This indictment will continue to be viewed by me as a political drama staged by Mr. Bragg, the District Attorney for Manhattan, with the intention of garnering cheap publicity.
For
the political drama that took place in the courtroom today, you have to give
credit to the Democrats on the far left and their woke-indoctrinated
representative in the office of the district attorney for Manhattan, Alvin Bragg.
When you thought they had nothing else to offer, they surprised you with a
wonderful episode just when you didn't expect them to. A stunning
courtroom scene took place today as Donald Trump became the first former
President of the United States to be charged with criminal offenses. In total,
he is facing 34 of these counts. These accusations are based on three separate
payments of hush money, one of which was made to a former porn star, and are
related to the alleged violation of regulations governing campaign financing.
They are common, but nonetheless shocking enough to hold the attention of an
audience. Mr. Trump has refuted each and every one of them. According to what I
have been seeing in news broadcasts from CNN, Fox News, and CBS, as well as
newspaper reports, the United States of America is, as it always has been,
sharply split in its responses to the most recent turn in the plot, but they
are unanimous in their adherence to the spectacle. What are other parts of the
world supposed to think about it? The situation calls for two quite different
responses.
One should have a calm demeanor. Even while taking previous presidents to court is quite usual in other democracies, this is the first time it has happened in America. There are many previous presidents and prime ministers who have been charged with crimes, including those from France (such Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy), Italy (Bettino Craxi, Silvio Berlusconi), and Israel (Moshe Katsav, Ehud Olmert, and currently Binyamin Netanyahu). Even Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president of Nigeria, served four years in prison between 1995 and 1999. In Taiwan, indicting former presidents is practically customary. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil, has been released from prison after serving a 580-day sentence. At a special tribunal in The Hague this week, Hashim Thaci, a former president of Kosovo, entered a not-guilty plea to charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Although Mr. Trump claims that his judicial judgment is a political witch hunt, elsewhere, similar events have not incontrovertibly destroyed democracy. Quite often, it is the opposite.
It's true that those who disagree with Mr. Trump have tried and failed to use the democratic system to remove him from office. On both occasions, the House of Representatives attempted to impeach him, but the Senate fell short of the necessary two-thirds vote to convict him. The Constitution of the United States was written to make impeachment difficult on purpose. Mr. Trump made it through the phony hearings held by a House committee on January 6th. Now, what seems to be the weakest and most confusing of the several legal issues threatening him is being used as the basis for an effort to punish him through the courts. Because of this, the New York indictment is definitely a bad move. Prosecuting a past president only affirms a key concept of democracy, that no one is above the law, if it is not a political persecution like this President Trump's case.
Locus
Standi
On a different level, though, America's allies have good reason to be concerned about the situation. Many people have spent the past two years basking in the blissful relief that Mr. Trump is no longer in power and desperately wanting to believe that, surely, given his misconduct after the election in 2020 and his many troubles (from legal jeopardy to electoral setbacks and the rise of rivals), he cannot return to the White House. This belief is based on the fact that many people have spent the past two years basking in the blissful relief that Mr. Trump is no longer in power. Such carelessness was always foolish, but it now appears to be dangerous. The most recent attack on Donald Trump has had the unintended consequence of reinforcing his position as the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, with a road to the presidency that is challenging but not impossible. This fact will begin to have an effect on the estimates made by other countries.
Consider Ukraine. Its leaders would conclude that the threat of a Trump presidency makes it all the more urgent to make military gains as quickly as possible. The contrary conclusion will be drawn in Moscow, where Vladimir Putin will decide he should wait until the United States, Ukraine's main Western supporter, is led by a president who openly mocks Ukraine and predicts Russian conquest. Consider NATO as an alternative. Many have worried that Trump would drop it in his second term. Thankfully, Russia's aggressiveness has only served to fortify and grow the partnership. Finland joined NATO officially as its 31st member on the same day that Mr. Trump appeared in court. Now that the alliance has been shaken, all members have a vested interest in strengthening it so that it can weather another Trump shock.
This indictment will continue to be viewed by me as a political drama staged by Mr. Bragg, the District Attorney for Manhattan, with the intention of garnering cheap publicity. Obviously, there is a lot that could go wrong in order to stop the production of a new White House season of this program. As a result of the precedent that the Manhattan case has set in the United States for the indictment of a former president, it is more likely that additional, more serious cases will follow. These cases could focus, for example, on election interference in Georgia or on his mishandling of classified documents. The good news is that Mr. Trump will not be completely overpowered by these legal messes. Due to the support that he enjoys among Republican primary voters, there is a distinct likelihood that Donald Trump may win the candidacy of his party. Even while there is a possibility that he will have a lower probability of victory in a rematch with Joe Biden, it is possible that the electorate as a whole will reward him for his efforts. The crux of the matter is that there will undoubtedly be other turns in this narrative. Yet it is important for the American people to keep in mind the horrible reality that this indictment is nothing more than a cynical political maneuver.
References
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