Guilty

I was driving to Walmart, hands gripping the steering wheel, Sirius tuned to MSNBC, when Ari Melber read off the first “Guilty.” You know the moment I’m talking about. We all do. With each of the following thirty-three guilty verdicts, I shouted, “Yes!” relief washing over me. When I arrived, I sat in the parking lot for a few minutes, windows and sunroof open, summer breeze rippling, happy tears springing to my eyes. I knew it was a weighty moment—a former United States president had been convicted of felonies for the first time in history. But, I also felt overcome with joy. Surely a convicted felon couldn’t be president? The nightmare was over. I texted my kids and husband, Trump is GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS!! I finished it with clapping emojis.

About half an hour later, while I was wandering the aisles of Walmart, my middle son, Joshua, replied, Can he still run?

At that point, I already knew the answer. My youngest, Aidan, had informed me, when I called him right after the verdict, that there is no law prohibiting a convicted felon from becoming president. “Eugene Debs ran for president from prison,” he shared. I had never even heard of Eugene Debs, but Aidan is much smarter than I am.

Aidan replied to Joshua’s question with one word…Yes.

Joshua’s reply—a crying SpongeBob image—perfectly encapsulated my feelings. I was relieved that justice was finally served after Trump has escaped consequences of his illegal activities for decades. I was relieved that after he called for the death penalty for the “Central Park Five” (with a full page ad, no less), he is now a felon and they are exonerated. I was relieved that after all the chants of “Lock her up,” he is the one awaiting sentencing, not Hillary Clinton. But…I also knew that this verdict will likely make no difference at all in the presidential election, and that is disheartening, to say the least. Infuriating is a more apt descriptor.

It’s a bit hard to wrap my brain around the fact that Donald Trump can’t hold public office in New York nor Florida, but he can become president. As the law stands, he can’t even vote for himself in Florida, but they will almost certainly defer to New York state, which as of 2021 restored the right to vote to felons. He can’t hold a laundry list of positions as a convicted felon, but president isn’t one of them, even though his guilty verdict means that without a doubt he illegally influenced the 2016 election in his favor. Since Trump was a game show host, let’s put it this way—if it was proven that a contestant on a game show cheated to win, would that contestant be invited back for the champions round? Never—the contestant would be stripped of the title and relegated to the dustbin of game show history. That’s what should happen with Trump, and it is astonishing that no one in the GOP has even considered it…or maybe they have and just don’t care.

I also do not understand the pure ignorance that causes MAGA world to insist that Biden is behind this. It’s a New York state conviction, and even if it wasn’t, there is a separation of the executive and the judicial branch—maybe not so much when Trump was president (it seems that he weaponized the judicial branch against Michael Cohen), but now there is. I mean…would Hunter Biden be standing trial if his father unfairly wielded power over the justice system? No, he wouldn’t. This all harkens back to the old Nazi adage, “Accuse others of that which you’re guilty,” widely attributed to Joseph Goebbels. I may be paraphrasing, because there are so many different versions of this quote, it’s hard to discern which one was the original, but they all have the same meaning—before your actions come to light, accuse your rival of the same thing. The cries of a rigged election and cheating were merely deflections meant to divert attention from what the Trump campaign was actually doing…cheating, pure and simple.

By making hush money payments and hiding them; by weaponizing the National Enquirer to not only catch and kill stories, but to also peddle false stories about Hillary and Bill Clinton and push stories that elevated Donald Trump; he preyed on the most gullible swath of voters. He used stupidity to his advantage and cheated by not allowing voters to make an informed decision. Yes, those same voters heard the Access Hollywood tape and dismissed it as “locker room talk,” but the margin was so slim in his win, that his actions almost certainly helped hand him the presidency. It is mind-boggling that this person is allowed to run for president again.

It’s even more mind-boggling that the hordes of morons poured money into his coffers and think of him as some sort of martyr, a political prisoner on par with the likes of Alexei Navalny. Biden is not Putin. We are not Russia; we are not a third-world country…but if you spend even a few moments X (formerly Twitter), you’d think Trump was a martyr. You’d think Biden persecutedhim and not that New York state prosecuted him for a very valid reason—crimes he committed. A jury of his peers, regular New Yorkers—watchers of Fox News and users of Truth Social among them—found him guilty. He received a fair trial and a fair verdict. He was not persecuted, simply prosecuted.

The worst are the elected officials—the GOP stars—who are screaming that this was unfair, that Trump is targeted, that there should be an uprising. They know better. Yale-educated Josh Hawley was screaming on X that it was “…one of the most dangerous abuses of the political process…” Eric Schmitt called it, “…unprecedented lawfare.” This is disingenuous and extremely dangerous. Their followers are eating it up; with “Civil War” trending on X. Trump’s employing of stochastic terrorism is now being emulated by his minions in the GOP. This will not end well. And it seems Democrats are now afraid to touch Trump’s convictions with a ten foot pole, worried that they will be accused of using it for political gain. They should be the ones screaming from the rooftops that Trump is dangerous, not the other way around…

If we somehow make it out of this election with our democracy still intact—which will only happen with a Biden win—laws need to be changed. A convicted felon should not be allowed to hold the most important job in the country; a convicted felon should not be commander-in-chief, when most convicted felons cannot even join the military. Jobs run background checks for a reason, and many felons are automatically out of the running for a multitude of positions—leader of the free world should be one of those.