Let’s Talk About Spoiled Rich Kids
You know the type.
One of the basic reasons Trump appealed one of his cases recently was because he claimed that as President, he had complete immunity. Of course, to anyone with half a brain, that’s just nonsense. There’s nothing, first of all, in the Constitution to indicate the Founders had any such thing in mind as they wrote the blueprint for our government.
In fact, the only reason anyone might have to even think that way is because of a DOJ memo written as guidance during the Nixon Administration regarding the possibility of indicting VP Agnew. (Which by the way, noted that there’s no prohibition to indicting a sitting VP, so “go ahead.”) In one single paragraph, that memo says as a sidebar that the President “should” not be arrested or indicted because “he’s busy being President,” so has no time for dealing with legal matters of a personal nature. Now in the intervening years, nobody has changed that memo, but frankly, with the ratification of the 25th Amendment and its procedures for temporarily replacing the President with the VP if the President is incapacitated, there’s no reason any longer to assume that office has any kind of immunity.
So, why does Trump think the law doesn’t apply to him?
It isn’t because he was President.
It’s because he’s a spoiled rich kid. At no time has Trump EVER spent so much as five minutes inside a jail cell. The only laws Trump has been convicted of for which he paid any price, he literally paid cash to make them go away — as with the New York case over stealing money from a charity he ran. Apparently that amount wasn’t enough to make him think he’d been actually been forced to “pay” the consequences for breaking the law. He just paid to make it go away — in his mind.
It’s been that way all of his life. Either he paid a nominal fine, or he paid lawyers to delay any lawsuits until his opponents couldn’t pay lawyers anymore and went away to face bankruptcy. Hence his current tactics of delaying the criminal trials so he can be President and pardon himself.
“Yes,” I can hear you say, “but what about Georgia?”
So? He still thinks it’s just a state court, so it’s not important . He’ll just ignore it — he’ll be President, after all, so the law won’t apply to a dictator. Again, he’s managed this all his life. (Don’t get me started on why he never faced charges of theft of services for all the companies he caused to go bankrupt by not paying his bills, or why New York never went after his ass for it.)
So how does a country deal with someone who thinks the law doesn’t apply to him?
Well, first let me make it clear that I am rabidly pissed at the judges who have allowed him to get away with his threats and social media posts inviting others to threaten and harass judges, court personnel, or prosecutors and their personnel. If anyone else had done any of that, they’d have spent the rest of the time between that and the trial date in jail. In fact, in the documents case in Florida, there are people right now who, after mishandling one single classified document, have been in prison for over five years and never saw a day out of jail between being arrested and imprisonment. Why did Trump get the chance to get bail in his case where he’s charged with taking HUNDREDS of such classified documents, when just one got those others jailed with NO BAIL allowed?
And don’t get me started on the judge whom everyone said held him to account in the E. Jean Carroll case. Not only did Trump storm out of the courtroom in the middle of the plaintiff’s lawyer’s closing arguments, before that, he had smart-mouthed BACK AT THE JUDGE when that judge admonished him for his smart-assed talking. Again, had anyone with less money done that, they’d have at least spent that night in the lockup.
Why didn’t Trump?
No damn wonder he thinks the law doesn’t apply to him, if not even a federal judge has the guts to jail his ass for threats and such against both him and his employees!
That is one complaint Trump has made that I completely agree with him on — we DO have a two-tier justice system if someone like Trump can threaten judges and their employees, and prosecutors and their employees, and even badmouth judges inside their courtrooms, and nobody bothers to toss his ass in the clink for so much as an hour.
Apparently, the law doesn't apply to him, if he can do all that, plus steal classified documents, and not spend a single minute behind bars.
If at some point, someone with a set of balls, or ovaries, or someone with backbone decides to actually hold him to account for his misbehaviors in a courtroom by putting his ass in jail overnight, then maybe he’ll get a taste of what he’s facing.
In fact, I’d bet that if one of those judges finally got tired of his antics and charged him with contempt of court and jailed him until his trial, Trump’s lawyers would break every standing land speed record getting to the courthouse to demand the trials start NOW! Not next week, not tomorrow — NOW! Trump would do that to get out from behind bars in, ahem, a New York minute.
Trump is the kind of guy whose attention is on today. He’d rather kick it on down the road where he can ignore it for a while, but if he can’t, he’ll fight it right then. Or, you know, just pay someone to make it disappear.
Kinda makes you wonder why he never got charged in New York for theft of services, huh? Who’d he pay then?
Look, my attitude here isn’t about politics. It’s about democracy and the rule of law. Either this country is a democracy based on the law and the idea that everyone is equal before that law and nobody stands above it, or the law means nothing, and we have no democracy.
I get it — minorities have faced this disparity for generations, and we white folks have ignored it. If they’re pissed about that, then by damn, we deserve every bit of contempt and anger they feel as a result. But just because that’s true doesn’t mean we can’t join hands with those minorities and fix the system for all and for good.
This is, after all, what progressives have been talking about for a while. Ask AOC. She’ll tell you, and I’d bet good money Bernie would too. The right wing is dead wrong about one thing. Progressives may be all about those “socialist” ideas, but there’s one thing progressives are also, and that’s firmly in support of democracy and the rule of law, which includes enforcement of said law. We don’t disagree one bit over the idea that our country is based on that. We just disagree with them over who should be treated in what ways as a result of being caught. They think whites should be treated better, and we disagree.
We for damn sure don’t think money should get you a get out of jail free card!
Damn spoiled rich kids.
