About Last Week...
The Legal Attack Strategy Against Trump is Not About Justice, It’s About Advertising.
So Donald Trump got indicted, again.
The first local indictment in New York was patently ridiculous.
This second federal indictment is clearly political but it may have – unlike the previous one – something to it.
Trump took records home – actually a common practice usually handled by a few letters back and forth (which was being done, sort of.)
Meh.
Trump’s security of said documents was rather ramshackle – again, not unheard of, especially for aficionados of cool old ‘Vettes in garages.
Eh.
Trump – being Trump and physically incapable of keeping his mouth shut and psychologically incapable of not showing off – seemingly showed said documents to a reporter.
Not good.
Trump – being Trump and thinking that lawyers and money can make things go away (real money and good lawyers often accomplish this; Trump’s legal team…not so much) - reportedly tried to “edit” the collection of documents in his possession.
That is a no-no.
The indictment is clearly a political act – there can be no question of that fact.
But just because something has ulterior motives - or very very exterior motives as in this case – that does not mean it is automatically wrong. Think of a soda focusing its advertising on the fact it has no calories – that is a very exterior motive to get you to buy it but it really does have no calories so it’s legitimate.
It’s just saying it really really loud on purpose to get your attention and, hopefully, make you switch brands.
That is what is happening here – true or not, the primary point of the legal bricks being thrown at Trump is not justice or enforcing the law without fear or favor or serving and protecting democracy, whether it be actual democracy or what passes for “our democracy” these days - https://thomas699.substack.com/p/what-protect-our-democracy-really : it is all about getting people to switch brands, no more, no less.
The legal attack strategy against Trump is not about justice, it’s about advertising.
Where does that leave the former president and his legions of supporters? A bit unclear at this moment.
Yes, he can continue to campaign as an indictee. What if he is convicted prior to the election but still wins – can he take office?
Sure he can, but there will be an argument made that someone who cannot vote – Florida/federal felon – cannot hold elective office and that someone who has violated the Espionage Act cannot be allowed access to classified information which, I understand, is an important part of the job of being President.
And then what happens if he gets elected and can’t fulfill his duties? Actually, we know the answer to this and its called Joe Biden so that may not be as big an issue as many think.
All of this will be tossed out during the campaign – and the timing will be played to have maximum impact on Trump (indictment comes out day after Biden bribery scandal goes really public? subtle as a crutch, guys.) to confuse and dissuade voters from the fact that, yes, a felon can be president.
Not a good look, necessarily, but its legal.
And politically it will do nothing save harden his base. For the past eight years (has it been that long? Wow…) Trump has been unfairly and illegally maligned in every possibly way. He’s even been maligned when he should have been, but drawing that distinction is nearly impossible because of the amount of improper ooze that has been thrown at him, therefore attacking him or even seriously disagreeing with him is difficult without being seen as part of the never-ending pattern of false attacks.
The fascinating part of that is this: think of the ink spilled, the charges lobbed, the lies told, the piles of money burned, the overt collaboration of the media with his opponents, the wholesale changes to and manipulation of the actual election system purely to benefit the Democrats, and the fact that the nation was going through its worst crisis since, well, it’s up there with the biggies, and Trump lost by about 63,000 votes scattered amongst a few states.
All of that time and effort and destruction and that’s all they could manage.
Trump’s opposition will, however, now be able to say he actually has been indicted, not that he will be indicted as they said 3,572,784 times during his presidency - https://thomas699.substack.com/p/maybe-this-time-bb5 .
The funny thing is that there are actually good reasons – beyond his personality - to think very hard about giving Trump another four years: he got snookered by the pandemicists and went along with turning life upside down, he failed to deep six the deep state which only grew under his reign, and he is seemingly still a chaotic manager who appears allergic to detail.
To end on a different note, I was walking through the grocery store the other day and I saw an older gentlemen – all right, just a bit older than me – and it occurred to me that when I saw such people as a youth I would think – “hey, he probably fought in World War II” and now I think “hey, he probably took a bunch of acid for a Pink Floyd concert.”
Or maybe it was just the t-shirt and the hair.
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