As you might have already heard whether you wanted to or not, the likely Republican candidate for President of the United States has been convicted of 34 felonies and not much of anybody – including him or me – thinks that alone will be enough to keep him out of the White House.
And that’s because Trump’s Supporters have repeatedly been willing to make excuses for their idol: if the news about Trump is bad it’s fake news, if Trump gets beat in an election the other side stole it and if Trump’s found guilty of 34 felonies the trial was rigged.
Trump supporters have demonstrated the same damage-assessment philosophy as the Black Knight and if you don’t get that reference to a Monty Python movie, here you go:
The comparison holds up if you think about Trump Supporters after the 2020 election as legless, armless lunatics in the middle of a bridge screaming insults at people who didn’t listen to them, but those lunatics are right back at it in 2024 and according to The Economist (in a poll updated four minutes before I wrote this and it’s 4:45 AM which makes me wonder what over-caffeinated pollster is up at this insane hour) Donald Trump is slightly ahead in the polls.
But take that for what it’s worth because polls have a long and rich history of getting things wrong and on some overly-memorable occasions, so do I.
Like when Trump bragged that being a celebrity allowed him to grab women by the vagina without consequence, I was totally convinced there was absolutely no freaking way you could boast about sexually assaulting women and get elected president.
But Trump’s supporters proved me wrong and if they’ll vote for a guy who thinks it’s cool to grab women’s crotches as an introductory move and then boast about it to another knucklehead, 34 counts of falsifying business records isn’t going to faze them.
So What Now?
Assuming what I read wasn’t fake news, you can be a convicted felon and still run for president because the only requirements are:
1. Being at least 35 years old.
2. Being a natural born citizen.
3. Being a U.S. resident for at least 14 years.
So Trump can run for president, but being a Florida resident he might not be able to vote for himself because Florida bans felons from voting until they serve their full sentence and any supervised release, but I don’t think that’s going to be an issue because the judge is never-ever-never going to sentence Donald Trump to jail time.
And you can take that prediction to the bank, just like my previous prediction that you can’t put a Vulcan Nerve Pinch on strange women’s vaginas and still get elected president, along with my incredibly accurate 2010 forecast that the internet was a fad which would soon pass and eventually we’d all store our unused laptop computers down in our basement right next to the Hula Hoops and Duncan Yo-Yos we won’t throw away because you never know when some batshit crazy person will want to buy them on E-Bay.
(Hey, it could happen and if you need a full set of Ninja Turtle action figures, direct message me on Facebook and I can hook you up.)
But it turns out the Florida law defers to whichever state you get convicted in and I’m under the impression that in New York you can be a felon and still get elected mayor, lead the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and play point guard for the New York Knicks because as near as I can tell New York City is governed by the same power structure featured in the latest Mad Max movie.
Hey, I’m Not The Only One With Bad Predictions
While reading a wide variety of Trump’s Now A Felon articles over the past few days I came across one by an incredibly naïve woman who said this jury decision proved Trump isn’t above the law, which made me think:
“Oh, yeah? Wait until Trump appeals the decision and finds a court with ripe bananas for backbones that will overturn his convictions because they don’t want Trump supporters showing up at their house and screaming incoherent insults from their front lawns at 4:45 AM when any sane person should be home updating polls or writing essays about the American justice system.”
And just to prove political naivety is not gender-based; some guy wrote an article that said the trial kept a “bedrock American ideal alive” because even though he was an ex-president, Trump had finally been held accountable by a jury of his peers and to that I reply:
“Let me know when Trump actually pays a serious fine or does jail time.”
Plenty of journalists said the same stuff about not being above the law and finally being held accountable when a jury gave E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million and near as I can tell that didn’t change Trump’s behavior one bit.
American History conclusively proves you can have just as much justice as you can afford and for most of us if we got convicted of jay walking we’d have to accept it and learn to play the harmonica to pass time in jail, finally get around to reading Moby Dick and, if at all possible, try to enjoy or at least endure unrequested sex involving guys named Bubba.
If most of us got fined $9,000 for violating a gag order we’d have to shut the fuck up, but Trump can afford to go right back out and refer to Michael Cohen as a “sleaze bag” which he did right after getting convicted.
And if you’re rich and can afford the legal bills you can just keep appealing and appealing your case and avoiding consequences and if you think someone is actually going to get serious about putting you in jail, move to Paris and sublet an apartment from Roman Polanski.
In The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.”
Yeah, they rarely go to prison.
An Interesting and Cynical Point About Hush Money
An article on the Forbes website entitled (and I didn’t make this up) “If You Pay Hush Money, You May Not Be Able To Deduct It On Your Taxes” explains that settling out of court with whomever you fucked over and requiring them not to comment on that settlement is also hush money because you’re paying someone to keep quiet about all the BS you pulled.
So people and companies are paying hush money all the time, we just don’t call it that.
Turns out, businesses can pay hush money and it’s tax deductible, but individuals who pay hush money have to show it was related to their business if they want a tax write-off. Hush money for sexual harassment or sexual abuse fall into a special category and here’s what Forbes has to say about that:
These restrictions only apply if confidentiality is required. So, if you just pay hush money but do not expressly call for nondisclosure or confidentiality, companies can still write it off. Some companies settle without requiring confidentiality to get around the new rules.
So let’s say you treated somebody like crap and settle on a million dollars to make them shut up and go away, but you’d really like to deduct that million dollars from your taxes. The Forbes article suggests maybe it’s possible to say only $50,000 of that $1 million was for sexual harassment (which the company can’t write off) and say the other $950,000 was for “other employment claims” which the company can write off.
If you handle it right and listen to accountants and lawyers with the same moral instincts as the average barracuda, you can sexually abuse an employee and write off most of any financial penalty, which lets us know the kind of thing rich people talk about on the 17th hole at Pebble Beach.
And just in case you have yet to figure out that we have legal system written by lawyers for lawyers, it also turns out if you’re the victim being paid the money you have to pay taxes on it (unless the payment was for physical injuries or sickness) and in some cases you have to pay taxes on 100 percent of the money even though your lawyer siphoned off a bunch of it in legal fees first.
Jesus Christ on a pogo stick.
(And if you want one of those I might have one in my basement right next to those Ninja Turtle actions dolls.)
In A Depressing Conclusion
As the cartoon at the top of this post indicates, I believe the Trump Campaign can and will use his convictions as fuel and according to a headline in the Kansas City Star he’s already raised $38.4 million off becoming the first ex-president/felon and Trump’s life is continuing along pretty much the same lines as it was before he got convicted except he’s got something new to whine about.
So when some naïve person says Trump’s convictions prove the system works, I’d agree: the system works for the rich just as intended…
But the system was never designed to work for the rest of us.
Another 24 "carrot" JEWEL, Gem? Thank You, Mr. Judge. My shot here, Justice= Just Us Poor Folks GO TO JAIL.
OMG that Monty Python/Trump Supporters comparison is hilarious.