Voices: Avengers Assemble – it’s the Trump indictment gang

I’m no fan of the Republican Party, but I’m thankful that Fulton County DA Fani Willis is about to save it.

America works better when it has two semi-functioning political parties, rather than what we’ve had since 2016 — one traditional political party, and one dumpster full of racist raccoons worshipping at the feet of Donald Trump.

It’s not that we need complete unanimity on every issue, we just need our political response to tragedies like the wildfires in Hawaii to be a consensus on helping victims, without a sizable group of red-hatted mouth-breathers farting out conspiracy theories about space lasers and Hunter Biden’s laptop being what set them off. My country has never been the soberest voice in any given room, but as Trumpism has seeped into our bloodstream like sweaty hair dye oozing from Rudy Guilini’s brow, we’ve suddenly become the town drunk, toilet-tweeting our inchoate rage into the ether, unaffected by facts, reason, responsibility, or any of the other basic human things you’d find in any children’s book (if you were still allowed to read them, that is).

The smart Republicans understand that their emperor is naked, but with the very minor exception of Chris Christie, whose lungs are still scarred with the Covid that Trump spat on him during the 2020 debate prep, none have had the courage to cough up any real criticism of the man.

And this is why Fani Willis is the hero the Republican Party has been looking for.

Her sweeping RICO indictment of 19 co-conspirators has the potential to excise a sizable portion of the misshapen mole spreading across the nose of the Republican Party. In 98 bold-faced pages, she not only diagnoses the disease, she offers a cure, both for her country, but also for the party currently vilifying her.

The names on this indictment read like the credits of an under-viewed Battle of the Network Stars, except instead of Klinger from MASH and one of Suzanne Somers’s replacements from Three’s Company, we have the likes of traffic court lawyer Jenna Ellis and leopard-printed, Dr Pepper-enthusiast Sidney Powell. Imagine The Avengers with zero super powers and a carbon-monoxide leak on the set. Here are some of the highlights, such as they are:

Mark Meadows

The founder of the Freedom Caucus (the Orwellian-named collection of congresspeople who prefer wearing AR-15 lapel pins to actually helping their constituents), Meadows is one of a long line of Trumpists who think they’re smart enough to use Trumpsim for their own ends. Mark Meadows looked at the Chief of Staff position that had ground down Reince Priebus, John Kelly, and Mick Mulvany into the useless pencil nubs you find in your kid’s backpack at the end of the school year, and said, “Yeah, I’ll take that job!” Meadows, like a lot of traditional Republicans who readjusted their orbit around the Orange Gas Giant, made the mistake of confusing his cynicism for wisdom.

Sidney Powell

What can you say about Sidney Powell that hasn’t already been babbled out by a fanatical snake handler, delirious with venom, as he slowly expires on the floor? The woman behind the famous “release the Kraken” (and we’re STILL waiting, Sidney), Powell lives on Mars in the castle Dr Manhattan built in Watchmen and only comes to earth long enough to whisper lunacies so fanciful that even the most hardened members of Trump’s inner circle thought she was crazy.

Jenna Ellis

A former traffic court lawyer, Jenna has, in recent months, defected to team DeSantis, which is, of course, the equivalent of being rescued off the Titanic by the Hindenburg. Before that, though, she was a major voice on the election-denial team Trump put together, a truly MAGA combination of wine o’clock mom bromides, bible quotes, and a complete lack of any understanding whatsoever of constitutional law.

Rudy Giuliani

A man that a lot of Americans admired after 9/11, Rudy Giuliani has completely sold out his legacy in order to become a remora fish in a boxy suit, mindlessly devouring whatever crumbs of power Trump sloughs off for him. A frothing goblin man, Giuliani needed Trump to stay in power because that was the only way for the increasingly chaotic former mayor to keep any relevance whatsoever.

These and the other co-conspirators make up the core of Trumpism, which is best defined as a tossed-together summer salad of cynical ambition, desperation, incompetence, and moon-man insanity.

What Fani Willis has the chance to do here, then, is not just put Trump away, but to yank a large chunk of the dark tumor of Trumpsim out of the Republican Party.

If she’s successful, she’ll not only have won a victory for the rule of law and American principles, she’ll have done more than any other person alive to return some semblance of respectability back to the Republican Party.

20 years from now, if there’s still a thing called the Republican Party, they’ll have Fani Willis and this indictment to thank for their continued survival.

Jay Black is a comedian, writer and actor from New Jersey.