For years some people in New York City who knew Donald Trump said that based on his lack of ethics in both business and his personal life he should not have sought the Republican Party nomination. Trump would not fare well, they said, with every aspect of his life under the microscope. Though Trump would not have known the word that best defined his attitude in 2015, anyone with a healthy vocabulary called it hubris. Throughout his life, countless stories have surfaced concerning his refusal to pay legitimate bills and cheating both on his taxes and his multiple wives. Skirting the laws and grifting for the latest money-making scheme has left a bad taste in the mouths of Americans. Then came banner headlines on Thursday with unprecedented news. Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies in a hush-money case where campaign finance and tax laws were repeatedly broken. As bad as the legal outcome was, worse yet for the thin-skinned man-boy is how he was publicly repudiated and completely demeaned in ways that make for the perfect storm. One that America needed to witness.
The most important aspect of this story is how law and order are equally applied in our nation. No one being above the law remains a foundational truth we first learned in civics classes. Despite the most absurd clamoring by Trump to turn that long-held concept on its head by exempting his behavior from the legal norms, twelve jurors (and Trump’s peers), made a strong statement not only about the hush-money case but about the very foundation of law in this nation. While Trump and many of his supporters are vocal about their willfully misguided perceptions that the trial was somehow unfair, we must be aware that the effort to undermine citizens’ belief in the judicial process is but one step toward fascism. That we are again witnessing such moves from the Republican Party should not be discounted, as they are telling us precisely what they believe in, and where they wish to take our nation.
The unseemly side of Trump has been witnessed far more widely since the summer of 2015 when he took an escalator ride before letting loose with a racist and vile opening speech to win the hearts of the Republican Party. Since his desire to be a politician put him on page one of newspapers so too did his horrible treatment of women. Allegations of sexual abuse turned into a finding by a jury in January that Trump defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll after already having been found guilty of raping her in a changing room at Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s. Judge Lewis Kaplan stated the jury found Trump did, in fact, rape Carroll as the term is commonly understood. Though the hush money trial was not about Trump’s treatment of his third wife, who just weeks prior to his sexual romp with porn actress Stormy Daniels had given birth to his fifth child, there was still a strong sense of vindication for women across the nation. Scorned women by caddish husbands from Burbank to Boston and from Minneapolis to Memphis surely smiled and thought of their own day of justice.
While we can honestly say the Trump chapter in our national story is a sad and pathetic one, the last pages written thus far about him being found guilty 34 times of felonious crimes is what our nation needed to see and hear. We have needed this moment for a long time. His arrogant and pompous buffoonery needed to be deflated as much as the laws of the land required being upheld. But there are far more pressing criminal charges that must be heard by other juries than what unfolded in a New York courtroom.
I have not been shy in calling out Trump as a traitor to the American people. Though it will never be heard in any court or face any consequence for him we must never forget Trump stood alongside the despot Vladimir Putin and took his word against the United States intelligence agencies that found Russia had interfered with the 2016 election. What will be heard at some point by a jury of Trump’s peers is the fact that Trump incited an angry crowd that likely did not have one library card among them to acts of violence so to stop the counting of the Electoral College ballots in Congress.
The nation is in the midst of what can be termed the perfect storm and if we are smart citizens we will not only watch and read each development along the way but also learn from them. No one needs to be reminded that Trump has blamed everyone and everything other than himself for his own boorish conduct. Up until recently, he has always been able to con or buy himself out of taking any personal responsibility. It was a very important moment for our nation to see Trump come to terms with a most important fact he seemed unaware of until Thursday. He is no better than all those people he has maligned and called names for decades. He is no better than a janitor who cleans toilets at a bus terminal. Though my money is the janitor has a better set of morals.
CAFFEINATED POLITICS 