“As you wish…”
The trouble with being worked into a tizzy about politics is that you can often lose track of what point you were originally trying to make. For instance, a lot of folks on our side spent quite a bit of time insisting (often inaccurately or hyperbolically) that Donald Trump is getting “special treatment” in his criminal trials. “Anyone else would be locked up by now if they were saying the things Trump is saying,” they insist, even though that’s not the case.
In reality Trump has long tried to by abide by gag orders, for fear of getting locked up. Instead he says awful things that aren’t covered by the gag order, prompting folks on our side to inaccurately insist that he’s “getting away” with violating it – even though he’s not violating it.
But now that Trump’s gag orders have become very specific and constraining heading into his first criminal trial, Trump may not be able to control himself enough to avoid violating them. He seems to have figured this out, as he announced on social media this weekend that he would love to be locked up for violating his gag order.
This has created the very real possibility that Trump might indeed end up in jail before he’s even convicted. It’s also prompted a lot of the same people who were yelling “Oh no, Trump hasn’t been locked up, we’re all doomed” to instead start yelling “Oh no, if Trump is locked up, it’s going to play well with his base, we’re all doomed.”
Well wait a minute here. You can’t go from arguing that we’re doomed because Trump isn’t locked up, to arguing that we’re doomed if Trump is locked up. This is why I can’t take the doomsday types on our side seriously; they’re always so worked up and spun around that they never even seem to know what position they’re trying to take.
For starters, we’re not currently doomed. Look around. Do we look doomed to you? Look at how bad of a position Trump and the Republican Party are in. If one side is winning in politics at any give time and the other side is losing, Trump and the Republicans are definitely losing, which means by definition that we’re winning. Yes, this is what winning looks like.
Nor are we going to be doomed if Trump does get locked up. For one thing, why would we suddenly be taking anything Trump says at face value? He’s suggesting that it’ll be a victory for him if he’s locked up, so it has to be true? Since when does that man ever tell the truth? If he’s posting about how he wants to be locked up, it means that 1) he thinks he’s about to get locked up, and 2) he’s scared to death of getting locked up.
If Trump gets himself thrown in the slammer before he’s even convicted, how’s that supposed to help him? The only people who would see that as a plus are the people in his core base, and they’re already voting for him anyway (and if they want to get violent over it, they can join their January 6th pals in federal prison). Most potential Trump voters (and potential Trump donors) would see Trump as less viable if he’s behind bars. That’s not just my take; polling overwhelmingly shows it.
So what should we be rooting for? It doesn’t much matter. If Trump decides to keep violating his gag order in such a manner that anyone else would be locked up before conviction, then the judge should (and absolutely will) lock Trump up. And if Trump bites his tongue through the end of the trial, he’ll be convicted, and then he’ll end up in prison anyway.
With regard to jail, there’s no scenario where Trump wins, and no scenario where we lose. The judge will handle Trump just like any other defendant. So if Trump really does want to take the kinds of actions that’ll get him locked up before or during the trial, that’s fine. In such case the judge will simply say “As you wish.”
