“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

God bless America!

If 34 counts of guilty don’t please you it’s time to talk to a shrink. But Donald J. Trump might beat you to the door. After all, he’s never experienced a defeat like this before and it’s bound to affect his colossal ego.

A humiliating retreat to Mar-a-Lago might ease the pain but it won’t stop it. However, the thought of prison may have a way of doing that.

Trump will be sentenced July 11and prison is one of the options open to Judge Juan Merchan, but a highly unlikely one. No judge wants to be the first in history to imprison a former US president.

So, a hefty fine and a long probation term are far more likely outcomes for Trump. Ironically, in the short term, this is resulting in even more campaign donations flowing into Trump’s already bulging coffers from his rabid base which can never give enough to its tarnished hero. But will they keep giving until election day Nov. 5?

There’s not a lot of money floating around the Rust Belt these days and its rust belt states like Kentucky, Michigan and Virginia are among Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters.

And who ever heard of a convicted felon being elected president in the first place?

We have Trump to thank for that bizarre possibility and the Republican Party, which is now nothing more than a Trump cult. Aside from this, recent polling suggests that about five to seven per cent of Trump supporters have said in the past they wouldn’t vote for Trump if he was convicted of consorting with porn star Stormy Daniels and paying her thousands in hush money by getting his underlings to falsify his financial records to hide what he did.

No, this is not made up. Not in Hollywood. Not in the National Enquirer. It was found to be fact by a jury of 12 people despite Trump’s vehement claim that the verdict was “rigged” and he was the victim of a “witch hunt” by his political enemies.

But that’s what Trump’s supporters claim and they don’t all live in Mississippi and Alabama. Many are Christian evangelicals. Some even live in Canada.

So what now? You can bet CNN and Fox News will wallow in this sordid swamp of political ooze until election day in November. And most of us will keep watching. In a hastily arranged news conference in the White House Friday, President Joe Biden said, “it’s reckless, dangerous …  and irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.”

Trump shot back, saying “This is all done by Biden and his people. This is done by Washington. No one has ever seen anything like this.”

German diplomat Count Otto von Bismarck once said, “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable and the art of next best.” Surely if this is true, we’re all in trouble? There’s no “next best” when dealing with the monster from Mar-a-Lago.

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who never gets tired of examining the foibles of politics.

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