The Times They Are a-Changin’
In the year and a half since Donald Trump was booted from office, we’ve had to constantly hear about how he was somehow on track for getting right back into power in 2024, and that he now had us where he really wanted us. Of course that was never the case, and instead the facts and circumstances have always pointed to a hobbled and powerless Trump being on track for eventual indictment and prison. I’ve taken a lot of heat for having pointed this out over the past year and a half, because I was just about the only one who was willing to say it. But apparently we’re all now at a point where we’re finally allowed to say it.
The Daily Beast just ran with the headline “Trump will be indicted.” Good for them, it’s good to see. But whenever I’ve run headlines like that, the media and pundit class has generally mocked me for it. Sure, I’ve said that in the past without the benefit of a DOJ search warrant affidavit spelling it out so emphatically that a kindergartner would understand it. But then again, this DOJ classified document criminal probe into Trump has been public knowledge since early 2022. It’s not as if the prospect of Trump being indicted suddenly came out of nowhere when the Feds carried out that warrant two weeks ago.
The details were always up for debate as to how we would get here. Who among the multiple jurisdictions criminally investigating him would complete their work and indict Trump first? Which specific charges would form the basis of that first indictment? How long would it take before we got there? Those were always open questions. But all along, we’ve been on this trajectory where Trump was going to end up indicted somewhere, by someone, for something, and then after that he was going to get indicted in more places, by more people, for more things.
Donald Trump’s crime spree while he was in office was one thing. But the frantically enhanced crime spree that Trump embarked on after he lost reelection, in a go-for-broke attempt at remaining in office, made it a given that he was going to end up indicted six ways to Sunday. There was never an alternate trajectory where Trump was somehow magically going to be able to just shake it all off and gear up for another presidential run, as if nothing had happened. That was just the fictional narrative that the media and pundit class was using as filler while it waited for prosecutors to finally complete the long complex task of getting to the publicly visible part of their Trump criminal probes.
And so now we’re finally allowed to talk about the fact that Trump is going to be indicted, and the reality that he’s on track for prison. Good. It’s about time. But now that we’re all finally on the right page, can we have the past year and a half back, please? All that time wasted sitting around fretting and hang wringing, while the media insisted that Trump’s magic comeback was inevitable and there was nothing we could do to stop it, was time that we could have spent far more productively if the media hadn’t been holding us hostage with bullshit.
The good news is that, as fate would have it, everyone is finally figuring out that Donald Trump is toast, just as we’re heading into the most crucial part of the midterm elections. Trump is finished, but do you really want a bunch of mini-Trumps in control of the House of Representatives come January? We’ve got time to dive into the midterm races and help the most competitive Democratic candidates win. But we really do need to get to work. Today would be a good day to start.
