SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 5.31.2024 UPDATED
It’s disconcerting to read the post conviction reports and realize that too many Americans are buying in to Trump’s incendiary and dangerous rhetoric. Rupert Murdoch’s MAGA tabloid rag The New York Post says it all with the screaming headline INJUSTICE.
The people I consider intelligent are ecstatic.
Donald Trump has been found Guilty of committing 34 felonies.
In his attempt to hide damaging information which could have cost him the 2016 election.
Voters in most countries would recognize Trump’s long overdue comeuppance as justified.
Sufficient reason to preclude this lying now convicted felon from being considered for any elected office.
Not in America, I fear.
Excerpted from The New York Times – Frank Bruni – 5.30.2024
The first former American president to be put on trial is now the first former American president to be convicted of a felony. Those milestones should be tombstones. A normal mortal doesn’t rise from that political grave.
But Donald Trump? I could see him skipping out of the cemetery, all the way back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I could see “guilty” being a mere bump in the road. I could even see it being an accelerant, as his indictment arguably was.
That’s because he has spent much of his lifetime and all of his political career preparing for a chapter like the current one — carefully constructing and ceaselessly repeating a narrative in which there are forces out to get him, they’ll use whatever trickery they must and their accusations are never, ever to be trusted.
I long ago lost count of the times that “witch hunt” tumbled from his lips or his keyboard. Same for “rigged.” He wasn’t just venting. He was girding, an amoral storyteller insisting on a story and a moral different from the ones that those nefarious establishment types were pushing. Trump came to understand that commanding people’s attention could get him only so far, while commanding their realities might enable him to get away with anything.
The trial and its conclusion slot neatly into the Trump-against-the-world worldview that he has promoted so assertively, so continuously and, as his sustained perch atop the Republican Party demonstrates, so successfully. Indeed, the whole point of promoting it was inoculation against potentially ruinous circumstances like Thursday’s verdict.
In the eyes of many voters, his prosecution proves his persecution. It’s as much affirmation as condemnation. And it’s all the more reason for him — and for them — to press on.
Trump behind bars
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