Totally totally normal and not at all fascistic, not even a little bit; stop being hysterical, he will become presidential any day now

That assassination attempt sure sobered Donald Trump up now didn’t it?

 Donald Trump shared more than a dozen posts on his social media network Wednesday that call for the trial or jailing of House lawmakers who investigated the attack on the U.S. Capitol, special counsel Jack Smith and others, along with images that reference the QAnon conspiracy theory.

The former president began posting a string of messages Tuesday evening after Smith filed a new indictment against him over his efforts to undo his loss in the 2020 presidential election. The new indictment keeps the same criminal charges but narrows the allegations against Trump following a Supreme Court opinion last month that extended broad immunity to former presidents.

Trump reposted a doctored image that was made to look like President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in orange prison jumpsuits, among other political figures, and a lewd post about Harris and Clinton that referenced a sex act. One post seemed to suggest former President Barack Obama should be tried in a military court.

Trump has long talked about seeking retribution against perceived enemies if he wins a second term. He has publicly bristled in recent weeks at the advice of his campaign advisers to focus his message on policy around the economy and the border rather than indulge in personal attacks that were seen as distracting from the case he’s trying to make to voters.

I taught Trump v. United States this morning, and I cannot emphasize enough the extent to which sane moderate institutionalist John Roberts’s opinion represents the purest gaslighting of an entire legal and political system.

Here are three things that, per the opinion, a president cannot under any circumstances be prosecuted for doing, either when he’s president, or after he’s no longer in office. Note that these aren’t parade of horribles arguable hypotheticals: THESE ARE ALL FULLY IMMUNIZED ACTS UNDER THE RULES CREATED — and “created” is very much the exact term — BY THE OPINION.

(1) Ordering the military to assassinate his political opponents. Commanding the military is explicitly a core constitutional function of the presidency, which means anything done by a president in that role immunizes him forever from criminal prosecution.

(2) Openly auctioning off presidential pardons to the highest bidders. Again, the pardon power is an exclusive core constitutional function of the presidency. Literally nothing Trump does when exercising it is subject to prosecution, during his presidency or at any time afterwards.

(3) Ordering the Attorney General to fabricate criminal charges against Kamala Harris, Joe Biden. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and anybody else he wants to imprison on false charges. Roberts holds explicitly that Trump is absolutely immune forevermore for anything he communicated or will communicate to Department of Justice officials.

This list could be extended pretty much endlessly.

If pre-Trump you had told any lawyer, law professor, historian, political scientist etc. that the SCOTUS would issue an opinion that explicitly — again, not “arguably,” but simply undeniably –reached these conclusions, you would have been considered a lunatic.

Yet here we are.

I’m teaching this stuff as straightforwardly as I can to my students, which very possibly will no longer be an option after next January.