So, yesterday Trump goes on one of those alt-right media stations and claims that he will campaign, win, and serve as President even if he’s in jail.
Now what’s most interesting about this piece of verbal crap is that Trump is actually admitting that there’s a possibility he could wind up in jail. He’s never said that before, which means that maybe, just maybe, he is beginning to acknowledge that things in Trump-land may be getting out of control.
On the other hand, the last thing Trump would ever acknowledge is not only that he wouldn’t be the first Presidential candidate to run a national campaign from a jail cell, nor would he be willing to connect his name to that of Eugene Victor Debs, who received 3% of the popular vote running from a jail cell in 1920 as the Socialist Party candidate.
Which brings us to consider whether Trump will be headed for a cell at Butner, Otisville, or Danbury as he squares off against Jack Smith in a courtroom rather than on Truth Social or some alt-right reality TV.
Remember the great scene in Godfather II when a gangster named Willie Cicci explains to a Congressional committee what the word ‘buffer’ means? The latest move by Jack Smith indicting Trump’s Mar-a-Lago pool guy for attempting to destroy evidence after Smith issued a subpoena shows that Trump was surrounded by lots of ‘buffers’ during his White House years.
On the other hand, if you read the text of the indictment, it’s clear that some of those buffers have already flipped, including Rudy Giuliani, who may have been one of the most important buffers of all. And while Rudy was questioned not about the Mar-a-Lago documents but about the riot on January 6th, when was the last time that two federal grand juries were sitting in different locations running two separate investigations against the same person at the same time?
Besides some of his closest cronies blabbing their heads off in grand jury sessions, the other problem for Trump is that he keeps adding and then subtracting lawyers who are working on his case, or his cases, whatever the case might happen to be. And by the way, the cases against all those phony Presidential electors have just started ramping up, which means Trump will need even more legal help than he has on his payroll right now.
Meanwhile, Smith just plods along building his case or cases against Trump. And along with what people say who appear before the grand juries, don’t forget that Smith also has access to email and text messages, along with various surveillance tapes.
The problem with being a President, as opposed to being a Mafia guy, is that the President is surrounded by people even after he leaves the White House and you just can’t assume that none of these folks remember nuttin,’ particularly when they’re answering questions before a grand jury which can always issue a superseding indictment that will include – them!
The one thing Trump has going for him is that if he can delay the various ‘witch hunts’ until January 20th, 2025, all the various investigations and legal actions would then be suspended, as it were, in mid-air. But that strategy assumes that Trump will win the 2024 general election, whether he runs at the head of the GOP ticket, or the head of the MAGA Party, or something else.
Meanwhile, I can just see Trump running back and forth between his homes in Bedminster, NJ and Palm Beach, FL as he meets with lawyers and various buffers once another indictment from another Smith-led grand jury rolls out.
Know what? Trump really has become the victim of a witch hunt, except who’s to say that the 1629 witch hunts conducted in Salem should never have been held? Maybe none of the 18 witches executed at Salem needed to die. But when the witch hunting mania died down in Massachusetts and other colonies, laws were passed that ended the hysteria and scapegoat explanations for events like Indian attacks and plagues.
The thousand or so putzes who smashed into the Capitol on January 6th represented a modern-day manifestation of the craziness which circulated among some of Trump’s most ardent supporters after he lost the 2020 vote. And Trump himself has said that ‘his people’ were much more emotionally involved in the 2020 campaign than they were involved in 2016.
All of which may be true except for one, little thing. Jack Smith isn’t running for public office and until January 20th 2025, he’s just going to continue doing his job.
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