L. Ian MacDonald

March 31, 2023

Perhaps the funniest comment on Donald Trump paying $130,000 hush money to Stormy Daniels weeks before winning the 2016 US presidency was the porn star’s  remark two years ago that having sex with him “was the worst 90 seconds of my life.”

That’s a keeper, and so is the Manhattan district attorney bringing criminal charges against him after a grand jury returned an indictment on Thursday afternoon.

Worse than being defeated and discredited, Trump is now looking at being disgraced.   Already the first former American president ever to face criminal charges, he actually risks being sent to jail if tried and convicted on charges of tax evasion, for deducting the hush money as a business expense in a 2016 tax return filed after he became the 45th president of the United States of America.

All things considered, he would likely be better off to cop a plea, and avoid being taken away in handcuffs.

As it stands, he has been asked by the DA’s office to surrender next Tuesday for arraignment before a judge. But first, Trump is treating his followers and the world at large to the usual Trumpian drivel and lies on his social media accounts.

He deemed it “political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history.”

Actually, no. The worst example of that was his endorsement and incitement of the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, a day—as Franklin D. Roosevelt famously declared to Congress after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor—“that will live in infamy.”

On that recent infamous day, thousands of protesters prevented Congress from ratifying the election of Joe Biden as president, which he won in both the Electoral College as well as the popular vote. One police officer died in that criminal assault, for which Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives one week before leaving office on January 20. It was the second time he was impeached — the first president ever to be impeached twice. That he avoided being convicted and removed from office by the Republican majority in the Senate is a historical footnote.

If he goes to trial — and trials are televised in the state of New York —Trump will have to sit through the testimony of Stormy Daniels as to how she received the 130 grand in hush money, to say nothing of Trump apparently being a lousy lover.

Michael Cohen, the long time Trump lawyer who pleaded guilty in 2018 to making the payoff to her, said the money came from the Trump Organization real estate account. And Trump allegedly refunded himself in a tax return filed during his presidency.  Which could be a criminal matter in itself — declaring the buying her silence as a business or campaign expense. Cohen has already testified before the grand jury, and would evidently be called to do so publicly in a trial.

No matter what happens in the New York court in the next few months, this may not even be the worst of it for Trump. Other investigations are ongoing. In Georgia, an inquiry continues as to whether he tried to have his loss of the state reversed in a crooked recount. He urged the state’s chief electoral official to find enough votes for him to win. Evidently, it’s on tape.

And a federal inquiry continues as to whether Trump illegally removed secret documents from the White House, storing them at Mar-a-Lago, his luxurious residence in Palm Beach.

Trump’s self-absorption may not be criminal in the end, but it is clearly historic. As for his political legacy, he will be remembered as the American president who courted the favour of dictators Putin in Moscow and Xi in Beijing. So much for his leadership of the US on the world stage. As for its relationship with the next-door neighbour, he proved to be Canada’s worst friend in the White House in the last 100 years. Whenever Justin Trudeau does leave politics, he should be named a Companion of the Order of Canada, just for the nonsense he put up with from Trump. The low moment was the 2018 G7 Summit in Charlevoix when Trump, upon leaving the meeting early after refusing to sign the communiqué, called the host “very dishonest and weak” in an interview aboard Air Force One bound for Asia. The next day he tweeted: “Fair Trade is now to be called Free Trade if it is not reciprocal.” In a follow-up tweet he wrote: “Then Justin acts hurt when called out.”

That was finally too much for Chrystia Freeland, who had held her tongue as foreign minister while ably negotiating NAFTA 2.0 with the US. “Canada does not conduct its diplomacy through ad hominem attacks when it comes to a close ally.”

Worst of all Trump’s historic misbehaviour, on January 6, 2021, he deliberately put the democratic process in jeopardy in the most powerful democracy the world has ever known. That is the crime of which, after the saturation coverage and commentary of a televised trial, he would probably be convicted at least in the court of public opinion.

If he is found guilty, he could be led away in handcuffs.

And the question is, should he go to prison, whether he would then lose the protection of the US Secret Service. Would they be expected to look out for his safety in jail?

Perhaps he shouldn’t be jailed, even if convicted. But he should be condemned by history. And shunned by society.

L. Ian MacDonald is Editor and Publisher of Policy Magazine.