Now that there are verdicts in the Manhattan criminal trial of former President Donald Trump, the legal experts and political analysts will be able to prognosticate about how the 2024 election will be affected.
But for those of us not as intimately invested in the machinations of political polls and statistics, the trial itself may indicate something more — namely that the moral center of the country is being decimated.
No longer do we strive to fight for (borrowing from Superman) truth, justice and the American way. Instead, we are becoming a nation where sex, lies and political ambition are leading us away from the principles of democracy.
Since it’s former President Trump’s unquenched political ambition and greed that is fueling so many of the lies and conspiracy theories, we who are not in his pocket need to search for the truth. Bringing sex into some of the cases is merely a distraction designed to delay justice.
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Personally, I do not care whether citizen Trump had sex with anyone, so long as it was consensual. This is already a man with a reputation for serial cheating, after all. Even without discussing the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, or his civil liability for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll, both the first Mrs. Trump in her autobiography and the former president himself in multiple interviews have detailed some overlapping of his relationships. It’s not a stretch to believe there were other women sprinkled throughout his multiple marriages.
But as been pointed out by a multitude of politicos, the New York trial was not about his sexual escapades, but about his successful plans to keep his alleged sexual partners quiet (lest the information influence voters) by bribing them and then hiding the paper trail within the cog of business records.
The day after his conviction, former President Trump gave a disjointed press conference claiming the trial was rigged, all the while describing what appeared to be an actual attempt to rig his trial. He said his side had tried to get the case moved to a different (i.e., more favorable) venue and away from a “conflicted” judge.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, the definition of the word conflicted means “having or showing confused or mutually inconsistent feelings.” Was he trying to accuse Judge Merchan of having a conflict of interest? Since there is no jurisdiction in the United States where the allegations in this trial would be unknown, wouldn’t trying to move it to a more favorable location be considered a rigging attempt?
Similarly, the issue of sex among prosecutors in the Georgia election interference case is totally immaterial to me unless there is evidence that District Attorney Fani Willis used taxpayer or campaign funds improperly.
Would the facts of the case change if two single people working on the same case exchanged pillow talk about it? Not one iota. It makes more sense to worry about the pillow talk being exchanged by Associate Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and their Trump-supporting wives when they are weighing in on cases involving the former president. This certainly reeks of conflicts of interest, despite their protestations.
But again, this is not what the Georgia case is about. Instead, it is the phone call from the former president to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking him to “find 11,780 votes” following his 2020 loss in that state.
Trump’s lawyers and MAGA supporters still say this was not an attempt to subvert the voices of Georgia’s voters, or an attempt to pressure Raffensperger to falsify (“find”) votes. Sure.
In the recent Manhattan “hush money” trial over Trump’s business records, justice would have been served if Judge Juan Merchan had locked the former president away for contempt continually ignoring the gag order he’d imposed.
Now that the sentencing portion of the trial approaches, however, the judge might actually be conflicted, as Trump alleged. Legal experts say probation or a fine would be a typical sentence for most first-time offenders in such a case. But considering the disrespect and disobedience the defendant showed the judge during the trial, Judge Merchan might be torn.
If this defendant were locked up, would his armed Secret Service detail have to be locked up too? Perhaps that’s spelled out in the Secret Service handbook.
I suspect that voters who believed Trump’s past lies and/or ignored his character flaws will continue to support him.
Those of us who do still believe in truth and justice can protect the American way by voting for President Joe Biden in November.