I’ve been shaking my head so much in the last week I have given myself a headache.
The spin that followed the historic court ruling made me dizzy.
We all saw, read or heard that former U.S. president Donald Trump was found guilty in a New York court on 34 felony charges.
It stemmed from hush money paid to an adult film star to keep Stormy Daniels quiet about a previous sexual relationship. (It is still denied by Trump.) The campaign didn’t want the story to affect the 2016 election. The illegal part was how the payment was made, via falsification of business records.
I believe the jury got it right.
As each guilty verdict was read out, I felt maybe finally Trump would be held to account for wrongs done.
Then, it all seemed to unravel.
And recycling the nickname "Teflon Don," which was first used to describe mob boss John Gotti, is so accurate. It's like nothing bad sticks to him.
It is all very complicated, but here was my big question: How can it possibly be legal for a now convicted felon to be allowed to run for any political office let alone president of the United States?
Why doesn’t this immediately bar him from being the Republican Party’s chosen nominee?
The founding fathers likely didn’t figure they needed to set that out in document form. They likely considered that to be self-evident!
“The leader of the country and commander in chief should-eth not be a crook.”
Trump makes Richard Nixon seen like a choirboy, doesn’t he?
So, we hear the jury come back with 34 guilty verdicts and then we hear that donations to Trump’s re-election fund have skyrocketed.
News reports quote Trump campaign advisers as saying this verdict will actually motivate their core supporters. So many donations came into WinRed, the platform the campaign uses for fundraising, that it crashed. Aides had to set up a backup platform to handle the money pouring in.
How is that possible?
I no longer understand many of our neighbours to the south.
My other question is how can this conviction not lead to jail time?
According to political pundits, he could get probation or up to four years per conviction, but to a maximum of 20 years.
New York litigator Mitchell Epner told the New York Times that his expectation would be probation.
“With a defendant who has no prior criminal record, that would be my absolute expectation," the lawyer said.
There could also be $5,000 fine per charge.
All that’s up to the judge in the case which Trump has repeatedly called “a Trump hater.”
The sentence will be handed down July 11, just days before Trump is announced as the Republican Party’s likely nominee of choice.
Then, we wait for the appeals process.
Putting all the politics aside, I just couldn’t help but wonder how the limo ride went on the way out of Manhattan. Was there screaming, yelling, gnashing of teeth? Was his face redder than his tie?
When he got back to Mar-a-Lago, was Melania sitting there in her infamous “I Don’t Care Do You” jacket?
How frosty was that reunion?
Speaking of family, where was daughter Ivanka during the entire court proceeding? Noticeably absent.
Doesn’t anybody think it's weird Trump fell asleep during the trial?
How many antacids did attorney Todd Blanche need to get through the last few weeks?
How badly does the lawyer want to change professions?
Trump said after the trial ended that revenge from the "witch hunt" would come when he wins in November.
That was very telling. This is all about revenge. It's about getting back at anyone who crossed him. It's about him and it's about winning.
He puts nothing before himself. Not his family, and certainly not his country.
In my opinion, he wins and we all lose.
