The incoming Biden administration should not waste time prosecuting Donald Trump.
If you’ve been following my musings for the last few years, this statement may surprise you. I’ve made no secret of my belief that Trump engaged in illegal, immoral activities before and during his time in office. He and cronies deserve to be held accountable.
But not by Biden.
The 46th president will already come to office under a cloud of suspicion and mistrust. Despite the assurances of secretaries of state and other election officials from both sides of the aisle and in all 50 states that November’s election was safe and secure with no evidence of widespread fraud, the Trump crime cartel, which poisons everything it touches, has managed to sow real doubt among many of the 73 million people who cast their votes for a second term of misfeasance and malfeasance.
Not that those voters required much urging.
If Trump has been successful at anything over the last four years, it has been the creation of a near-cult of automatons who will accept anything he says and does at face value, just because he says it. They fly his banner in place of the American flag, leave his signs in their yards long after the election, and somehow embrace him as a consummate symbol of Everyman — or Every White Man — despite his gloating over paying almost no taxes and disparaging comments toward women, minorities and veterans.
Oh, and his complete bumbling of a pandemic that keeps devouring American lives and livelihoods while his focus remains alternately on Twitter and the golf course.
So whatever the result of any federal prosecution, Biden loses.
If Trump is found guilty, his supporters will spin a saga of kangaroo courts and QAnon-inspired deep-state conspiracies. A guilty verdict will make a martyr of Trump. If he’s found not guilty, it will be seen as a vindication of four years of chicanery and ineptitude.
And if Biden issues a pardon (which he indicated he is not inclined to do), the Always Trumpers will argue it’s because 45 did nothing wrong in the first place. It’s really a no-win in this nightmare scenario created by Fox News and Russian trolls, egged on by a narcissist who would rather annihilate all democratic norms than admit defeat.
Regardless, Biden has bigger problems just trying to undo the missteps of the last four years. A virus needs quelled, an economy salvaged, international relations repaired, and environmental damage reversed. All of these are more pressing issues than pursuing a divisive investigation into Trump.
This isn’t to say other legal forces won’t be closing in on the soon-to-be ex-president. Jane Mayer, writing in the Nov. 9 New Yorker, notes both the Manhattan district attorney and the New York attorney general are “independently pursuing criminal charges related to Trump’s business practices before he became president.” He is said to be on the hook for some $300 million in personal loans and some $900 million in real-estate debt, according to Mayer.
Some say the thought of Trump in prison orange is a left-leaning fantasy. I tend to agree. He has more lives than the scrappiest alley cat, despite being one of the softest and most fragile men, ego-wise, on the planet.
The best outcome would be a nation and world that simply moves on post-Trump, voting out those who enabled him while leaving his outmoded form of noxious nationalism where it belongs — in the past.
Unfortunately, there are 73 million reasons why this isn’t likely to happen, and 73 million reasons to worry that if the next grifter is actually intelligent instead of merely crafty, the country could be in real trouble.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
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