Donald Trump Needs To Go To Prison. It Might Be The Only Chance We Have.
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Never in my adulthood have I witnessed a more dire prognosis for a presidential election.
I’m watching with abject horror as former president and sentient pumpkin-colored boat shoe Donald Trump clears the path to coast back into the White House — and it doesn’t feel like there’s a thing we can do about it.
Mirroring his unlikely victory in 2016, Trump is toppling his field of competitors one by one. Tim Scott bounced in November and channeled his inner Stephen from “Django Unchained” to endorse him a couple weeks ago and Vivek Ramaswamy got out of his way in the middle of last month. But when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out of the Republican presidential primaries last week, that’s when I knew things had gotten real.
Real, real.
Mind you, I didn’t want DeSantis anywhere near the White House. But I figured he would’ve been Trump’s biggest threat had he not run a veritable shitshow of a campaign.
Now, the only other candidate standing in the way of Trump’s nomination is Nikki Haley, who recently made headlines for refusing to acknowledge how racist the U.S. is and whose campaign is currently being held together by chewed bubble gum and paper clips. Although Trump beat her in the New Hampshire primaries last month, Haley has vowed to continue duking it out.
Trump will very likely seal the nomination, and with every passing day I lose more optimism that President Joe Biden can repeat his 2020 win. No one I know is excited about Biden (or Kamala Harris, for that matter) and the polls reflect that. A similar lack of enthusiasm allowed Trump to steamroll over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Of course, the biggest difference between 2016 and 2024 is that Trump is going into the election with criminal cases hanging over his head longer than his comb-over. Embodying the apex of white male privilege, Trump is facing four criminal indictments in three jurisdictions and just under 100 felony charges, 34 of which are in connection with hush money paid to clear heels enthusiast Stormy Daniels. And yet, he still roams the streets as a free man.
I think the only chance we have to keep Trump away from the White House next January is to finally lock his ass up. However, that might not be legally enough.
Three of the indictments are not much of a threat to him right now, especially in Georgia, where Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis allegedly blocked her own blessings by way of poor judgment. The Department of Justice case, which focuses on Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, appears to be the best chance to have him thrown in the pokey.
The problem is that Trump can still run for president if convicted. Felons can’t even vote in certain states (and Trump might not even get to vote for himself) but there are no federal limitations for the presidency that acknowledge criminality. (As if the founders of the Constitution didn’t think to worry about such things.)
Individual states will attempt to keep him off the ballot, just as Colorado did when it attempted to leverage a 14th Amendment clause that states that anyone who took an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution but then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” is unable to hold state or federal office. But this seems like a reach. Plus, the highly conservative, Trump-leaning U.S. Supreme Court will be deciding on this, meaning it’ll likely fall flat.
(I’d like to pause this piece and ask you to close your eyes and reflect for a moment on how mind-boggling and absurd it would be for Trump, a man facing multiple criminal indictments because he illegally tried to remain in office, to get voted back in the White House. Done? OK, back to it.)
If Trump gets back into office before he’s imprisoned, he’ll have the power of the presidency on his back, which he’ll wield in its entirety to keep from behind bars. His federal cases could be booted by an attorney general he appoints — and it would be entirely legal.
There’s even a possibility, however slight, that he could be elected while in prison. If that happens, I’ll convert back to Christianity just so I can be first in line for the rapture.
Mind you, so much of this is without precedent that the powers that be won’t know how to deal with it until it happens. I’d like to believe that we wouldn’t become the laughingstock of the aliens – or the rest of the civilized world ― by electing a jailbird.
But we still have folks like the Republican voters at the Iowa caucus, the majority of whom believe that Biden wasn’t elected legitimately and that Trump would be fit to be president even if he were convicted. Which tells you everything you need to know about Republicans or Iowans.
Also, eight years ago at this moment, I didn’t think there was a pig’s chance in Kansas City, Kansas, that Trump would actually get elected. Now, anything can happen — and nothing would surprise me.
