Judges put “Citizen Trump” in his place. He has no immunity, but time is on his side in his work to undermine constitutional democracy.
• Read also: No presidential immunity for Donald Trump
Its main allies are the infuriating slowness of the judicial process and the equally infuriating tendency of the media to normalize a candidate who is anything but normal.
Citizen Trump
In an attempt to derail his trial for attempting to hijack democracy following the 2020 election, Donald Trump presented the preposterous argument that a president is immune from criminal prosecution.
The Court of Appeal completely debunked this argument. It is illogical that a president who takes an oath to enforce laws can transgress those laws at will. “Citizen Trump” is not above the law.
But this is not just any citizen. Thanks to the millions of dollars his naive donors provide to pay his lawyers, Trump can drag out the proceedings and pollute the minds of his supporters by claiming to be the victim of a witch hunt.
The Supreme Court holds the key
Trump will challenge this decision in the Supreme Court, which could take its time and allow Trump to delay his trial long enough that his election allows him to overturn it.
The Supreme Court could also block his candidacy by upholding the Colorado court’s decision that found Trump ineligible for president under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. She is hearing pleas today (Thursday).
In a world where facts and common sense still matter, Trump’s participation in the events surrounding the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 would disqualify him.
That would be too easy. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority will likely find an escape route.
If the trend continues…
Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s complete capture of the Republican Party allows him to benefit from the well-established norms that force the media to cover both parties in a balanced manner and condition voters to perceive their respective candidates as normal and legitimate choices.
If Trump is thus “normalized”, if he escapes the consequences of his legal tribulations and if the current trend reflected in the polls continues, the United States risks falling into the Trump trap again.
It’s not inevitable.
It is possible that a trial will incriminate Trump before the election. It is also possible that voters will end up perceiving that the American economy is doing well under Biden’s leadership and that he is not the caricature that his opponents make him out to be. It is also possible (we can dream) that the Republicans realize that they have been tricked by a blackmailer who made them lose the last three elections, who transformed their party into a circus and who is embezzling the lion’s share from the electoral fund for his personal purposes.
All this could happen, but constitutional democracy would have a better chance of surviving if Supreme Court justices, like those in the District of Columbia and Colorado, gave it a little helping hand.
