AND NOW, THE INEVITABLE TRUMP INDICTMENT POST

 And so eventually Donald Trump has actually been indicted for something – and it could be the first of many. The internet is a-buzz, and the GOP reaction has been 100% predictable, to say nothing of Trump’s gibbering word-salad firehose of a response.

 

Well, it doesn’t get more bloggable than this, so …

 

1. To get the obvious out of the way, of course we don’t know how airtight Bragg’s case is, and it is entirely possible that even Trump’s legal team could find a way to dismantle it enough to get an acquittal, a mistrial or whatever. Some have said it’s the weakest case of the four that have been brewing the last few years. We’ll just have to wait and see. I will say that Trump's tactic of publicly attacking the judge and his family probably isn't going to go the way he thinks.

 

2. However it plays out, I will be very surprised if it ends with Trump doing time. Billionaires rarely go to jail. At most he may be slapped with hefty fines (which, true to his character, he probably won’t pay). 

 

3. If we’ve learned anything from this so far, it’s that the GOP is very much Trump’s party. We knew this already, of course, but there was the usual buzz that the GOP has wanted to drop him like 3^rd Period French for awhile now, especially because of his looming legal problems, and an indictment would be the perfect political excuse to finally wash their hands of him.

 

Turns out, ha ha, no. Just about everyone apart from the handful of dedicated Never-Trumpers (your Romneys and Liz Cheneys and whatnot) has firmly defended Trump as the totally innocent victim of a vicious gay liberal witch hunt/conspiracy to steal the 2020 election and jail/punish all opposition to the resulting Biden Dynasty. Or words to that effect.

 

4. One big reason for this, of course, is that they’re afraid of the MAGA base, who has made it clear in no uncertain terms that Trump is the second coming of Jesus and that anyone who says otherwise will be dealt with accordingly. Of course, the GOP is largely responsible for enabling that base, so, you know, hey ho.

 

Which is also why the usual metric the GOP uses for this sort of thing – “Will this cost us the White House in the next election?” – isn’t that reliable. There’s no law preventing Trump from running for office even if he goes to jail, and the MAGA base is very likely to vote for him regardless. So the risk of a split vote is very real. If they can’t convince the base that, say, Ron DeSantis is an acceptable Trump substitute, I think the GOP will have no choice but to rally behind Trump and take their chances.

 

5. One silver lining, I suppose, is that the MAGA base has not been inclined to take to the streets en masse and rip shit up, despite being urged to do so by Trump himself, as well as the usual lackeys like Marjorie Taylor Greene. But the potential for political violence is the highest it’s been since the 1960s, so I’m expecting to see more isolated incidents as the trial goes on.

 

6. The GOP has also been offering a predictable litany of defenses, my favorite of which is “We don’t arrest former Presidents / current POTUS candidates in this country!”

 

… Well, you know, maybe we should?

 

Seriously, though, it’s worth unpacking that statement, because it basically implies that we don’t arrest former Presidents / current POTUS candidates because it’s not allowed, or it’s an unwritten rule or something.

 

In the first place, POTUS (and other) candidates have been arrested before, so it’s not unprecedented. Also, one reason former POTUSes haven’t been arrested before is because only a few have ever faced possible criminal charges. Of those, Warren Harding died in office and Richard Nixon was pre-emptively pardoned by his loyal sideman Gerald Ford. As for Bill Clinton, he was successfully sued by Paula Jones while in office, and while he did face possible criminal charges for perjury and obstructing justice, he did what a lot of rich and powerful people do – he avoided indictment by cutting a deal, which in his case resulted in a $25,000 fine and suspension of his law license for five years.

 

Trump, incidentally, probably could have done something similar to avoid indictment, but that would mean admitting wrongdoing (as Clinton had to do as part of his deal), which he is constitutionally incapable of doing.

 

7. In any case, I for one refuse to be lectured by the party of “LOCK HER UP!” about the inappropriateness of indicting POTUS candidates and former Presidents.

 

8. I do think the “We don’t arrest former Presidents” meme raises the question of accountability and to what extent we think Presidents (current or former) should be above the law. Impeachment is supposed to be the preferred remedy of high crimes and misdemeanors in the White House, but it’s a political solution, not a judicial one. And the politics makes it risky, lest we get into an endless cycle of political revenge (as various Repubs are now threatening to do).

 

The dilemma is: If it’s politically too dangerous to impeach or arrest a POTUS, what incentive remains for a POTUS to follow the law – especially a POTUS who turns out to be a pathological liar with no regard for the law and a willingness to burn the country to the ground if it means staying out of jail?

 

9. The other big question of course is: what does this mean for his re-election chances? It’s not clear yet, although we’ve already established that (1) you can still legally run for (and win) the Presidency from a jail cell, and (2) the MAGA base will vote for Trump no matter what. And it’s a given that Trump will milk this for everything it’s worth, so I think he’s still just as likely to at least win the nomination. He might not win the general election, but that may have been true before the indictment.

 

10. The one thing we can be sure of is that the political climate in the US is going to get a lot worse. The indictment will feed the MAGA crowd’s persecution complex and fuel the GOP’s apparent commitment to embrace fascism and turn America into Hungary to save it from the Soros-Backed Woke Trans Antifa Drag Queen Biden Army.

 

However, in my opinion, that’s no reason not to indict Trump. The fact that he’s been indicted at all speaks volumes – I think few DAs, and no grand jury, would bring a case like this if there wasn’t enough evidence to justify the expense and the extraordinary sociopolitical consequences. And again, this is only one of several cases brewing – Trump has pushed the limits of what the “norms” of not arresting Presidents will accept.

 

Trump has basically forced the nation to reckon with a major dilemma: When a POTUS unabashedly crimes with impunity, our choices are (1) indict him and uphold rule of law, or (2) accept that any POTUS can crime all they want with no consequences apart from losing their re-election campaign (which they could also claim was stolen and refuse to accept).

 

Which will it be?

 

Stormy weather,

 

This is dF