Donald Trump is an enigma inside a riddle wrapped in 34 felony convictions, so it’s difficult to work out exactly where he goes from here. Conventional wisdom tells us the presidential campaign of a traitorous Putin sympathizer with this much legal baggage should officially be over, but this is Trump we’re talking about. The dude makes no apologies, has no shame, and continually respawns like a Grand Theft Auto character on a 24-hour killing rampage.
And since the Republican Party is now basically the Jonestown Cult without the complimentary beverages, few GOP luminaries—including elected officials—will dare gainsay him.
Indeed, in the wake of his conviction, the party of law and order is queuing up to kiss his arse in perpetuity. And Trump himself is trying to divert attention from his own crimes by claiming that New York—and the nation as a whole—is hopelessly steeped in lawlessness because Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is only paying attention to this one case.
(Actually, the crime wave that started under Trump has now ebbed, and crime as a whole is close to a 50-year low—except among former U.S. presidents, of course. Among that admittedly narrow cohort, it’s up approximately 100%.)
Ah, but now is not the time to be complacent. Trump’s goose might look cooked, but one thing we’ve all learned over the years is that no matter how grotesque and silly he might appear at any given moment, he keeps coming back. He’s sort of like Jason Voorhees that way. Or Infrastructure Week.
Indeed, we’ve seen this movie many times, and it’s always set us up for sequels. Which means we’re not done fighting this cancer—not by a long shot.
Here are 11 times it looked like the Trump train had—or should have—officially derailed, only for some weak-kneed enabler (I’m looking at you, Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell) to lift it back onto the tracks and send it on its merry way. (Note: This list is not chronological, and it’s by no means exhaustive.)
1. The “Access Hollywood” tape
For many, this was the first time it looked as though Trump was cooked for sure. You can’t gleefully admit to serial sexual assault and still be elected president, right? Right?! It’s over! Let’s spike the ball right here—on the 10-yard line. What could possibly go wrong now?
Ah, memories. As we now recall, this seismic October surprise was ultimately papered over with the infamous Jim Comey letter, and Trump was elected our 45th—and first future felon—president.
2. His campaign launch
Many forget that Trump’s campaign stumbled right out of the gate when he infamously declared that Mexican immigrants were criminals and rapists. The remarks were offensive (and false) enough to prompt NBC to sever ties with their star reality show host. Sadly, they weren’t quite offensive enough for Republican primary voters. Indeed, his remarks probably gave him an edge over his opponents, who were still relying on dog whistles as Trump was blithely blowing an airhorn.
3. Mocking a disabled reporter
There have been numerous instances involving Trump saying or doing something so beyond the pale, it felt like no one outside the fringiest of fringes could possibly still support him. And yet they did.
In November 2015, he cruelly mocked reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a condition that “can impact the function and range of motion of joints and can cause muscles to atrophy.”
It was the ugliest thing most longtime political observers had ever seen, and yet it somehow failed to dissuade millions of Republican primary voters, who proudly nominated him as the Republican presidential candidate in July of the following year.
4. Disrespecting Gold Star families and John McCain
In July 2015, Trump downplayed GOP Sen. John McCain’s military service, saying, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
Roughly a year later, he was disrespecting military families again (well, their lost loved ones were suckers and losers, right?). After Gold Star father Khizr Khan, whose son died in the line of duty in Iraq, spoke on Hillary Clinton’s behalf during the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Trump showed once again that he has the impulse control of an Arby’s grease fire.
In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Trump first claimed that, contrary to what Khan had said in his address, Trump actually had made sacrifices for his country by employing “thousands and thousands of people.”
Then he attacked Khan’s wife, Ghazala, saying, “If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably—maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me.”
Oh, boy! He won’t survive this one! He’s like a shark with three barrels stuck in him! It’s over! Right?
5. The Mueller probe
We all thought this investigation would enfeeble Trump beyond hope of recovery, didn’t we? And then Bill Barr happened.
After months of waiting for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to drop his report on Russian election interference, we did get some real answers about the Trump campaign’s extensive contacts with the Russians involved in ratfucking the 2016 presidential election—and we also discovered that Trump had gone out of his way to obstruct the investigation. But Barr furiously spun the report’s findings, and nothing much came of them.
Trump continued to claim his innocence, even after a later Senate investigation definitively proved collusion between Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and a Russian intelligence officer. But by that time the public had largely moved on.
6. Charlottesville
We all recall when Trump both-sidesed Nazis. Nazis! How the fuck can you both-sides Nazis?!
Well, Trump can—and he did.
“You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides,” Trump said in the wake of the violent white-ring Charlottesville protests.
Seriously, dude, these are NAZIS! World War II—and pretty much every war movie filmed in its wake—made very clear that these are the bad guys.
Ah, but Trump loves to move the Overton window, and sadly, Nazi apologia was not a bridge too far for the GOP.
7. Extorting Ukraine/first impeachment
You’d think withholding congressionally approved military funds meant to aid a democratic ally caught in a life-or-death struggle with a hostile authoritarian regime would be enough to get you impeached and convicted. Especially if you were doing it to compel that ally into digging up dirt on your likely future opponent.
You’d think.
Well, you’d be wrong, because … Republicans.
The Government Accountability Office determined that Trump had broken the law in withholding the funds, but that wasn’t nearly enough for the law-and-order party, which continued to pretend Trump was the most brutally persecuted—and unluckiest—human in history.
8. The Helsinki Surrender Summit
If you had any doubts about Trump’s lickspittle obeisance to Russian war criminal Vladimir Putin, they were put to rest after this sorry incident.
At a joint press conference with Putin in July 2018, Trump took the dictator’s word over the findings of our own intelligence agencies (who had determined Russia interfered in our elections).
“[Putin] just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be,” he said.
For once, Trump’s remarks actually seemed to scandalize stalwart Republicans. As The Associated Press wrote at the time, “The reaction back home was immediate and visceral, among fellow Republicans as well as usual Trump critics. ‘Shameful,’ ‘disgraceful,’ ‘weak,’ were a few of the comments. Makes the U.S. ‘look like a pushover,’ said GOP Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee.”
But, in the end, nothing really changed, as Republican spines dissolved faster than Lindsey Graham’s dignity at the Mar-a-Lago omelet bar.
9. Jan. 6 and the Second Impeachment
Okay, he’s really done now, right? Right?
Violently attempting to overthrow the government is so egregious, even Graham dropped the ocher abomination. (Sadly, a little more than a month later, he came groveling back.)
Unfortunately, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, while clearly upset by Trump’s outrageous attack on democracy, refused to back his conviction, preserving his eligibility for future office. And before the month was over, Rep. Kevin McCarthy—apparently assuming Trump was the ticket to a long and rewarding speakership—helped rehabilitate his image among the “fuck your feelings and our 245-year-old democracy crowd” by hurrying to Mar-a-Lago to sample every square inch of Trump boots.
Thanks, guys!
10. The E. Jean Carroll judgment
Yeah, Trump was found civilly liable for lying about sexually assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll in a department store. And, sure, he’s being forced to cough up $83 million. What of it?
Trump assured us Carroll wasn’t his type, and as we all know, Trump never lies. The fact that he later thought an old picture of her was a photo of his ex-wife Marla Maples is irrelevant, and definitely not something you should spend any time thinking about. Especially if you’re a Republican.
MAGA ‘24, baby!
11. Four—four!—felony cases … and 4 million Republican yawns
It might seem like a cop-out to shove all of these into one catchall category, but when you really think about it, one felony charge should have been enough. And yet Republicans were able to ignore 91 with unprecedented aplomb.
Besides, two of those four felony cases were related to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election and install himself as a dictator, and Republicans had already established that they don’t care about such picayune matters.
Also, who doesn’t steal box loads of highly sensitive government secrets and randomly stack them in a heavily trafficked ballroom at a country club? That’s what the U.S. is all about. If they can go after Trump for that, they can go after you for doing the same thing. Think about it. It’s just common sense.
And if it’s this easy to ignore 91 felony charges, ignoring 34 convictions should be a doddle, now shouldn’t it?
Of course, both President Joe Biden and Trump have stressed that the real verdict will come on Nov. 5. And they’re not wrong.
As we’ve clearly seen, we voters are the only ones who can put an end to this feral fuckery. No doubt y’all are happy about this verdict—I know I am—but there’s “happy” and then there’s “cosmically orgasmic.” We haven’t attained the latter yet—and we won’t until Trump is permanently consigned to the Walmart parking lot dumpster of history.
In other words, now is no time to get cocky. We need to run through the tape all the way through November—which means our work has just started.
We can all do something to help push Biden over the goal line, whether that involves donating or getting out the vote (phone-banking, door-knocking, postcard-writing, talking to friends, etc.). But the last thing we can be is complacent. We all remember how we felt when Clinton lost in 2016—it’s far too early to let our guard down. Too much is at stake.
So by all means, celebrate over the next couple of days, but then get back in the trenches and fight like your life depends on it. Because, you know, it very well might.
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Every day brings a new prognostication that is making President Joe Biden’s campaign operatives worry or freak out. Is Donald Trump running away with the election? No. Not even close.
