As justice system comes for him, Donald Trump makes everyone look like partisan fools | Opinion

Every institution that justly tries to address the historic evil that is Donald Trump ends up looking foolish and partisan. I don’t know whether this is because Trump’s populism is so unique, or whether it is because our leaders are so feckless.

The latest case in point is the criminal justice system which will, for the first time, put a former president on trial this month in New York.

The crime alleged by an elected Democratic prosecutor? Trying to cover up a tryst Trump had while his wife was at home with a newborn babe. Now, jurors are supposed to believe it is a crime to do what hundreds of other politicians have done in various ways, sometimes with the collusion of the press, including presidents such as Dwight Eisenhower and Teddy, er, Jack Kennedy.

I know. I know, Trump’s approach to potential “bimbo eruptions” was to pay off his accuser, a move that probably flouts legal technicalities. And why not? Everything Trump does takes the typical awfulness of politicians to a new level.

Now Bill Clinton’s approach was to have his minions smear and shame his accusers with the famous “nuts and sluts” defense. I ask you, which is more evil: a straightforward payoff or a masterclass in the politics of personal destruction being unleashed on a person who is telling the truth?

So the uniquely evil politico Trump is going on trial April 15, not because he covered up an affair, but because he didn’t do it the right way. If we get a jury of Emily Post fans, maybe prosecutors will get an easy conviction. Maybe not, as New Yorkers are not known for their politesse.

If what Republican Newt Gingrich did — impeach a president for lying about an affair while conducting his very own affair — then, really, nothing Trump did is even on the same scale. From where I sit, on the small but resolute anti-Trump side of the conservative movement, this prosecution looks like little more than a joke despite the fact that one of Trump’s legal cronies has already done time for the crime.

The next trial Trump faces, maybe in July, will be for his decision to keep secret government documents after he left office in his famously secure Mar-a-Lago bathroom.

Mishandling government secrets is perhaps more common in Washington than the aforementioned extramarital cover-ups. You only have to go back to, well, to the guy who is currently in the White House, Joe Biden. While Trump will face a trial, Biden, who kept the secrets in his famously secure garage, will not. Why’s that? Well, according to the prosecutor, Biden is a bumbling, forgetful old fool whom a jury will feel sorry for. He can’t even remember when his son died or when his term as vice president started.

Establishment Washington will be on trial

Trump’s mistake — besides being compos mentis — is that he wasn’t sorry for doing what everybody else did. His last political opponent kept secrets on a server in a closet in her house even after she sent a memo to her subordinates about the dangers of using private email for public work and even after she fired one for doing the same thing. And really, why would he? A) Everyone does it and B) Trump’s evil.

So by the time the criminal justice system gets around to putting Trump on trial for something serious — like trying to steal a freaking election — he’ll have been through two farcical trials that will put all of establishment Washington on trial as much as they will Trump and it will be time for the 2024 presidential election or, worse, after, when Trump won’t be too far from the Oval where he can pardon himself and all of his co-conspirators, at least from the federal charges.

Even then, this serious branch of the Trump criminal trials has beclowned itself. You can’t make this stuff up.

The Democratic Georgia politico who poses the biggest criminal threat to Trump decided that as long as she was in charge of the world’s most important criminal trial she’d A) hire her questionably-qualified lover to run the show B) after maybe beginning the affair while he was semi-married, getting herself C) almost caught up in the family court legal wrangling and ended up D) testifying in another proceeding about the issue in which she probably lied. A lot.

If you care about convicting Trump for all the crimes that led to hundreds of other crimes on Jan. 6 as the Trumpists tried to steal the election, you have to laugh because otherwise, the only thing to do is cry.

The people in this mess who don’t look foolish and partisan are few and far between. As a result, Trump may laugh his way right back into the White House while America’s Founding Fathers and more than a few of the rest of us cry, too.

David Mastio, a former editor and columnist for USA Today, is a regional editor for The Center Square and a regular Star Opinion correspondent. Follow him on X: @DavidMastio