Philippa Kaur

Much has been made of the unprecedented nature of the April 4, 2023 arraignment on criminal charges of former President Donald Trump following an indictment brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. But a closer look at American history shows that the indictment of a former president was not unforeseen.

What the Constitution says about prosecuting a president

The Constitution’s authors contemplated the arrest of a current or former president. At several points since the nation’s founding, our leaders have been called before the bar of justice.

Article 1, Section 3, of the Constitution says that when a federal government official is impeached and removed from office, they “shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”

In his defense of this constitutional provision, Founding Father Alexander Hamilton noted that, unlike the British king, for whom “there is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable; no punishment to which he can be subjected,” a president once removed from office would “be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.” Trump has been impeached twice, but not removed from office.

As a scholar with expertise in legal history and criminal law, I believe the punishment our Founding Fathers envisioned for high officeholders removed from office would also apply to those who left office in other ways.

Tench Coxe, a delegate from Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress from 1788–89, echoed Hamilton. He explained that while the Constitution’s speech and debate clause permanently immunized members of Congress from liability for anything they might do or say as part of their official duties, the president “is not so much protected as that of a member of the House of Representatives; for he may be proceeded against like any other man in the ordinary course of law.”

In Coxe’s view, even a sitting president could be arrested, tried and punished for violating the law. And, though Coxe didn’t say it explicitly, I’d argue that it follows that if a president can be charged with a crime while in office, once out of office, he could be held responsible like anyone else.

The indictment of Aaron Burr

Hamilton’s and Coxe’s positions were put to an early test soon after the Constitution was ratified. The test came when jurors in New Jersey indicted Vice President Aaron Burr for killing Hamilton in a duel in that state.

An artist’s depiction of the Burr–Hamilton duel on July 11, 1804. Hamilton was mortally wounded, and Burr was indicted for his death.
Ivan-96/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images

The indictment charged that “Aaron Burr late of the Township of Bergen in the County of Bergen esquire not having the fear of God before his eyes but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil … feloniously willfully and of his malice aforethought did make an assault upon Alexander Hamilton … [who] of the said Mortal wounds died.”

While Burr’s powerful friends subsequently interceded and persuaded state officials to drop the charges, their success had nothing to do with any immunity that Burr enjoyed as an executive officer of the United States.

Indeed, Burr’s legal troubles were not over. In February 1807, after his term as vice president ended, he was arrested and charged with treason for plotting to create a new and independent nation separate from the U.S. This time, he stood trial and was acquitted.

The Strange case of Ulysses S. Grant

Fast forward to 1872, when the incumbent president, Ulysses S. Grant, was arrested in Washington, D.C., for speeding in his horse-drawn carriage.

The arresting officer told Grant, “I am very sorry, Mr. President, to have to do it, for you are the chief of the nation, and I am nothing but a policeman, but duty is duty, sir, and I will have to place you under arrest.”

As The New York Post recently recounted the story, Grant “was ordered to put up 20 bucks as collateral.” But he never stood trial.

20th and 21st century precedents

A little over a century later, Republican Vice President Spiro Agnew had a more serious brush with the law when he was accused by the Department of Justice of a pattern of political corruption starting when he was a county executive in Maryland and continuing through his tenure as vice president.

On Oct. 10, 1973, Agnew agreed to a plea bargain. He resigned his office and pleaded no contest to a charge of federal income tax evasion in exchange for the federal government dropping charges of political corruption. He was fined US$10,000 and sentenced to three years’ probation.

Spiro Agnew leaves a Baltimore federal courthouse on Oct. 10, 1973, after pleading no contest to tax evasion charges and resigning as vice president.
Bettmann via Getty Images

Richard Nixon, the president with whom Agnew served, narrowly escaped being indicted for his role in the Watergate burglary and its cover-up. In 2018, the National Archives released documents, labeled the Watergate Road Map, that showed just how close Nixon had come to being charged.

The documents reveal that “a grand jury planned to charge Nixon with bribery, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and obstruction of a criminal investigation.” But an indictment was never handed down because, by that time, Hamilton’s and Coxe’s views had been displaced by a belief that a sitting president should not be indicted.

Nixon was later saved from criminal charges after he left office when his successor, President Gerald Ford, granted him a full and complete pardon.

Another occasion on which a president came close to being charged with a crime
occurred in January 2001, when, as an article in The Atlantic notes, independent prosecutor Robert Ray considered indicting former President Bill Clinton for lying under oath about his affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Ultimately, Ray decided that if Clinton publicly admitted to “having been misleading and evasive under oath … he didn’t need to see him indicted.”

And in February 2021, after President Trump had left office, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged that the former president, who had escaped being removed from office twice after being impeached, would still be legally “liable for everything he did while he was in office … We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”

What history teaches about Trump’s indictment

This brings us to the present moment.

For any prosecutor, including Alvin Bragg, the indictment and arrest of a former president is a genuinely momentous act. As Henry Ruth, one of the prosecutors who was involved in the Nixon case, explained in 1974, “Signing one’s name to the indictment of an ex-president is an act that one wishes devolved upon another but one’s self. This is true even where such an act, in institutional and justice terms, appears absolutely necessary.”

For the rest of us, this nation’s history is a reminder that ours is not the first generation of Americans who have been called to deal with alleged wrongdoing by our leaders and former leaders. More

On April 4, Americans lived through a new experience: a former president of the United States officially charged with a criminal offence. Donald Trump has achieved many firsts across his media and subsequent political career – but it’s unlikely this was a first he was aiming for.

Not that you could tell from his demeanour. Although news reports from journalists in the courtroom noted he appeared “sombre”, on his own turf Trump pulled few punches. On his social media platform TruthSocial, shortly before he left Trump Tower to head to the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, Trump blasted the judge in charge of the hearing, Justice Juan Merchan, as “highly partisan” and whose family are “well-known Trump haters”. He repeated these accusations during his speech from his Mar-A-Lago home in Florida a few hours later.

Denying he did anything illegal, Trump also repeated now-familiar claims that his prosecution is politically motivated, asserting that this process is an “insult” to the US. He claimed: “The only crime I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it.”

The charges

The official reading of the charges against Trump in court revealed few surprises. In effect, he has been charged with falsifying business records. The charges allege that having reimbursed his lawyer for payments to two women (unnamed, but widely believed to be former adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy Bunny Karen McDougal) to ensure their silence about allegations of extra-marital relations, Trump then claimed those payments as legal expenses in his accounts.

The payments themselves were not illegal, but recording them as something else in the business records is. Trump is charged with 34 counts, each relating to a particular instance of financial accounting for these payments.

Perhaps the most surprising element after days of speculation was that Trump was charged with felonies – the more serious level of crime – rather than the lower-level misdemeanours that had been expected. The argument here is that the falsification of business records occurred to cover up another crime.

The district attorney bringing the case, Alvin L. Bragg, appeared to keep options open regarding exactly what that other crime might be. Violations of state and federal election laws are one possible claim, but may be difficult to prove. A second possible avenue appears to be that these financial records were intended to mislead state tax authorities. Bragg may well seek to establish both at trial, giving a jury options for conviction.

New York district attorney Alvin Bragg has received death threats following his decision to pursue the investigation against the former president.
EPA-EFE/Justin Lane

The charges may seem relatively insignificant for anyone expecting something in keeping with Trump’s larger-than-life personality and the vehemence of his criticisms of those involved in the process. And he certainly faces other, more serious legal investigations around both his role in the January 6 2021 riots on Capitol Hill and potential election tampering regarding the closely fought Georgia election. Both could lead to future criminal charges.

But, as Bragg noted in his post-hearing statements, prosecuting business crime is a large part of what the New York district attorney’s office does – and white-collar crime is still criminal behaviour. Each felony count carries a maximum sentence of four years, meaning if convicted on all counts, Trump could face up to 136 years of prison time, although it is more likely that he would face a hefty fine.

The process

Little moves quickly in the US justice system. The next step is for the prosecution to file what is known as “discovery”, or the evidence they will use at trial. This will be followed by a similar filing by Trump’s defence team. According to New York law, these must be filed by May 9 and June 8 respectively.

The defence then has until August 8 to raise any claims or queries. This might include a motion to dismiss the case entirely, if they feel there is insufficient evidence on which to proceed. The prosecution has the option to respond and Judge Merchan will have until early December to rule.

Judge Juan Merchan, who will preside over the trial of the former president, has already been involved in the prosecution of the Trump Organisation over tax matters.
Jane Rosenberg/Reuters

While the Trump team’s motions might well garner attention, the most significant date is December when both sides – and the rest of the country – will find out whether the case will go to trial or not. The timing is significant as it comes just before the first voting in the primary elections for the 2024 presidential campaign.

If the case is discharged, it may prove to be a major boost to his chances of electoral success. Alternatively, the spectacle of a presidential candidate fighting to prove his innocence in a criminal case while simultaneously campaigning for the nation’s highest office is hardly likely to undermine the outsider’s perception of a broken American political system.

What of Trump’s presidential bid?

Trump’s indictment and official charging have brought him national media attention at a level he hasn’t really received since he left office in January 2021. But the presidential election is 18 months away and a lot can happen between now and then.

Recent events have invigorated Trump’s base, but we already knew that there are a core group of voters who continue to support Trump and believe he was unfairly denied the election in 2020. And, despite claims of a boost in the polls, poll-tracking website FiveThirtyEight indicates that Trump’s approval ratings are around 39% – not a low for him, but not an historic high either (Joe Biden’s approval ratings stand not much higher at 43%).

Trump’s ability to win in 2024 will depend on his ability to secure the votes not only of his base but of moderate Republicans and centrist swing voters, many of whom were convinced in 2016 that Trump represented the change the nation needed. Four years later, those voters reversed course and chose the moderate, non-confrontational Biden instead.

After the tumult of the pandemic and massive inflation, the nation’s appetite for a return of the political disruptor remains in doubt, irrespective of the status of his legal troubles. All we can be sure about is that Trump will not back down and will continue his campaign for the office he believes he deserves – which means we’ll all be hearing more from and about him in the coming months. More

Former US President Donald J Trump has been charged with 34 felony counts in New York. In the words of Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, Trump is accused of making “34 false statements”, themselves “made to cover up other crimes”. Those crimes include a “conspiracy to promote a candidacy by unlawful means” and to “scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election”.

The charges in New York add to the network of cases focused on Trump’s efforts to subvert and undermine democratic processes in the United States, now stretching all the way back to his 2016 candidacy and across the duration of his presidential administration.

The charges shouldn’t really come as a surprise. As recently as December 2022, Trump called for the “termination” of the Constitution so that he could return to power. The former president has always been brazen in his contempt for the rule of law.

But it is genuinely, historically significant that a former president is facing criminal charges and trial. This is an enormous shift in the norms and standards that have governed American politics for decades.

Trump’s arraignment proceeded as expected: he arrived at court, was processed, and pleaded not guilty to those 34 charges. Amid a media frenzy, he left court and flew home to safer ground in Florida. At Mar-a-Lago, he made a standard stump speech listing his grievances and dramatically mischaracterising the investigations into his conduct.

As Trump’s indictment and arraignment have played out, he and his supporters have employed now distressingly familiar techniques for inciting their followers. Last week, Trump threatened “death and destruction”, posting a picture of himself wielding a baseball bat next to a picture of the Manhattan district attorney’s head. His son, Donald Trump Junior, posted a picture of the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan. This week, in the shadow of yet another school shooting in Nashville, Fox News host Tucker Carlson warned viewers that the indictment meant it was “probably not the best time to give up your AR-15”.

Read more:
Trump has changed America by making everything about politics, and politics all about himself

Posts and statements like these can only be read for what they are: clear attempts to foment further racist violence against anyone cast as an enemy.

Such calls fit into a pattern of incitement that has led to violence in the past and will likely do so again. Trump and his supporters have given no indication that they are concerned about inciting unrest; they are actively and knowingly encouraging it.

It is more than likely that they will continue to do so, using events like the arraignment today to double down on conspiracy theories. And they will have plenty of chances: the trial in New York could drag on, potentially, for over a year, and indictments in other state and federal investigations now seem more likely.

Trump supporters gather outside his home of Mar-a-lago in Palm Beach, Florida.
Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA/AAP

As I have written before, political violence is a feature, not a bug, of American politics. That’s partly why widely held perceptions of impending Civil War are so concerning; not necessarily because Civil War is likely, but because growing certainty that it is coming can give further license to violence now perceived as inevitable anyway.

Read more:
What does Trump’s indictment mean for his political future – and the strength of US democracy?

Much of the coverage and analysis of American politics will describe the nation as “divided” or “polarised”. But polarisation isn’t really an accurate way to characterise the state of US politics today. Polarisation implies a kind of equality – that sides are divided into equal but opposite extremes, willing to take the same measures to win power; that there are “two sides” or that “both sides” are as dangerous as each other. This is also sometimes described as the “horseshoe theory” of politics.

In the modern United States, the evidence does not support this framing. One side is facing over 30 felony charges, in what is likely only the start of an impending wave of indictments across state and federal investigations. Those investigations, collectively, paint a damning picture of a conspiracy to subvert the world’s most important democracy. In the United States, the “other side” – which is far from immune from critique – is at least attempting to get on with the business of democratically elected government.

The focus instead has of course been on the Trump media circus, now very familiar to us all. The black, armoured SUVs crawling across New York City streets; “plane watch”; the t-shirts; the farcical, gold-tinted press conferences. The mainstream press may well be falling, once again, into the traps Trump has laid so carefully.

But it’s also much more than that, this time around. How this all plays out will be yet another litmus test for the strength of American democracy. And it’s an essential one: simply put, the United States can not, must not, fail this test. The consequences of failure aren’t just domestic. Viewed from afar, we might be tempted to dismiss this as just more hijinks in the compelling but distant drama of American politics. But the outcome will affect us all. So we will – we must – keep watching. More

A Manhattan grand jury voted to indict former President Donald Trump on March 30, 2023, for his alleged role in paying porn star Stormy Daniels hush money.

Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina confirmed the indictment.

The New York Times reported that it is not yet clear what exact charges Trump will face, but a formal indictment will likely be issued in the next few days. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is the first prosecutor ever to issue an indictment against a former president. Trump is still the center of several ongoing investigations regarding other alleged criminal activity, including actions he took while in office.

American history is rife with presidents who have used their office to extend executive authority.

Presidents are not kings. George Washington once reflected on this distinction, saying, “I had rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world.”

But American politics and presidency scholars – including me – have long worried about the idea of an imperial presidency – meaning, a president who tries to exert a level of control beyond what the Constitution spells out.

Trump was just another example of a president acting as if he was king by just another name.

People protest in Manhattan in April 2022, demanding the indictment of former President Donald Trump.
Pablo Monsalve/VIEWpress

Expanding role of the presidency

While some early presidents, notably Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, expanded the executive branch, most were constrained by the dominance of the legislative branch in their day.

The growth of the executive branch in terms of size and power began in earnest during the 20th century.

Franklin Roosevelt attempted to pack the Supreme Court to overcome opposition to his New Deal legislation, a series of public works and spending projects in the 1930s.

Roosevelt wanted to add a justice for every existing judge on the court who did not retire by age 70 – but it was a transparent attempt to alter the court’s composition to favor his agenda, and the Senate shot it down.

Richard Nixon decided to impound money authorized for programs simply because he disagreed with them. Nixon had vetoed the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 but was overridden by Congress. He still withheld money, which eventually culminated in a 1975 Supreme Court case, in which the court ruled against Nixon.

Other presidents tried to unduly influence more mundane aspects of life.

In August 1906, for example, Theodore Roosevelt issued an executive order forcing the Government Printing Office to begin using the new spellings of 300 words – including “although” and “fixed” – in order to simplify them.

Following broad public criticism of this plan, Congress voted to reject these proposed spelling improvements in 1906.

Richard Nixon speaks with journalist David Frost in 1977, three years after Nixon resigned.
John Bryson/Getty Images

Trump’s turn

Trump’s actions and words throughout the presidency also suggest he believed that the office gave him overarching power.

For example, Trump reflected on his power over states to force them to reopen during the COVID-19 crisis, saying in April 2020, “When somebody’s president of the United States, the authority is total.” But governors actually maintained the control over what remained open or closed in their states during the pandemic.

Trump has also treated the independent judiciary as an inferior branch of government, subject to his control.

“If it’s my judges, you know how they’re gonna decide,” Trump said of his potential judicial appointees in 2016.

Chief Justice John Roberts rejected Trump’s view on this issue in 2018, saying, “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. … What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

It’s classified

There is a rigorous procedure if presidents decide to declassify information. This complex process involves all classified material being reviewed by appropriate government agencies and experts at the National Archives.

But Trump claimed at one point any documents he took home were already declassified.

He later asserted, “There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it. … You’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified, even by thinking about it.”

These comments help substantiate Trump’s belief in his absolute authority. There are specific procedures in place to manage declassification that do not involve psychic powers.

One real superpower

If the American presidents have one superpower, it is the power of the pardon. American presidents can pardon people, and the legislative and judiciary branches cannot prevent it.

Past presidents have used pardons largely in the service of justice, but at times to also reward personal friends or connections. But Trump took it even further, using this power seemingly as a way to reward his loyal supporters – and says he will seriously consider pardoning the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol rioters if he is reelected.

Trump also apparently considered granting himself a pardon as a way to avoid any prosecution for his involvement with the Capitol attack.

A self-pardon would also potentially place any president in constitutional murky water.

A 1919 Supreme Court ruling declared that a pardon “carries an imputation of guilt and acceptance of a confession of it.” So, if Trump had pardoned himself for anything, he would have admitted to having committed a crime – for which he could still potentially be impeached or investigated under any applicable state law, which is not covered by a presidential pardon.

Private communications about presidential pardons are shown during a hearing of the Jan. 6 committee in June 2022.
Mandel Ngan-Pool/Getty Images

After office

Since leaving office, Trump has attempted to claim post-presidential executive privilege, independent of the current administration. But President Joe Biden – who must first give Trump this privilege – never extended it to his predecessor.

Trump’s defense that he was allowed to store classified documents at Mar-a-Lago as a result of executive privilege has largely been unsuccessful in the courts.

Trump has also used his time as president to avoid any lawsuits that emerged after he left office.

In January 2023, a federal judge shot down Trump’s attempt to dismiss a 2022 defamation lawsuit filed by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who says Trump raped her in the 1990s. Trump denied the rape in 2019.

In court, Trump argued that anything he said as president should be protected and he should be given immunity during that period.

Though a ruling is still pending, Carroll has argued in court that immunity would apply only if Trump were referring to presidential matters, and not personal ones.

Former President Donald Trump speaks at an event in his Mar-a-Lago home in November 2022.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Everyone is held to the same rules

American presidents serve a limited amount of time governing before they return to the general population’s ranks.

Those privileged enough to hold the top office in the U.S. are still citizens. They are held to the same laws as everyone else and, the founders believed, should never be held above them.

Throughout history, many presidents have pushed the boundaries of power for their own personal preferences or political gain. However, Americans do have the right to push back and hold these leaders accountable to the country’s laws.

Presidents have never been monarchs. If they ever act in that manner, I believe that the people have to remind them of who they are and whom they serve. More

The recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and other major banks has raised fears about a potential 2008-style banking crisis. While this seems unlikely, like so many events these days, SVB’s failure has also been caught in the sticky rhetorical web of the culture war.

Right-wing media outlets and pundits have blamed SVB’s collapse on its so-called woke practices.

In other news, Vivek Ramaswamy, author of the anti-woke book Woke, Inc., recently became the latest entrant in the U.S. Republican Party’s presidential primary. The entry of Vivek Ramaswamy and other potential candidates indicates that battles over wokeness will likely spill over into the next U.S. presidential election.

Old term meets new movements

The term woke is not new, and its history is lengthy and tragic.

The idea was first popularized by legendary folk singer Lead Belly in his 1938 song Scottsboro Boys. It alludes to nine black teenagers who were falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931. In relation to the song, Lead Belly warned, “I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there — best stay woke, keep their eyes open.”

‘Scottsboro Boys’ by American musician Lead Belly.

Linguist Tony Thorne suggests that Black Americans started using the term in the 1940s to “mean becoming woken up or sensitized to issues of justice.”

From this, wokeness initially focused on raising awareness among Black Americans of important issues impacting their community. But over time, its use expanded to encompass other social justice concerns, often in new and sometimes highly inconsistent ways.

In the wake of 2013’s Black Lives Matter movement, woke’s meaning quickly expanded. Part of this has to do with its social media origins. The movement subsequently became diffuse due to its unique organizational structure and social media use.

A term that was once focused on the challenges facing Black Americans within a complex political landscape expanded rapidly. Now it is used as a shorthand for a host of progressive ideas.

As a result, woke quickly became a broad rallying cry for social justice.

However, the swift spread of the term among advocates and allies was not universally welcomed. Instead, woke continued to wildly transition in opposition to the rapid expansion of social justice movements.

‘Woke’ has become a rallying cry for many progressive causes. But it has also triggered anti-woke reactionism.
zijunnyc/flickr

Waking the anti-woke

Right-wing politicians routinely rail against perceptions of wokeness. For example, Canadian opposition leader Pierre Poilievre has characterized himself as “anti-woke.”

In 2022, former U.S. president Donald Trump criticized banks, believing they had “gone woke” and should be penalized. As such, SVB and Signature Bank are not the first banks to be caught up in the widespread hysteria over wokeness.

Congressman Matt Gaetz said that the U.S. military is too focused on wokeism. And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has repeatedly made headlines over his government’s ban on teaching certain subjects deemed woke and his rejection of corporate social advocacy.

Business executives like Ramaswamy have criticized woke capitalism and Elon Musk has recently criticized ChatGPT which he believes has gone woke.

Comedian Bill Maher frequently complains about woke’s impact.

Personalities like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson believe it silences speech and cancels speakers.

Read more:
Can we cancel ‘cancel culture?’

The label woke is now frequently deployed in opposition to a variety of social movements, including fights for gender equality, climate change and LGBTQ+ rights, among others.

Like pebbles dropped into a pond, the waves of conflict over wokeness ripple ever outward. But how can we maximize woke’s liberating potential while minimizing divisiveness?

Open-ended terms like ‘woke’ can evolve over time to symbolize more than their creators could have ever imagined.
dinosossi/flickr, CC BY-NC

Post-woke future

For some, the idea of being woke means to “be awake to social oppression.” But for others, wokeness limits speech and threatens the prevailing order.

The result? Vicious public quarrels. We are trapped in a digital Tower of Babel built for the social media age seemingly without escape.

Open-ended terms like woke can evolve over time to symbolize more than their creators could have ever imagined. Words used ambiguously and in excess can eventually become meaningless. They can even experience semantic bleaching. This is when words lose their meaning through repeated and varied usage.

The state of play is so topsy-turvy you could argue that even anti-woke politicians can be woke. Think Poilievre advocating for drinking water for Indigenous communities. Or Trump’s criminal justice reforms.

When one term is interpreted antithetically, even adopted by its avowed adversaries, it increasingly becomes meaningless.

We should resist easy labels like wokeness that simplify or disregard complex and legitimate issues. Unclear terms confuse instead of clarify, alienating those we wish to include in conversation. Society suffers and divisions harden. And marginalized individuals often suffer the most severe consequences through no fault of their own. More

In an episode of HBO’s Real Time in March 2023, comedian Bill Maher hit the nail on the head when describing the current debate over Donald Trump v Ron DeSantis for the Republican presidential nomination.

Conventional wisdom is that lots of voters want Trump’s policies without Trump – so Florida governor DeSantis, wrapped up in “more electable” packaging, might appeal to the Republican base.

However, Maher asked: “Why would [Republicans] want a tribute band when the actual band is still playing?” It’s a valid question – and one that deserves an answer.

Different on policy?

Policy-wise, there’s not much separating Trump and DeSantis. Domestically, both embrace tax cuts, conservative judges, and hardline immigration stances. On foreign policy, both are sceptical of US aid to Ukraine and want to give China a punch in the gut.

Trump leans more into his populist, anti-globalisation crusade, while DeSantis’s hallmark is his “anti-woke” stance. But in the end, both are right-leaning culture warriors who portray themselves as outside-the-Beltway antidotes to Washington’s “swamp culture”.

Still, Trump and DeSantis aren’t clones. Here’s what most distinguishes the tribute band from the original.

Trump’s personal flair

Love or hate Trump, he’s got flair. Charisma may be too strong a word, but the reality is that he can fill a room – or a stadium – and knows just how to flatter his base. There’s a reason his cultish fans once rolled out a golden statue of him at a flagship conservative conference.

DeSantis is a chest-thumper, but in a lower-key way than Trump. His speeches tend to be briefer, more pointed, and less rambling. DeSantis sticks to the script, is less inclined to hurl insults, and is arguably more stilted on the stump.

A clear separator between Trump and DeSantis is the capacity for shock value. DeSantis can play dirty, but he hasn’t (yet) shown Trump’s penchant for pathological lying and overtly racist and misogynistic remarks. Even if he traffics in dog whistles, he’s less likely to “say the quiet parts out loud”.

DeSantis speaks about his position on the Ukraine war.

Trump and DeSantis share similar policy platforms, but there’s no mind meld. Trump is a former Democrat. He’s less ideological, more pragmatic, and seemingly more comfortable “owning the libs” than discussing the intricacies of economic or healthcare policy.

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DeSantis, by contrast, is a “true believer”. In line with his Ivy League pedigree, he’s a wonk who can go 15 rounds talking policy minutiae if needed. Whether it’s ranting about the inner workings of critical race theory or drafting a “Don’t Say Gay” bill, DeSantis can get down into the weeds.

Despite – or maybe because of – his notoriously loyal base, Trump isn’t afraid to break from the right-wing straightjacket. On COVID-19, for example, Trump endured boos after praising the vaccine. DeSantis, meanwhile, towed the party line (as per usual) and earned plaudits for insisting that his home state of Florida was “open for business”.

Respect (or lack thereof) for democracy

Trump won’t back down from the “big lie”, maintaining that he won the 2020 election. Which brings us to a big delusion: that DeSantis poses just as much a threat to American democracy as Trump.

DeSantis may be “Trump lite”. But he’s done nothing to suggest that if he lost an election, he’d spend months denying it, call on a secretary of state to “find votes”, then whip up a crowd of bloodthirsty rioters to storm the US Capitol.

On foreign policy, DeSantis also seems less likely to cozy up to dictators. Whereas Trump regularly extolled autocrats like Vladimir Putin, DeSantis lacks the same wannabe authoritarian impulse. Still, DeSantis’s recent euphemism – calling Russia’s war in Ukraine a mere “territorial dispute” – didn’t exactly inspire confidence that he’d aggressively promote democracy abroad.

The biggest divider between Trump and DeSantis is also the most obvious: Trump was president before. He’s tested on a national stage, a known quantity, and voters realise what they’re getting when they pull the Trump lever.

At the same time, he is also a proven loser. Trump has never won the popular vote, lost in 2020, and some of his endorsed candidates fared poorly in the 2022 midterms.

DeSantis is now a household name, but it’s unclear how he’ll respond under the bright lights. Plenty of Republican favourites in the past – including fellow Floridian Jeb Bush – have wilted under the pressure. DeSantis doesn’t look like a flash in the pan, but he still needs to prove himself in prime time.

Battle of the bands

Even though DeSantis is likely not to officially declare as a candidate until May, and other candidates have already announced a run, “Don v Ron” dominates Republican chatter right now, and for good reason. Trump’s stranglehold over the GOP and DeSantis’s rising stardom make for a captivating battle. Yet, for now at least, it’s important to remember the race isn’t a one-on-one matchup. And it’s a long way to the first primary in February 2024.

Trump’s level of support all but guarantees him 30-40% of the party’s vote. If other Republican hopefuls split the never-Trump ballot, that gives Trump a huge edge, especially in early, winner-takes-all primary states.

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John F. Kennedy, whose ancestors left Ireland during the potato famine of the mid-19th century, was famously the first United States president of Catholic Irish descent.

When Americans narrowly elected Kennedy in 1960, anti-Catholic bias was still part of the mainstream culture.

I am a scholar of Irish literature and the author of “Race, Politics, and Irish America: A Gothic History,” a new book that describes how the Irish were long excluded in America.

So when Kennedy accepted shamrocks from the Irish ambassador to the U.S. on his first St. Patrick’s Day in the White House in 1961, it signaled the social and political arrival of the Irish American elite. It also was a pivotal moment, marking Irish Americans’ fulfilled dream of full assimilation into the U.S.

The dream soured when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963. That tragedy – and the many others that followed for the Kennedy family – began to be told by others in the Gothic story tradition, which hinges on nightmarish scenarios and the abuse of power.

This kind of storytelling has shown to be a suitable match for the different narratives of the Kennedys as both innocent victims and wicked schemers.

The phrase “the luck of the Irish” is often used of Irish America, especially on St. Patrick’s Day, observed on March 17. Since it typically refers to good luck, however, it cannot be used of Irish America’s best-known dynasty.

This phrase has various proposed origins, including the success Irish gold miners had in the U.S. in the 1800s.

Irish America’s best-known dynasty might not be described as lucky, but rather as Gothic.

President John F. Kennedy accepts shamrocks from the Ambassador of Ireland, Thomas J. Kiernan, in 1961.
Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

The Kennedys and Gothic

Since its 18th-century beginnings in literature, Gothic storytelling uses a sinister atmosphere of conspiracy and the supernatural. It also generally features an all-powerful Catholic patriarch.

Many other elements repeat over centuries in different classic Gothic works, like “Dracula,” for example. This can include a secret or curse linked to a corrupt bloodline, endangered beautiful women and disrupted inheritance or murdered heirs.

For both sides of America’s political divide, the Kennedys fit the ready-made mold of Gothic, though in different ways.

After JFK’s assassination, liberals and Democrats who had approved of his administration’s progressive policies believed that the idealistic Kennedys were the blameless targets of dark conspiracies.

These conspiracies included persistent questions about who or what was behind JFK’s assassination, even though a former Marine, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested in 1963 and charged in the president’s death. Oswald himself was killed before he could stand trial, feeding the conspiracy theories.

However, for conservatives and Catholic Irish Americans leaving traditional Democratic Party loyalty behind, the family known as “America’s royals” represented the corruption of the elite.

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy’s official portrait, painted in 1970, is similar to some classic portrayals of women in Gothic literature.
White House Collection/White House Historical Association

The Gothic patriarch, Joe Kennedy Sr.

In traditional Gothic fiction, the usual source of such immorality is the all-powerful Catholic elder.

In the Kennedy narrative, that role of Catholic elder is played by the president’s father, Joe Kennedy Sr. He was a wealthy investor and politician. Kennedy family biographers have recorded rumors of shady dealings in his numerous business interests.

In addition, the Kennedy patriarch’s very Gothic ambitions to hereditary rule were repeatedly disrupted.

Joe Sr. strategized to help launch JFK’s political rise only after the first-born he had planned to make president, Joseph Jr., was shot down and killed in action during World War II.

Jackie Kennedy

The Kennedy Gothic narrative also enfolds people who marry into the family.

Joe Sr.‘s daughter-in-law, Jacqueline Kennedy, was filmed clambering over the back of the presidential open-top limousine in a bloodied suit immediately after her husband was shot while being driven in a motorcade. In that moment, she became Gothic’s classic endangered, beautiful woman.

Strikingly, Jackie Kennedy’s eerie official portrait resembles the fleeing woman in a flowing white gown of Gothic paperback cover tradition.

Right after her husband’s assassination, Jackie Kennedy talked about how the Dallas mayor’s wife had given her blood-red roses earlier that day – which she implied was a bad omen of the forthcoming assassination, given the flowers’ color.

In the same interview, Jacqueline used the phrase “Camelot” to refer to the idealism of her husband’s administration.

However, many biographies and media stories in the years that followed painted the picture of a morally complex Kennedy family.

Former First Lady Jackie Kennedy receives red roses shortly before JFK’s assassination in Dallas, Texas.
Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

The Kennedy curse

Some Kennedy men’s sexually promiscuous or otherwise “liberal” behavior with women, for example, got as much press as their liberal politics.

In 1969, a year after Robert Kennedy was assassinated during his presidential run, his brother Ted drove off a bridge in Massachusetts. Ted Kennedy was yet another son of Joe Sr. with ambitions to one day become president.

His 29-year-old passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned after Kennedy left her in the water. He did not report the accident for 10 hours. Ted pleaded guilty in 1969 to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident and later received a two-month suspended jail sentence.

A 1965 mosaic in Galway Cathedral memorializes John F. Kennedy’s visit there in June 1963.
Peter Moore/Author provided, Author provided (no reuse)

Ted later spoke about “some awful curse” playing a role in Kopechne’s death. Ted’s naming of the very Gothic idea of a family curse caught on and became popular lore.

Many observers have subsequently described the family’s tragedies as the result of a curse, especially the 1999 death in an airplane crash of John Jr., JFK’s son and possible political heir.

When the numerous premature deaths of Kennedy family members are tallied, they do appear to be statistically unlikely. But whether the family’s tragedies are the result of mere bad luck or a Gothic family curse remains a matter of open interpretation. More