Trumped Up

So Kilmar Garcia, whom the Trump Administration supposedly couldn't get back into the United States, is back in the United States. Because the Trump Administration has charged him with "conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain" and "unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain."

Somehow, I suspect that I'm not the only person who thinks that, in this attempt to make an example of Mr. Garcia, perjury was suborned along the way. Any takers on a bet that the witnesses to Mr. Garcia's involvement all turn out to be people in custody for something or other? Didn't think so.

This may be the evil that Trump supporters are familiar with, but is it really the evil they signed up for? I know that a lot of Trumpists think of Democrats as weak and spineless, but this still strikes me as a dangerous precedent to set, precisely because it probably looks to anyone who isn't deeply supportive of the President like a deliberately bogus prosecution. And, as the saying goes, two can play at that game.

But it's a game we don't really want people playing. While I suspect that President Trump is betting either that Republicans Trumpists will win the next election (or that he's found away around the next election), that comes across as a pretty high-stakes gamble. Which gives me a certain suspicion that all of this might simply be a way to lever Mr. Garcia into agreeing to be deported; it's unlikely his conviction would survive a change of party in the White House, and a Democratic administration would have ways of making El Salvador's President Bukele wish he'd never played ball with President Trump if the current administration suddenly shipped Mr. Garcia back after an electoral loss, hoping to keep him away.

At this point, a lot of President Trump's actions seem geared towards taking, and using, as much power has he can, confident that he has a strong enough base of voters that Congress won't really do anything about it. This next midterm cycle is going to be interesting, to say the least.