TWGB: All Trump Wants for Christmas

 

Well, it's not hard to figure out what Trump wants for Christmas, since it's all been put into a filing available to the public: he wants immunity!  Some people might want their day in court and to be found innocent and to clear their good name. 

He would like to very much not have that conversation out loud if we can at all. His lawyers are claiming that everything he did while president counts as an official act (I guess they mean everything: official Tweets, official watching tv, official golfing, and probably official trips to the bathroom--since that also covers "document handling") and he wasn't convicted by the Senate at his impeachment, so if that was good enough for them, it's good enough for him. 

It's a fantasy. It starts out with a wonderful supposition: 

"During the 234 years from 1789 to 2023, no current or former president had ever been criminally prosecuted for official acts. That unbroken tradition died this year, and the historical fallout is tremendous," the Trump filing reads. "The indictment of President Trump threatens to launch cycles of recrimination and politically motivated prosecution that will plague our nation for many decades to come and stands likely to shatter the very bedrock of our republic—the confidence of American citizens in an independent judicial system."

We are to believe it would seem, that the officeholders from 1789 to January 20, 2017 may have been simply lousy with crime, but were not prosecuted due to...tradition?  And we are not invited to contemplate the fallout from a president being told that literally anything they do and label an "official act" is without legal consequence? And he's handing that same card to our current sitting president?

Lordy. I think Santa definitely puts one on the naughty list for this kind of jackassery. 

I don't expect consistency and logic from MAGAland, I truly don't. It doesn't escape me that that same people who jump into Twitter threads claiming "Hur hur hur, this isn't a democracy, it's a constitutional republic" also respond to the Colorado 14th Amendment decision with "But who cares about the Constitution? What about our democracy?" It doesn't faze me that Senators who let Trump go having honestly been RIGHT THERE when the Capitol was attacked claiming "It's a matter for the courts" are now thumbing their noses at the involvement of the courts now, and let's don't even start on TrumpWorld hypocrisy over states' rights and do they have them or what? Long ago I formulated my impression of Republican ethics: "If I always act in my own self-interest, there's never a conflict." 

Corollary: Any argument that benefits a Republican is a good argument. 

It stinks to high heaven (as, we are informed, does Trump) that Trump points the finger at the various jurisdictions in which he is facing legal woes, and claims that this is a Banana Republic!!! (it's not even an Aeropostale) that he is singled out like...any other person who could be accused of wrong-doing and subject to due process and still able to access the various rights defined under the law. It would actually be the case that the immunity he's looking for in this filing would truly be exactly that--a note that some people are above the law: a get out of jail free card.

That card exists in a board game. This is the history of our country we're talking about. It is not a game. In view of the decision of SCOTUS to punt to allow the lower court to take this one, my best hope is that the finding will be "No jackass, no one gets immunity like that" and the high court just lets it rest.