Trump appearance demonstrates appeal and controversy | GARY COSBY JR.

Former President Donald Trump’s Aug. 4 appearance at the Alabama Republican Party’s Summer Dinner, a fundraiser for the Alabama GOP in Montgomery, set records for the party.

The event raised more than $1 million and it packed out the Renaissance Hotel and Conference Center, an area about the size of a football field. There is no doubt Trump is very popular in Alabama, and he made certain to show his appreciation to the Alabama GOP members in attendance, even promising to six-lane Interstate 65 throughout its entire length if he wins back the presidency.

The speech was his first major address after being arraigned on federal charges that are among the most serious yet leveled. Those charges are related directly to Trump’s failed attempt to steal the election and the resulting Jan. 6 riot, or insurrection, or whatever you wish to call it, resulting in several deaths.

From other members of the ALGOP who spoke during the event, a common refrain was voiced before Trump made his keynote speech and that was that the former president was being persecuted and was under attack. Frankly, that’s a little hard to swallow. Actually, it is equivalent to choking. The audience did not react very much to this refrain until Trump made his appearance. His personal denials of the charges were met with ovations.

The public response to Trump is incongruous, not simply in Alabama but across the country where polls show he is leading Ron DeSantis by a wide margin and all other Republican candidates by a huge margin. Trump is facing 91 criminal charges, many of them federal, with a new 13 count indictment announced in Georgia for election tampering in that state this week.

While Trump continued to infer that the election was rigged and stolen from him by Joe Biden, he has begun claiming that he is being prosecuted for exercising his First Amendment rights. That’s a new tactic and not one likely to gain much legal traction.

What Trump did, especially in inciting the riot on Jan. 6, was tantamount to crying fire in a crowded theater where there was no fire and then standing by and watching as people got trampled. I suppose one might have the right to do that, but one must also face and bear the responsibility for what was said and done. Clearly, the biblical truth ― by your words you are justified and by your words you are condemned ― comes into play with Trump as he tends to be his own worst enemy, saying and doing things publicly that will be hard to refute in a court of law.

Trump did say something I agree with in principle. He said the Justice Department could have filed these charges at any time in the past but waited until now to file them after seeing his popularity. I agree that he should have been arrested immediately after inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection. I do not agree that the charges have come as a result of his popularity with Republican voters.

In order to make a proper case, thorough investigations must be conducted, especially on a case as high-profile as this one. Federal prosecutors have an astronomically high success rate, meaning they do not normally file charges they cannot prove in court. But there is another court in which Trump is being tried and that is the court of public opinion.

More: School is back in session: Now it's time to pray | GARY COSBY JR.

The presidential campaign is really an extended job interview, the ultimate court of public opinion. We the people of the United States are the interviewers and the candidates are the applicants. If you are sitting down with a prospective employee and begin looking at his criminal record, what do you think your response would be to a man who came in with all those felony indictments hanging over his head? Right, no employer in the country would hire such a man. In fact, no employer, upon seeing the application and doing a background check, would even offer him an interview.

A long time ago, I was a volunteer firefighter. When we rolled up on a fire, there were several things you could expect to see. Sometimes, the fire was out or there had been no fire, so there was no smoke showing. Other times, you pulled up and would find light smoke. Then there were those times you would see dark smoke rolling out of every crack, crevice, and hole on the building. Finally, some were fully involved with flames coming out all over the place.

Trump’s situation is like rolling up on a house that has smoke boiling out from every opening. There is no possibility there isn’t fire inside that is ready to erupt the moment oxygen gets to it. Any trial will supply that oxygen and the billowing smoke will quickly become a raging inferno.

Trump continually alleges that there is partisanship involved in the charges being filed, but it makes little to no difference. The Democrats did not light the fire that is causing all this heavy smoke. Trump did all that himself. The old adage, where there is smoke there is fire has never been more true.

Gary Cosby Jr. is the photo editor of The Tuscaloosa News. Readers can email him at gary.cosby@tuscaloosanews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Trump appearance demonstrates appeal and controversy | GARY COSBY JR.