Trump: Unpresidented

THERE’VE always been salacious reports in the ether that Donald Trump never expected to win in 2016. Accounts from backstage of the Trump show tell of hushed horror on the night the results were declared. Melania Trump reportedly looked like she’d seen a ghost – her own. Here was the proverbial dog that had chased the car, caught it and had no idea what to do with it.

Ever the hybrid ringmaster and clown, there was no political strategy buttressing the Trump 2016 campaign – he was just busy doing Trump, interrupting people’s expertise and experience with his confidence. There wasn’t even a victory speech prepared for that night. There are further testimonies of his having scheduled a trip to Scotland to seek the solace of his fairways and escape any possible gloat from his detested adversary Hilary Clinton. This was all brand-building theatrics gone off the rails.

If Trump and Co neither expected nor wanted to win in 2016, his attitude has likely changed given the legal jeopardy encircling him. He may indeed be seeking some perceived shelter in the White House from the storm of serious legal consequences already at his throat.

There’s the New York State fraud case in which he has been fined close to US$400 million for undervaluing his properties to trim his tax bill. In May of last year, a jury found that the former president had sexually assaulted and defamed a writer. She was awarded US$5 million; peanuts compared to the US$83 million judgement against Trump in another similar defamation case. These and other civil matters, while not an insignificant nuisance to the tycoon, aren’t out of the norm for a man who has been fending off litigation his whole life.

Far more serious are the election subversion matters, some of which threaten the Home Alone star with imprisonment. Trump faces multiple counts in a multi-defendant conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election – a long campaign aptly described as a paper coup, culminating in an actual insurrection at the US Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.

Notwithstanding these considerable legal troubles, Trump is the presumptive nominee of the GOP for the presidential election later this year. He trounced his morally amoebic challengers, Florida governor Ron De Santis and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, to rise to the surface of the pond.

Trump’s presidency was one of firsts and worsts. Yet he’s already given a foreshadowing of the sequel and it’s worrying. In a fevered vision of revenge, he vows to use the office to target political opponents, specifically the “Biden crime family.”

If re-elected, Trump would almost certainly appoint a special prosecutor to dismiss cases hanging above his head, if they aren’t adjudicated before the election date – which remains up in the air. Indeed, there’s strong legal opinion that there is no constitutional impediment to the be-leaguered former president ascending to office if convicted of the crimes of which he is accused.

Already at the state level, Trump has won a minor victory. It was passionately argued in actions filed to keep him off the ballot in several states that the presumptive nominee is ineligible, given allegations of election interference and incitement to riot on January 6. Currently, there’s no bar

to Trump appearing on the ballot in states where his eligibility was vigorously contested.

If any (or all) of this seems impossible, Trump is nothing if not the master of the impossible, having endured legal challenges, reputational excoriation and bankruptcies that would have deleted any other mere mortal from the public consciousness. This accidental president has transcended the confines of earthly flesh to become an intangible force – an idea.

While the fog of fervour has lifted for some MAGA devotees, Trumpism endures among a supporter base who either overlooks Trump’s transgressions or still believes in the stolen election narrative, notwithstanding incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.

In the wake of the armed insurrection performed in the heart of democracy in the US, the Republican Party balked openly at the violation of the Constitution. That GOP revulsion had a shorter shelf life than milk in the midday sun. Conservatives who initially distanced themselves from Trump’s extremism have softened substantially. As such, the former president’s hold over the Republican Party seems unbreakable.

Trump’s prospects for victory in the 2024 election shouldn’t be discounted in the manner they were in 2016. If anything, The Donald has mastered the art of the comeback, even if he hasn’t wrapped his head around the role of president or probity in public life.