Trump's Conviction

 

Statement A:

Donald Trump is a man who is unfit for any public office in the United States. He is an arrogant, vulgar, bullying, graceless, power mad ignoramus, and he doesn’t hide the fact. From December 14^th 2000 to January 6^th ,2001, he functioned as an enemy of the republic, conspiring and attempting to overthrow the government and remain in power illegally and unconstitutionally. The rally and riot of January 6^th had no other purpose. His order to Pence to change the results of the election was by itself an attempted coup. In 2022 he called in writing for overturning the Constitution and returning him to power immediately. He has made it plain recently that the only thing he regrets about the coup is that if failed. He is erratic to the point of instability, and apparently incapable of strategic thought beyond superficial transactional considerations.

Statement B:

The basis for the indictment of Trump in New York was farcically weak. The prosecutor was a Democrat party hack and scoundrel who acted for purely political reasons. The judge was another party man clearly biased in favor of the prosecution. There is evidence that the Biden administration was involved in the case in an attempt to ruin the leading candidate of the opposition party. The whole thing was a travesty and miscarriage of justice that Trump’s supporters have rightly called worthy of a banana republic. It also created a dangerous precedent, made millions of people more convinced that the ruling establishment is both corrupt and their enemy, and weakened the civil order.

These statements are not mutually exclusive. Both can be true, and I think they are. People celebrating this should be ashamed. They also should realize that from now on it is going to be harder to take their homilies about democracy and the sanctity of the rule of law very seriously. Besides that,  the thing probably will not even work. Unless the judge sends Trump to jail and keeps him from functioning as a candidate, it likely has raised the probability of Trump winning in November. If he does win, and this helps him do it, it would serve the people who did it right.