What’s being eroded isn’t just decorum—it’s the shared belief that rules can stand above factions. When a prominent lawmaker casts lawful processes as persecution, he invites millions to view every charge as a rigged game. The courtroom becomes a stage, the judge a prop, the verdict merely a plot twist in a partisan drama. Once that mindset hardens, no evidence can persuade, no ruling can calm, because the outcome was “illegitimate” the moment it cut against the tribe.
Nations do not lose the rule of law overnight; they bleed it out through a thousand small exceptions, each justified by fear of the other side. The danger is not that he will be jailed, but that his supporters will come to believe that any consequence is oppression, any accountability is war. When that belief settles in, justice doesn’t just get harder—it stops being believed in at all.
