AS OF THE writing of this article, Donald Trump was found guilty by a US court of paying a prostitute through his lawyer.
I don’t care to know the details of the case because it is stupid. The New York court could have charged him with something more serious but they decided to go with that, which made them look stupid in my opinion.
American legal and political experts believe that the case will be dropped by state and supreme courts, but the results are ultimately irrelevant.
What matters is that Trump’s case was driven by political motives, not justice. His enemies were so desperate to destroy him that they used the flimsiest excuses to hurt him.
Imagine if President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. or his allies had done something similar to former president Rodrigo Duterte, it would be considered a politically-motivated attack. Republics that do this are in decline, and they are in decline because the rule of law, which is supposed to be the pillar of republicanism, has been replaced by sheer power politics.
Republics are designed to prevent that, and any Republic that cannot stop its government from engaging in power politics is well on its way to a dictatorship, an oligarchy or worse.
At this point, Trump’s value to his base comes from his symbolic defiance to the US government. Becoming President will be good for him, but Trump’s story was less about winning elections or making reforms (though he tried doing some of that) and more about revealing how the US government worked and the fissures in American society.
He revealed how courts, the media and electoral system actually worked and how they can be weaponized against those the US bureaucratic machinery consider their enemy.
I have no idea what will happen to Trump going forward. I don’t know if he’ll win or not. But he has become a martyr figure for his supporters both in the US and beyond. This case may harm him, but I think his enemies hurt themselves more./PN
