Trump seems to have gotten away with it. However, over time and with careful pressure there is hope yet that Trump’s legal troubles–and some kind of accountability–will follow him into his next term. There is hope that the accumulation of legal problems will undercut Trump’s real or perceived mandate to govern. Eventually, something will stick. Trump has vulnerabilities or he wouldn’t be fighting every attempt to have the truth come out.
Trump displayed his weakness when he felt he had to go after a legacy news agency for misstating the difference between “sexual abuse” and “rape” in reference to E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit. His need to parse words, and to defame Carrol, shows that he is not as invulnerable as he wants us to believe. His moral troubles may prove more resilient than his purely legal ones. E Jean Carrol is still bravely moving forward with her suit. Her’s is perhaps the most important because it calls Trump out for what he is–morally bankrupt and concerned only with escaping accountability.
Trump has famously claimed that he could shoot someone in broad daylight and get away with it. But that doesn’t mean he can do whatever he wants for any length of time. Eventually, what he does will catch up with him. Granted, there may be a group of people surrounding him that are so fanatically dedicated to him that nothing will cause them to change their minds. But the people who got him into the white house were not that fanatically devoted to him. They gave into his lies about how he could and would improve their lives. Trump’s claim, for instance, that he would lower the price of groceries. This is actually an economic impossibility. Deflation is the worst thing that can happen to an economy. What needs to happen is for real wages to rise enough for incomes to catch up to prices. This will occur on its own–Trump or no Trump.
So, there is a group of people with whom Trump is very vulnerable. The question is how to reach them–or maybe what to reach them with. It is a matter of finding what matters to the right people at the right time. And that takes really understanding why people voted for Trump in the first place. It takes getting your head around why all of this man’s immorality did not disqualify him in the minds of average American voters.
One thing is for sure, an unconditional discharge isn’t going to help; it is a major setback. It puts to rest something that should have followed Trump into the White House. But even with an unconditional discharge, Trump is still a felon. And we do have a report by the special council saying that he would have been convicted. That is not nothing. And it is telling what lengths Trump has gone to to suppress it. It shows us that there are limits to his ability to cast himself as a martyr oppressed by the deep state.
Progressive Without Apology 