Donald Trump has no doubt heard of Niccolo Machiavelli, the Florentine statesman of the Renaissance.   

But he certainly hasn’t learned anything from him.

Consider the way he has repeatedly insulted his nemesis, Jack Smith.

Smith was appointed Special Counsel for the United States Department of Justice on November 18, 2022.

Jack Smith

His assignment: Oversee the criminal investigations into former President Donald Trump’s behavior regarding:

• The January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol; and
• His taking and storage of classified government documents at his Mar-a-Largo estate in Palm Beach, Florida. 

Since then, Trump has launched a series of vicious attacks on Smith—despite the fact that Smith holds the power to indict and prosecute him for multiple felonies.

For example: On June 8, Smith indicted Trump on 37 federal felony counts for illegally retaining hundreds of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Boxes of classified documents in Mar-a-Lago bathroom

At a press conference, Smith defended his team’s work and emphasized the seriousness of the charges: “Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States, and they must be enforced.” 

He also emphasized that Trump “must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.”

Trump quickly responded: “The prosecutor in the case, I will call our case, is a thug. I have named him ‘Deranged Jack Smith. He’s a behind-the-scenes guy, but his record is absolutely atrocious. He does political hit jobs. He’s a raging and uncontrolled Trump hater, as is his wife, who happened to be the producer of that Michelle Obama puff piece. This is the guy I’ve got.”

On June 27, Trump, using his social network Truth Social, continued his attack on Smith: 

COULD SOMEBODY PLEASE EXPLAIN TO THE DERANGED, TRUMP HATING JACK SMITH, HIS FAMILY, AND HIS FRIENDS, THAT AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, I COME UNDER THE PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS ACT, AS AFFIRMED BY THE CLINTON SOCKS CASE, NOT BY THIS PSYCHOS’ FANTASY OF THE NEVER USED BEFORE ESPIONAGE ACT OF 1917. “SMITH” SHOULD BE LOOKING AT CROOKED JOE BIDDEN AND ALL OF THE CRIMES THAT HE HAS PERPETRATED ON THE AMERICAN PUBLIC, INCLUDING THE MILLIONS & MILLIONS OF DOLLARS HE EXTORTED FROM FOREIGN COUNTRIES!

Donald Trump

So: Where does Niccolo Machiavelli enter this story?

In his masterwork, The Discourses, published in 1531, Machiavelli laid out his advice for preserving liberties within a republic. 

His counsel on gratuitously handing out insults and threats could have been written with Donald Trump in mind:

• “I hold it to be a proof of great prudence for men to abstain from threats and insulting words towards any one.
• “For neither the one nor the other in any way diminishes the strength of the enemy—but the one makes him more cautious, and the other increases his hatred of you, and makes him more persevering in his efforts to injure you.”

Niccolo Machiavelli

Meanwhile, Smith has not responded to Trump’s slanders.

“Smith is not going to play this case out in public,” said Steve Friedland, a law professor at Elon University and a former federal prosecutor. “We’ve seen that in other cases, and that’s true for most prosecutors.” “

“Trump has done this with [New York Attorney General] Letitia James, he has done this with [Fulton County District Attorney] Fani Willis, just every prosecutor that’s investigated him,” Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor, told ABC News.

James has sued Trump for fraud and Willis is investigating Trump’s efforts to gain unearned votes in Georgia to overturn the 2020 electoral victory of Joe Biden.

According to Machiavelli, Trump’s continued outbursts against Smith illustrate another great truth: That it’s possible to tell a truly great man from an imposter:

“A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances. And if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him. 

“The conduct of weak men is very different. Made vain and intoxicated by good fortune, they attribute their success to merits which they do not possess, and this makes them odious and insupportable to all around them.  And when they have afterwards to meet a reverse of fortune, they quickly fall into the other extreme, and become abject and vile. 

“Thence it comes that princes of this character think more of flying in adversity than of defending themselves, like men who, having made a bad use of prosperity, are wholly unprepared for any defense against reverses.”   

Trump is desperately trying to appear as the victim of a “weaponized” Justice Department eager to eliminate him as a 2024 Presidential candidate. He has railed against the “Deep State”—by which he means agencies he no longer controls.

And he has called on his allies within the Republican party to derail the continuing probes—especially by defunding Smith’s office or the entire Justice Department. 

So far, neither Trump’s whining nor his allies have deterred Smith from his prosecutorial efforts.