Trump has been charged. But what about his past?

Even if Trump is convicted, he fundamentally reshaped the Republican Party and the country as a whole. It will be nearly impossible to undo his actions

Donald Trump. (Getty Images)

The only image less believable than rioters breaching the US Capitol complex on January 6 was that of former president Donald Trump, the man who goaded the rioters to “stop the steal,” arriving in Washington DC to face charges for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

When the riot finally abated, it seemed that the United States had overcome the worst of the virus and that maybe, after being exposed to the worst elements of Mr Trump’s lies about the election and his vain attempts to try and stay in the White House, the country would develop an immunity to him.

But 139 Republicans in the House of Representatives and eight Republican senators objected to the 2020 presidential election results. In fact, the latest indictment revealed that White House Counsel Pat Cipollone called Mr Trump after the riot and asked him to withdraw any objections and allow the election results to be certified, which Mr Trump refused to do.

The January 6 committee’s investigation also revealed that the day after the attempted coup, Mr Trump could not bring himself to say that “the election is over” and instead simply said, “I just wanna say ‘Congress has certified the results’ without saying ’the election is over’, okay?”

The current charges leveled by Special Counsel Jack Smith and outlined in the indictment are perhaps the most serious ones the former president faces. While the charges he faces in New York outline his attempts to obfuscate the truth through dirty political dealing and the charges about classified documents allege utter carelessness and vanity, the charges he faced in Washington this week show his attempts to violate the presidential oath to maintain power for himself.

Mr Trump very well could skate by on these charges. He has found ways to bend the law in his favour throughout his career as a businessman, celebrity, candidate and elected official. Or he could very well face jail time for all of the charges in the three separate cases, to say nothing of a potential indictment from the Fulton County District Attorney for trying to overturn Georgia’s election results.

But even if Mr Trump were to spend time behind bars or face any type of accountability, it will be impossible to undo his fundamental reshaping of the Republican Party and the republic as a whole.

A perfect example of how much Trumpism has captured the country came in the form of a poll CNN dropped as Mr Trump came to Washington for his arraignment. The survey showed that 69 per cent of Republicans and Republican-leaning Americans believe that President Joe Biden is an illegitimately elected president.

The belief that the 2020 election was a fraud and Mr Trump was a victim of persecution has become an article of faith among both Republican voters. Meanwhile, Republicans who chose to certify the election results have slowly begun to exit Congress and only two of the House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr Trump remain. Many of them have been or eventually will be replaced by Republicans who parrot the former president’s words about the election being stolen.

Indeed, Sen Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who voted to convict Mr Trump for his role in January 6, was one of the few Republicans who spoke up and said the indictment showed Mr Trump “played a key role in instigating the riot.” And the only reason she can do so is she just won re-election in a state with ranked-choice voting, meaning she does not have to fear a right-wing primary challenge the way other Republicans do.

Conversely, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a man who previously said that Mr Trump bore responsibility for the riot, has lept to the former president’s defence throughout his legal tribulations.

Indeed, the House Republican majority has amounted to little more than Mr Trump’s legal defence team, trying to draw moral equivalency between Mr Trump and Mr Biden’s alleged crimes and setting up a special subcommittee to probe supposed “weaponisation” of the federal government in response to its probes of Mr Trump.

Furthermore, instead of using Mr Trump’s charges to argue that he is unfit to carry the mantle of the GOP, his fellow Republican presidential candidates have come to his defence, with his closest competitor Florida Gov Ron DeSantis defending Mr Trump despite saying he hadn’t read the indictment on Tuesday.

Mr Trump’s indictment and arraignment reveal not just the extent of his alleged criminality and scheming to maintain power for himself; they reveal the consequences of his elections. His antics exposed the United States to a virus and instead of inoculating the country, it continues to course through the veins of the body politic and will be nearly impossible to expel.