OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Twitter boss Elon Musk, known for issuing sarcastic and snarky responses to political events on the platform that usually don’t bode well for Democrats, called the party out again on Tuesday following former President Donald Trump’s appearance in a Manhattan courtroom, where he pleaded not guilty to dozens of felony charges.
Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, tweeted a meme containing a decades-old photo of a much younger Trump, which said: “Why do time travelers keep trying to kill me? I’m just a realtor!” — Donald Trump, 1980.
In the post, Musk wrote: “If the Dem Party had a time machine.”
If the Dem Party had a time machine pic.twitter.com/a1QE7JcGLB
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 4, 2023
“To avoid losing the trust of the American public, it is important that our justice system pursue Democrats and Republicans with equal vigor,” Musk wrote later in response to a tweet from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “Whichever party most puts justice before nepotism is the one that deserves trust.
To avoid losing the trust of the American public, it is important that our justice system pursue Democrats and Republicans with equal vigor.
Whichever party most puts justice before nepotism is the one that deserves trust.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 4, 2023
Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 charges regarding allegations that he falsified business records related to adult film star Stormy Daniels’ hush-money case. Trump was indicted late last week by a Manhattan grand jury in a case involving his purported role in hush money payments to Daniels ahead of the 2016 election, allegedly to keep Daniels quiet about an affair the two of them had in 2006.
However, Bragg’s case against Trump is so weak that several liberal outlets are even pointing it out.
Ian Millhiser, a senior correspondent at Vox, wrote: “There is something painfully anticlimactic about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former President Trump. It concerns not Trump’s efforts to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States, but his alleged effort to cover up a possible extramarital affair with a porn star. And there’s a very real risk that this indictment will end in an even bigger anticlimax. It is unclear that the felony statute that Trump is accused of violating actually applies to him.”
Mark Stern, a writer for the liberal outlet Slate, published a story titled “The Trump Indictment Is Not the Slam-Dunk Case Democrats Wanted.”
John Bolton — who served as a national security adviser in the Trump administration and has since come out against Trump’s 2024 campaign — appeared on CNN and blasted the charges filed against his ex-boss, former President Trump, saying the indictment was “even weaker than I feared it would be.”
“Speaking as someone who very strongly does not want Donald Trump to get the Republican presidential nomination, I’m extraordinarily distressed by this document,” Bolton said on CNN. “I think this is even weaker than I feared it would be.”
Notorious anti-Trump GOP Sen. Mitt Romney issued a statement saying: “I believe President Trump’s character and conduct make him unfit for office. Even so, I believe the New York prosecutor has stretched to reach felony criminal charges in order to fit a political agenda. No one is above the law, not even former presidents, but everyone is entitled to equal treatment under the law. The prosecutor’s overreach sets a dangerous precedent for criminalizing political opponents and damages the public’s faith in our justice system.”
On Monday night, Trump’s attorney Alina Habba spoke on Fox News about Trump being indicted and what’s likely to happen next.
“You know, we have Letitia James, that’s probably the most prominent one that I want to discuss because that is, again, a corrupt system. They’re going after the Trump Organization, poor Allen Weisselberg is sitting in Rikers Island right now over what, valuations? This is a real estate company that has done extremely well, is successful, and they’re trying to take them and all of their individuals that lead that company down for nothing. You know, they got three years of special proceeding investigations. They interviewed almost 60 people. We have five weeks. We have a complaint filed many November, it’s going to trial in October,” Habba began.
“This shows exactly how corrupt New York’s judicial system has become. The D.A.s and the A.G.s, Jim Jordan, I hope he brings in each and every one of them and asks them where the funding came from and how they think it’s appropriate to take funding away from the city that is now falling apart, which I used to love. They are taking funding away while people are dying and there is crime rampant in the streets to go after the leading GOP Republican candidate. It is unacceptable,” she added.
“That is, for me, the most important case I have. Other than that, you know, a lot of them are cases where we have to defend against things like election fraud, things like — I have a case in Pennsylvania, you know, somebody tweeted something and they sue Donald Trump. You know, I have a case against Mary Trump and The New York Times. I’m defending the case against E. Jean Carroll In three weeks on trial in New York. Again, the same thing, rapid, rapid trials,” she noted further.
