To the surprise of no one and the disappointment of millions of Americans who were counting on the judicial system to ensure Donald Trump never sets foot in the White House again, every criminal case brought against the insurrectionist-in-chief is mired in delays, freak-show nonsense, and bullshit appeals that threaten to push some of these trials into 2025.
It’s easy to get discouraged by these (so far) successful efforts on the part of Trump — who only wants his day in court and cannot wait to testify — to elude justice. I’m discouraged. But Trump’s stalling tactics are those of someone playing a weak hand.
Trump is the defendant in four criminal cases for which he collectively faces 88 separate charges. They include:
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Jan. 6 case (four felony counts)
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Georgia election interference (10 felony counts)
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Classified documents (40 felony counts)
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New York porn-star hush money payoff (34 felony counts)
These charges are accompanied by voluminous evidence in the form of seized classified documents, recorded phone calls, text messages, and testimony from flipped witnesses who heard and saw things first-hand. Let’s be pessimistic and assume Judge Aileen Cannon successfully sabotages the classified docs case; there still are enough serious charges in the other three cases to make some kind of conviction probable or, at the very least, possible.
Granted, Trump could add the 5th Avenue shooting he likes to brag about to his list of crimes, and he wouldn’t lose a single MAGA vote. Fortunately, a slight majority of Americans recognize that putting a person with bad intentions in charge of anything inevitably produces a bad outcome. How could it not?
It cannot be emphasized enough, though, that all of Trump’s intentions, impulses, and fantasies are beyond bad — they emanate from the tortured, disfigured psyche of a person gripped every waking moment with overwhelming rage, resentment, and grievance. More Americans are sure to be reminded of Trump’s unfitness for office through the spring, summer, and fall as the presidential campaign heats up — unless Trump’s latest demented statements and lapses into incoherence fail to break through the wall-to-wall coverage of how old Joe Biden is.
Trump also is struggling financially, thanks to recent multimillion-dollar findings against him in civil cases. He has failed to find a surety company to finance a $450 million appeal bond in his New York business fraud case.
Earlier this month the former president posted a $91.6 million bond in the defamation case he lost to E. Jean Carroll, who Trump constantly demeaned after she alleged he raped her in a department store in the 1990s. In a civil trial last year, Trump was found liable for sexual assault against Carroll.
Add in President Biden’s heavy fundraising advantage, and it’s clear that Trump will have to rely even more on siphoned money from the Republican National Committee and small-dollar contributions from his MAGA dupes.
Unless I miscounted, the Nov. 5 election is 232 days away. That’s a long time to be in “can we save our democracy” purgatory. It’s going to be frustrating, stressful, and scary. Trump is going to ratchet up the hate talk, the veiled threats, the overt threats, and the firehose of lies about the 2020 election, Jan. 6, and whatever else comes out of his mouth because everything Trump says is a lie.
Over the weekend, Trump was virtually foaming at the mouth during a MAGA rally in Ohio. In any other context, a man who talks like Trump does in public — both in terms of the menace and the incoherent babble — would draw attention from concerned family and friends, and eventually mental health professionals and law enforcement. Trump, with his back to the wall, is a dangerous man.
However, democracy also has its back to the wall. While I remain cautiously optimistic that Trump will not return to the presidency, there’s a more than zero percent chance of him winning. And if you don’t believe that, think back to your sense of shock on Nov. 9, 2016, when you woke up to the surreal news that Donald Trump was the 45th president of the United States.
So, yeah, it can happen. The job of responsible Americans is to make sure it doesn’t happen again. That means facing the Trump-MAGA movement and calling it for what it is. Our democracy depends on it.
(From Project Orange: Saving Democracy From the Trump-MAGA Cult)