Courtesy of Bastrop Advertiser
April 7, 2022
By Bill McCann
A federal judge made big news on March 28 when he stated that former President Donald Trump “more likely than not” committed crimes when he tried to obstruct Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. The judge made the statement as part of a ruling in which he ordered one-time Trump adviser John Eastman to release numerous emails to a House committee investigating last year’s Capitol insurrection.
Unfortunately, the story got lost in the noise when actor Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock the previous night at the Academy Awards show after Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife. The slap reverberated in the news and on social media for days, shoving real news to the background.
We could attribute the slapping incident and its aftermath to being part of the dumbing down of America, where celebrity antics often grab more attention than the chicanery of people elected to run our governments. But there is much more to it, certainly in Trump’s case.
Over the past six years we have seen way too many news stories detailing Trump’s bad behavior, some of which multiple experts have argued may be crimes. We are exhausted from the stories. We have grown weary of reading about investigations that appear to go on forever or go nowhere.
The nonpartisan government watchdog, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, lists some 48 criminal offenses that Trump has been “credibly accused of committing” during his presidency or while campaigning for it. These include Trump’s attempts to impede the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election; his actions with his former lawyer Michael Cohen in paying off two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump (Cohen went to jail for it); Trump’s seeking help from the president of Ukraine to find dirt on a political rival in return for military assistance; his ripping up government records and removing boxes of documents – some of them classified – from the White House after losing the presidency; and his ongoing attempts to subvert the 2020 election, including suggesting that the Georgia secretary of state alter election results.
Yet to date Trump has not suffered the legal consequences of his actions. Trump once bragged that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters. It may be one thing he hasn’t lied about.
Not only has our justice system so far failed to hold “Teflon Don” accountable, most Republicans, including many in Congress, have protected and defended him. Senate Republicans let him off the hook twice after the House impeached him with reams of evidence of wrongdoing. Some House and Senate Republicans continue to echo his lies about being cheated out of the presidency. Polls show most Republicans continue to believe those lies.
Someone asked me recently why I keep harping about Trump when he’s no longer president. The question seemed naïve at best. As a former president, he makes news. We still deal with the consequences of his actions as president. He is toying with being president again. He holds rallies and raises money.
Meanwhile, Republican zealots like to talk about being tough on crime but are apparently OK with their man Trump and his associates thumbing their noses at the law and the Constitution. Either they think Trump is above the law, or they will follow him no matter what.
And what average citizens learn from all this is that if you are rich and famous or politically powerful you can get away with it. No wonder many jaded Americans, some of whom have faced firsthand the warped scales of unequal justice, would prefer a silly smackdown at the Academy Awards to real news.
McCann is a contributing columnist for the Advertiser. He is a retired journalist and may be reached at [email protected].
