Trump’s Reckoning is Coming

The reckoning has begun. Buckle up, it’s going to be a wild, disconcerting ride because people like Trump never go down quietly. But down he is going.

The Daily is 100% reader supporter. We are devoted to diving deeper into news and current events to help build a more informed electorate to protect democracy. You can support us by becoming a subscriber.

Donald Trump has been wreaking havoc on this planet for his entire adult life. He’s been raping, pillaging, lying, conning, cheating and disparaging innocent victims for much of that time. Trump brought his trademark chaotic strife and petty obsession with revenge into the White House after that fateful 2016 election and we all dealt with the consequences.

When he lost the 2020 election, Trump chose violence, division and criminality instead of acceptance of the will of the people. This alone should have been disqualifying, but his party has instead ceded all power to him, even letting his family run the RNC.

For nine long years, the United States has been subjected to Trump’s dysfunctional personality issues and his dark authoritarianism combined the power of a president and ex-president who doesn’t respect Constitutional limits on his authority or even basic democracy.

To say this has been a challenging time is an understatement.

Donald Trump has the Plutonian energy of a less vigorous Hitler, and he has tried and is still trying to become the dictator of this country. He has gotten a soul-crushing amount of help from corporate media, the courts, elected Representatives and Senators, a corrupt administration, the Heritage Foundation plotting Trump’s Project 2025, his own party, and a populace so uninformed about basic policy that they’ve willingly sucked his Kool-Aid while emptying their slim wallets for him.

But it’s also true that this person’s best days are behind him. The reckoning has begun.

DANGER AHEAD

The journey forward will be fraught with danger.

For starters, the fact that our corrupt Supreme Court is actually even hearing a case claiming a president (TRUMP) has immunity for military coups and assassinations is outlandish and only speaks to the absolute failure of their own alleged “ethics” rules.

Trump’s lawyer argued that assassination could be an official act of a president. This is what the Supreme Court is entertaining.

Justice Sotomayor asked Trump’s lawyer on Thursday if a president says a rival is corrupt and orders their assassination, "is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?"

To which Trump’s lawyer responded, "It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act."

You can perhaps see why they are loath to grant this exact authority to a president right now, while a Democrat is in office.

It’s also telling that they are waiting untold amount of time to rule, which suggests that maybe they don’t want to grant immunity for a military coup right now; perhaps it would better serve the agenda of the majority conservatives on the court to give despot powers to a president when the president is no longer a Democrat. Or maybe they’re just cowardly punters who, like everyone else in their party, lack the courage to stand up to Donald Trump and say no to their overly indulged toddler.

Rep.Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said on MSNBC Thursday, "It can't be in our system that a president who tried to overturn the government to stay in power will not be tried before the next election. This is really outrageous."

Yes, it is.

NO IMMUNITY UNLESS SCOTUS CREATES IT

Meanwhile, an attorney for Special Counsel Jack Smith, Michael Dreeben, said yesterday that there is no immunity that is in the constitution unless this court creates it today:

I take issue, Mr. Chief Justice, with the idea of taking away immunity. There is no immunity that is in the Constitution unless this court creates it today.

There certainly is no textual immunity. We do not submit that that's the end of the story. United States versus Nixon wasn't a textually based case. Neither was Nixon versus Fitzgerald. We endorse both of those holdings.

But what is important is that no public official has ever had the kind of absolute criminal immunity that my friends speaks of even with respect to the speech or Debate Clause. It's very narrow. It's focused on legislative acts. It's not focused on everything that a congressman does. And it responds to a very specific historical circumstance that basically involves the two other branches, potentially harassing legislators and preventing them from doing their jobs. That's why it ended up in the Constitution.

Nothing like that ended up in, in the Constitution for the presidents and that's because one of the chief concerns of the framers was the risk of presidential misconduct. They labored over this.

They adopted an impeachment structure that separated removal from office as a political remedy from criminal prosecution. This departed from the British model, the British model was you get impeached and criminally prosecuted and convicted in the same proceeding? the framers did not want that. They wanted a political remedy in case a president was engaging in conduct that endangered the nation, He could be removed. He can't be prosecuted while he's a sitting president. that's been the long-standing Justice Department position.

The fact that Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginny was involved in trying to overturn the 2020 election for Donald Trump, did not recuse himself from the presidential (Trump) immunity case tells you all you need to know about this court’s legitimacy.

Justice Kagan said correctly on Thursday, “The framers did not put an immunity clause into the Constitution. They knew how to; there were immunity clauses in some state constitutions. They didn’t provide immunity to the president. And — not so surprising — they were reacting against a monarch who claimed to be above the law. Wasn’t the whole point that the president was not a monarch and the president was not supposed to be above the law?”

Prepare for anything with this conservative majority court.

ELECTION INTERFERENCE

It should be noted that the absurd issue of presidential immunity (for Trump) was being heard on the very same day as Donald Trump sat in a Manhattan courthouse on trial for election interference, and as former publisher of the National Enquirer David Pecker was explaining how AMI helped rig the election for Trump.

Pecker worked to catch and kill stories for Donald Trump out of concern for the election, prosecutors allege.  Adam Klasfeld shared on Friday (my bold):

“Steinglass shows Pecker this provision of AMI's non-prosecution agreement.

"AMI's principal purpose into entering into the agreement was to suppress the model's story so as to prevent it from influencing the election."

Pecker agrees this was true.

Harry Litman summed up the testimony (my bold), “True purpose of McDougal agreement was to influence the election by acquiring life rights to her story and keeping it from being published.  That's not in agreement by design (to conceal).   He didn't make a "mistake" in suggesting it n/w/s not described in the agreement.”

So, an ex-president who is on trial accused of criminally influencing an election that made him “president” is in another courthouse arguing that because he was president, he has immunity from criminal actions.

SO ALL OF THIS SEEMS BAD BUT:

Some of this is beginning to look like the extinction burst of an exceptionally dangerous movement led by a man who is decompensating psychologically in front of our eyes, as he is forced to listen as others set narratives about him and his behavior without the ability to control via gaslighting at the same time.