Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, has been indicted again. This time it was by a Fulton County grand jury issuing 13 charges, including conspiracy. The charges in Georgia stemmed from his attempts to interfere in the certification of the Georgia election. The facts are very simple. There were two candidates on the ballot, and Joe Biden won. Donald Trump didn't like it. And so what he and others did, including the disgraced former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and the disgraced former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows did, is staged a coup. They tried to steal democracy from 330 million Americans. They tried to steal the birthright of every American who isn't yet born. They tried to topple the results of the American experiment. They tried to end democracy in America.
Why? Because the worst president in American history was rejected by the American people, who after four years of 35,000 deaths and absolute chaos, said "Enough." What they wanted was a return to normalcy. The citizens of the state of Georgia voted, chose to make Joe Biden the president of the United States. What that set off is the greatest criminal conspiracy in American history. This is the hard thing to understand about this moment in time. There is no place to look for what to do. We've had incompetent presidents, dishonest presidents, ineffectual ones, short, fat and tall ones. But, we have never had one, when they lost an election, tried to burn down the republic, tried to take it away, in a fit of anger and petulance under a demand that they're not done leading, that they're not done ruling. They wanted power even though there was no legitimacy behind the grant of power. To Donald Trump, that didn't matter. To Rudy Giuliani, it didn't matter. To Mark Meadows, it didn't matter. All of these people were given trust by their fellow Americans, and they tore it to shreds. They ripped it apart. They're betrayals rank among the greatest in all the history of this country. Two hundred and fifty years ago, the United States declared its independence. We rejected the idea that there is a king, born above us who we serve. Instead, a new idea was put forward -- an idea about a government of the people, by the people, for the people. That government has endured through Great Depression, through World War, Civil War, and all manner of challenges. More than a million Americans, over those nearly 250 years, have died, have given what Abraham Lincoln called the last full measure of devotion to sustain the right, the birthright of the American people to choose their leaders and their destiny. This is very important to understand. Democracy is more than a concept. It's more than an abstraction. It is what keeps you and your family safe. It is what keeps the government's jackboot off the neck of your children. There was just an example in the state of Kansas in a small town with the newspaper at a point in America equidistant between Los Angeles and New York. A police chief in that small town and the local newspaper was investigating his misconduct at his old job. A local business dispute metastasized and what happened was a prosecutor, a judge and the police chief signed off on a warrant to search a newspaper. The entire town's police force came. They kicked down the door, and they took everything that wasn't nailed down. This is an un-American action. This is an assault on freedom. This isn't a story of a rogue police force, or a rogue sheriff, an incompetent judge, or an out of control prosecutor in Kansas. It's a story about breakdown, a story about breakdown of American democracy, of American society. It's a story about the police coming in the middle of the night, knocking on the door, and attacking freedom. It's not a different story than the Donald Trump story. Everyone should understand that these things are connected. America is unique amongst all of the countries in the world because it is the only country that is founded on an idea. An ideal. The idea is among the most powerful that has ever been put to paper by the mind of man. The notion that we are all created equal, endowed by our creator with inalienable rights, that include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There is no way to sustain that belief, that truth without the people, the citizens of this country, having the right, the power to choose who leaves, who makes the laws. Everything that is done in America is done in the name of the American people. Not in the name of a leader. The people in this country choose. The people in this country decide -- not the other way around. We are not the hostages. We are not the prisoners of our politicians. And that, fundamentally, is what has gone off the rails in this country. The indictments in Georgia are the end stage of a story that began in 2015. That should have sparked national outrage, and fundamentally shut down the political conversation during the 2016 race. What should have sparked that reaction was the first time Donald Trump intimated he would not concede an election that he lost, that he would challenge it as illegitimate by doing so. What Donald Trump did is kicked the legs out from underneath the table. He knocked down and cracked the foundation of American democracy because there is no way to sustain freedom without elections. It's fundamental. The right to vote has been hard earned in this country for millions of Americans, women, Blacks, Native Americans. Today, broadly, the American people understand that everyone gets a say. When the American people made their voices heard, what they said, and what they narrowly got in Georgia is fired Donald Trump. They said enough. It's happened before, except this time, the defeated president decided he didn't want to go. There was no concession phone call. There was no grace. There was no notion of putting the country first. Instead, there was a criminal conspiracy. That is what the case in Georgia is about. For a bit of time, Donald Trump was the most powerful person in the history of human civilization. That is, in the end, the power of the American presidency, the power of America's nuclear arsenal, but it was a mistake. The American people recognized it, and they voted him out.
It was time for him to leave with dignity, but he did not. Instead, he launched a coup. That coup was criminal. And though the wheels of justice grind slowly, they are indeed grinding. The former president of the United States stands accused of 91 different counts. This has never happened before. Hopefully, this generation of Americans will guarantee that it never, ever happens again. This generation of Americans has a responsibility and an obligation to protect and preserve our nation's democracy for our descendants. Donald Trump is a criminal defendant. He's not below the law, just like he's not above it. He has rights, like every American. And it is important to remember that it is a special burden on his fiercest critics to be the strongest supporter of Donald Trump with regard to his rights as a criminal defendant under the US Constitution. This is a tragic moment for the United States. It is a moment that puts the country in unchartered waters. This has never happened before. What we do about it as a nation is fundamental. It is as important as how the American people resolved to deal with the threats the country faced in the Second World War, in the Civil War, during the Great Depression, or the Cold War. The question of what happens as an outcome of Donald Trump's criminal trials is fundamental to the sustainment of American democracy. It may be that a jury decides Donald Trump is not guilty. If that is the case, so be it, but in the meantime, Donald Trump's incessant attacks on law enforcement, on judges and prosecutors are unacceptable. The United States is a nation of law. It is not a banana republic. It is not a kingdom. It is not a dictatorship. And in this country, in this land, Donald Trump will never be king. What he may be is locked up for the rest of his life. And if that happens, it will be because the government of the people, by the people, for the people made criminal charges, and a jury of his peers decided beyond a reasonable doubt that he was guilty of them. No one is above the law in America. That includes Donald Trump.