Jokes
and memes are flying but there is no humor in
a former president being convicted of 34
counts of felony charges for falsifying
business records to hide hush money paid to a
porn film actress during the 2016 presidential
campaign. Apparently, it wasn’t enough to keep
Stormy Daniels quiet because she sang like a
canary on the witness stand. This - and the
other 50 plus charges trump faces - may not be
enough to stop his bid to the White House
again.
The public knows a lot about
trump and there should be consensus that he is
unfit to hold any public office, let alone the
highest office in the land. He is a criminal; he has been a criminal. Sadly, I think
we will find this is insufficient to tarnish
his reputation, bring him down hard, and
permanently send him quietly into the night.
The
former president’s two favorite adjectives are
“rigged” and “disgraceful.” He used the terms
to describe his failed 2020 re-election. They
were used again to paint the entire judicial
process that led to his conviction. Rigged and
disgraceful was the process used to harass,
humiliate and convict the Central Park Five.
Readers may recall that trump took out a
full-page ad in the New
York Times.
Once the teens were exonerated, trump never
apologized for his part in publicly degrading
the Black and Brown teens for a crime they
never committed.
From
all accounts, it is unlikely that trump will
serve any time for this recent conviction.
Legal observers predict that because it is a
non-violent crime and there are no official
prior convictions, he’s likely to get
probation, fines or community service. This is
how the racist and classist judicial system
operates. A rich, white man - no matter how
vile and unethical - will not suffer the
humiliation and injustice that poor and
working-class people have endured for
generations.
The
tried-and-true bullying tactics of trump,
mixed with his cries of victimhood, are the
special ingredients for effective fundraising
and inciting his crazed, extremist base. One
such zealot already encouraged a repeat of
January 6 by calling for 1 million armed trump
supporters to “go to Washington and hang
everyone.” The orange man used the guilty
verdict to raise over $140 million. This is
more than Joe Biden and the Democrats have
ever raised in any one month.
This
is a hollow victory in the scheme of things
and trump has so many more cards to play. His
legal team plans to appeal this latest
conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping
for some favors from trump appointees. The
team has been strategic in stalling the myriad
cases playing out in multiple courts across
the country until after the November election,
such as the appeals court temporarily pulling
the reins in the Georgia election interference
case against trump.
The
former president has made negative history in
so many ways, yet he is still standing, still
raising money, and still talking trash. Being
a convicted felon won’t have the same
devastating effect on trump as it has had on
Pookie and Ray-Ray. Let that reality set in
for a minute or two.
