No, Clarence Thomas can’t magically save Donald Trump

It took Donald Trump long enough, but weeks after the Court of Appeals took the classified documents away from his pet judge and allowed the DOJ to resume building its indictment against him, Trump has finally figured out that he’s lost. We know this because Trump now finds himself reduced to trying a desperation move that he knows almost certainly won’t work for him, but he has to try it anyway.

That’s right, Trump is now appealing his classified documents scandal to the Supreme Court. Why didn’t Trump just do this right off the bat? Because he knows it’s of little value. The Supreme Court already made it very clear after the 2020 election that it has its own evil agenda, and it’s not interested in wasting its limited remaining political capital on trying to help soften Trump’s downfall. It’s just that Trump has literally no other options left, and when desperate people run out of real options, they resort to trying imaginary options.

Yet because Trump has appealed this ruling to Clarence Thomas, we’re seeing a ridiculous amount of doomsday hysteria from people who are absolutely convinced that Thomas can, by himself, somehow magically save Trump. That is – how can we put it? – not within a million miles of how anything works.

The explanation is a simple one: Clarence Thomas gets to vote once, not five times. That’s all there is to it. Thomas cannot, on his own, help Trump in any way. Thomas is going through the procedural motions that occur when something is appealed to the Supreme Court. But beyond that, there is literally nothing Thomas can do to help Trump. He can’t magically stall things. He can’t magically help Trump “run out of clock” or any of those silly defeatist catch phrases. There just isn’t anything for Thomas to do.

It takes four Supreme Court Justices to even decide to take up a case, and five to overturn a lower court ruling. And while there are that many corrupt scumbags on the Supreme Court, they’ve consistently shown no interest in helping Trump. Trump knows this too, or else he’d have gone running to the Supreme Court a lot earlier in this process. This isn’t something that Trump expects to help him, at all. It’s just that Trump’s life is now over, he’s completely out of real options, and this imaginary option is all he has left to try.

But because doomsday hysteria is great for ratings and retweets, we’re about to see a metric ton of doomsday hysteria shoveled at us in the coming days. None of it will be compatible with the facts, because it never is. We’ll hear, over and over, about how Thomas is somehow magically going to save Trump all by himself. It’ll be a repeat of the doomsday hysteria from December 2020, when the media and pundit class kept telling us that Brett Kavanaugh was somehow magically going to hand Trump a second term all by himself. But Kavanaugh didn’t get to vote five times then, and Thomas doesn’t get to vote five times now.

Donald Trump is finished. The DOJ has already clearly decided as much, and Trump doesn’t have some magic wand for saving himself. Minor delays or no minor delays, Trump is on his way to prison. There is no such thing as magically “running out the clock.” The DOJ does not change hands in the midterms. Even a Republican Congress would not have some magic wand for stopping the DOJ, no matter how many nonsensical tweets go viral claiming that it can somehow magically do so. There is literally nothing to save Trump at this point. Fretting over him is a waste of time.

Sitting around fretting over an imaginary Trump 2024 comeback is particularly offensive when you consider that even if that were a real thing, it wouldn’t be for another two years. Meanwhile we face the very real threat of the Republicans seizing control of Congress in just five weeks. And while Trump is toast no matter who wins the midterms, there are a litany of other things that would be an absolute disaster if the Republicans win the midterms.

In other words, it’s time for everyone to stop sitting around idly fretting over a completely powerless Donald Trump, and instead start actively putting in the work to help Democrats in competitive races win the midterms. Obsessing over Trump, when there’s midterm work to be done instead, is nothing short of negligence. Let’s get eyes on the prize and go put in the work to win the midterms. Trump’s downfall will play out of its own accord in the meantime.