevant global context.
The context needing amplification is his status as one of the corrupt leaders of the world. Nothing unprecedented about it. In fact, it’s all too starkly common, historically and currently. The international legion of dishonor of corrupt leaders who’ve been charged, convicted, sentenced, imprisoned, known to have embezzled money from their people, or been banned from holding office, is long and ignominious.
Count off to ten:
1. Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos - President and First Lady of the Philippines (1972-86)
2. Slobodan Milosevic - President of Serbia/Yugoslavia (1989–2000)
3. Baby Doc Jean-Claude Duvalier - President of Haiti (1971–86)
4. Mohamed Suharto - President of Indonesia (1967–1998)
5. Viktor Yanukovych - President/Prime Minister of Ukraine (2002–14)
6. Mobutu Sese Seko - President of Zaire (1965–1997)
7. Sani Abacha - President of Nigeria (1993–98)
8. Alberto Fujimori - President of Peru (1990–2000)
9. Nawaz Sharif - Prime Minister of Pakistan (1990-93, 1997-99, 2013-17)
10. Dilma Rousseff - President of Brazil (2010-16)
Don’t want to overlook other ignobles, whose iron-fisted leadership has made it hard to document their abuses:
Vladimir Putin - President of Russia
Kim Jong Un - President of North Korea
Viktor Orbán - Prime Minister of Hungary
Jair Bolsonaro - President of Brazil (2019-22)
Not only are Trump’s actions not unprecedented. This is the company he keeps. MAGA folk, Trump is nothing special. He is crammed into a long line of corrupt, sociopathic leaders whose legacies are uncanny charismatic powers that mesmerize and abuse their own people.
I purposely left out Adolf Hitler because mentioning him is a conversation stopper. I bring him up because of the uncanny similarity to where we are with Trump and his prosecutions. Hitler was tried, convicted and sentenced for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch of Nov. 8, 1923. The attempted coup in Munich by right-wing members of the army and the Nazi Party was foiled by the government. Hitler was charged with high treason. Despite his conviction, Hitler was out of jail before the end of the year, with his political position stronger than ever.
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