Reckoning With Trump

TODAY IS A TRUE MILESTONE in the seemingly never ending saga of Donald J.Trump, for for the first time in all this seeming chaos, he will have appeared in court as the defendant in a criminal trial. The trial, concerning financial fraud involving Trump uisng campaign donations to bribe a woman into silence, will take no more than a few weeks, and since Trump is guilty as hell, as the facts already presented clearly indicate, should result in a guilty verdict. The witnesses lined up against Trump to testify for the prosecution are among Trump's closest former associates, and they have quite damaging sworn testimony to give. Then comes the sentencing, which might not happen until somewhat later, maybe even after the election. Of the four seperate criminal trials which Trump should, in a just society, be required to and probably will indeed ultimately endure, only this one is likely to take place before the election. If Trump loses the election, which, again, would happen in a just, sane society, then nothing changes; he will go to trial, be tried, and there will be consequences in all four criminal prosecuations he currently faces. Prison time is among those possible. If Trump wins the election, presumably he would appoint an attorney General who would assume office only after agreeing with Trump to dismiss all federal charges against Trump. Presumably, the criminal charges Trump is facing in Georgia will be prosecuted in a timely fashion, whether or not Trump becomes president, and would not stop merely because of his election to high national office. Trump would have no power to truncate that proceeding. In the event that a future President Trump is convicted of election interference and tampering in Georgia, he would presumably either not be sentenced to prison time, or if he were, would not be expected to report to a Georgia state penitentiary while in office. At least, it is somewhat difficult to imagine a caravan of limos and sheriff's police cruisers from Georgia arriving at the White House, expecting the president to accompany them, in handcuffs, back to Georgia, in the back seat of a patrol car, sitting next to a Georgia sheriff's deputy. Maybe they would allow him to text and post as he rides, to keep him quiet... After he leaves office, who knows? Maybe Air Force One would give the outgoing president one...last....ride...to a Georgia prison. Obviously, there is much about this strange, unprecedented state of affairs which defies reason, and much must be guessed at and presumed, or left to speculation. Millions of people who want justice for Trump have little choice other than to content themselves by embracing the various presumed truths about the inevitability of ultimate justice. The arc of history is long, but leans towards justice, what goes around comes around, and so forth. The wheels of justice turn slowly, but, inexorably, they turn. What a long stange journey it has been for America and Donald J.Trump, and the longest, strangest part of it we haven't even reached yet. But we are rapidly approaching it, as the election fo 2024 and the Trump criminal trials loom before us. There is no avoding either. The election will take place, and so will Trump's trials. Their outcomes and consequences will tell us much about ourelves, and about our country.