Bad law and worse drama
The MSNBC crowd are out for revenge, whatever the pretext for indictment, while I share the view of the NYT columnists who have misgivings. In my view, the legal case against Trump is jerry rigged, compounding a state misdemeanor with a federal felony. Prosecutors are all too ready to convict or extend crimes so as to catch a bad guy. Remember that Martha Stewart was put in jail for having lied to the FBI about insider trading because the prosecutors thought that they couldn't convict her of the actual inside trading. In general, don’t trust the FBI. James Comey helped to scuttle the Hillary election and the main FBI headquarters is still named after the infamous J. Edgar Hoover. Liberals rather than Conservatives are the ones who distrust law enforcement. Another example. Michael Cohen got a soft sentence for pleading guilty about the hush money but the whole issue was debatable and was never tested in court because it was prudent for him to plead guilty rather than get the book thrown out at him for the effrontery of having proceeded to trial. I am consistent in my view in that I am also opposed to hate crimes, another way of broadening criminal penalty. If you shoot up a jewelry store you should not get an additional charge for having yelled "kike" at the jewelry store owner even if you raise penalties for firebombing religious buildings like synagogues, mosques and churches.
More importantly, this hush money case is too sleazy for words. Stormy Daniels got money for keeping quiet. Why not try her for extortion? The many legal savants on MSNBC and CNN before and after the indictment never considered or avoided that direct question though a classic instance of extortion is getting a payment for not revealing a nude photo and that would seem to include not revealing a tryst. I am being consistent. Bill Clinton should not have been impeached because of Monica. It was undignified, not appropriate for the government, to go after sex that is not violent or coerced. Reserve Trump for a serious indictment such as the Insurrection or trying to fix the Georgia election. I also think it has taken far too long to indict in those cases. Jack Smith still has to interview Mark Meadows and Mike Pence and others. It means that there will be at least two and a half years between the events and indictments and Trump will be too old by the time of a trial given more motions and other delays to get any time in jail. The next hearing on the Stormy Daniels case is not until December, 2023, which means the trial will be in primary season or later, which disrupts electioneering. Is that the right issue for the electorate to deal with? By that time the issue is old hat, just dredged up for political advantage, sort of an October Surprise that is no surprise, just on the calendar. Anyway, I don't want Trump in jail, just humiliated, as was the case with Nixon.
Nixon, however, was a tragic figure, Miltonic in that he was attracted to his darkest instincts, someone who sooner or later fall into them with the excuse that dirty politics were lamentable but necessary and ruing the day to his death that somehow he could be rehabilitated by his sins, feeling courageous for later in life admitting to therm. I am not at all charitable to think that Nixon would have avoided his fate if he had won in 1960 and so not fallen into the clutches of Haldeman and Ehrlichman and Mitchel. His scurrilous attacks went back to his slanders on Helen Gehagan Douglas. That was when he was labeled as “Tricky Dick”. But Nixon did feel shame.But Trump does not have the gravity to be called tragic. He is just a person who lies and cheats as much as he can, someone so ignorant of the moral dimension that not even the Presidency gives him pause about just doing whatever is selfish. He does not reflect and the only virtue to be found in him is that he persists in spite of all the slings and arrows thrown against him. Go on, Mac Trump, indictments however many dismissed as mere personal revenge rather than of substance to be answered, as would happen if he offered a public explanation as to why he inspired an insurrection without any evidence that the 2020 election was rigged.
Here is the gold standard for political drama: Shakespeare’s ”Julius Caesar'', where an assassination is the cause (and consequence) of political upheaval. There are at least three points of the play where the eloquence of the speakers transforms events as well as illuminates character. The dying Caesar says “et tu Brute” to show that the most important point is that he had been betrayed by a friend, devastating while some other assassins would be just the risks of political life and so along with Judas to be assigned by Dante as the innermost circle of hell. How different from Trump who never trusts anyone as presumed to be honorable, as Caesar did wight Brutus, but treats opponents of always scurrilous, calling Alvin Bragg as an animal. No proceedings are honorable while Nixon did not castigate the House Judiciary Committee. The second remark is the speech by Marc Antony that rehabilitates Caesar even if perhaps he had been told to give a non political eulogy by the assassins but deftly turns the tables and allows for he and Octavious to mount a battle against the usurpers while Trump never explains anything to exculpate his crimes, and so none are to be expected in the Stormy Daniels case. The third example of a political speech that rises to the level of tragedy is the speech of Brutus before he kills himself, where he takes responsibility for what he did while still thinking it to have been wise even if it ended badly. Trump could not separate good intentions and actions from winning and so he could not believe he lost, which for others can be considered an honorable state of being even if a painful one. A tragic story requires character and absence of that the story is pathetic and distasteful and to be dismissed as quickly as possible because it is not ennobling. Camus’ “Caligula” goes beyond tragedy by making the protagonist beyond comprehension and so a fact of life rather than of humanity.
Given this background, it is not at all surprising that the indictment fell flat either as law or as drama. The stipulations of the indictment revealed little other than possible future plans for tax evasion, which seems a stretch, and the claim that Trump had fathered another child, which is tube stuff of soap opera rather than worthy of serious political moment. For all the buildup, the motorcade down FDR Drive was ludicrous and unnecessary and, as commentators remarked, somehow akin to OJ’s caravan in Los Angeles. There was nothing to cover just the statement that it was noteworthy that this was the first time an ex-President had been indicted. News coverage is always out to find something visual, however uninformative that may be. Trump was quickly ushered into the courtroom and all that was seen of it were a few seconds of photos that some commentators understood him as being grim and overwhelmed but could also be seen as grim and stoical. Just commentators saying something because they have to. The ex-President's rant that evening was hardly redeeming, only vile, not a Shakespearean uplift. He has neither the ability or the inclination while Nixon on the night before he resigned to give a speech where he went on about his mother, which was all too human, knowing he had debased himself, and so bathetic rather than tragic, but that too was Nixon being Nixon. Trump’s speech was vituperative and filled with lies, hardly surprising because Trump was being Trump, given his mental limitations, incapable of forming an argument despite having been elevated by the populace, to their everlasting shame, to the most powerful position in the world. We are all better off going past this indictment yesterday to the Justice Department and Georgia indictments which rise to the nature of treasonable offenses and so dignify both the accusations and the persons indicted. Let us wash our hands of yesterday’s indictment.