XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, rec.arts.tv, talk.politics.misc   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns, alt.atheism   
   From: nowomr@protonmail.com   
      
   Trump will be jailed, the wheel has turned   
      
   It’s increasingly clear. Fox News cannot save him. His family and   
   surrogates cannot save him. And I think he knows it.   
      
      
   Published On 24 Aug 202324 Aug 2023   
   FILE - Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump   
   speaks to supporters during a visit to the Iowa State Fair, Saturday, Aug.   
   12, 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa. Trump’s response this week to his fourth   
   criminal indictment in five months follows a strategy he has used for   
   years against legal and political opponents: relentless attacks, often   
   infused with language that is either overtly racist or is coded in ways   
   that appeal to racists. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)   
   Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump speaks   
   to supporters during a visit to the Iowa State Fair, on Saturday, August   
   12, 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa [File: Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo]   
      
   Indulge me, dear readers.   
      
   You might consider the scene I am about to describe as implausible, even   
   fantastic. I share a healthy dose of your scepticism since its central   
   character – Donald Trump – is, as we know, incapable of stillness, let   
   alone introspection.   
   Keep reading   
   list of 4 items   
   list 1 of 4   
   Trump set to be first former US president to have mugshot taken   
   list 2 of 4   
   Trump to be booked in Georgia election case: Here’s what to expect   
   list 3 of 4   
   Five key takeaways from the first Republican US presidential debate   
   list 4 of 4   
   Trump lawyer Giuliani surrenders, booked in Georgia election case   
   end of list   
      
   Still, I think it is possible that when his familiar gallery of   
   sycophants, enablers and lawyers has left for the day and he is alone in   
   the quiet of night, the profundity of the legal peril Trump confronts has   
   to register if only for an instant or two.   
      
   Sitting in a gilded room at Mar-a-Lago, his painted-on, orange-hued tan   
   washed away, his trademark crisp blue suit, white shirt and long, red tie   
   abandoned, and holding a cell phone for lonely company, the troubling   
   truths that Trump keeps hard at bay are bound to intrude into his reality-   
   defying cocoon.   
      
   In those rare moments, an unsettling measure of doubt which may   
   occasionally tip into fear must grip Trump as the cascading list of   
   criminal charges grows with each indictment. I suspect that after a little   
   while, this simmering anxiety dissolves as quickly as it appears.   
      
   Then Trump returns to the comfort of his signature state of denial,   
   reassuring himself that he will, as always, escape the comeuppance served   
   to others beneath him who served him – loyally. They are expendable.   
   Unlike Mr President.   
      
   Trump’s abiding sense of invincibility is a by-product of his defining   
   authoritarian nature and preening, gangster-saturated hubris. But history   
   confirms that, one after another, once cocksure thugs – in and out of high   
   office – who remained confident that they were absolutely and permanently   
   beyond reach are belatedly and reluctantly obliged to face the harsh,   
   discordant music.   
      
   We have already had the pleasure of watching as Trump’s pedestrian crew of   
   co-conspirators – who tried to engineer a slate of fake electors in   
   Georgia after the 2020 presidential election – begin to be booked and have   
   their mug shots taken for embarrassing posterity. More are scheduled to   
   follow.   
      
   On Thursday afternoon, it will be Trump’s turn to endure that indignity.   
   What a delightful spectacle that is likely to be, coming only hours after   
   Trump’s agreeable tête-à-tête with a former Fox News faux journalist,   
   Tucker Carlson, who has grovelled his way back into a sexual predator’s   
   embrace.   
      
   Carlson’s pre-recorded burnishing of his indicted guest’s seething   
   megalomania and platforming of the predictable litany of discredited   
   accusations and mad conspiracy theories will, of course, satisfy Trump’s   
   junkie-like need for validation and attention. Yet, just as with all   
   fleeting highs, it will pass, replaced again by the blunt lows of   
   exposure, vulnerability and humiliation.   
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   Trump’s fourth appearance before a judge in the past four months is   
   further evidence that the bluster and bravado that have resonated with his   
   deplorable followers and silenced most of his servile Republican   
   opponents, will not intimidate, nor dissuade prosecutors from doing their   
   duty to hold Trump to serious account in Manhattan, Washington, DC, and   
   Atlanta courtrooms.   
      
   With a few notable exceptions, the Republican Party’s surrender to every   
   diseased, autocratic aspect of Trumpism was on dutiful display during the   
   two-hour “debate” among the grasping roster of also-rans on Wednesday   
   evening. Their faint prospects of becoming the nominee rest – whether they   
   are prepared to admit it or not – with the sometimes-sudden vagaries of   
   time and nature and, ironically, the success of prosecutors whose dogged   
   work they have almost universally and hysterically decried as an affront   
   to fairness and a retributive assault on the Republican Party.   
      
   Perhaps like you, my impatience with prosecutors had me questioning   
   whether Trump would ever face the reckoning he has earned for disgracing   
   the Constitution he swore to protect and defend in 2016 while placing a   
   hand on his childhood bible, as well as the bible Abraham Lincoln used at   
   his inauguration in 1861.   
      
   I was convinced that precedent and the persistent tenets of US   
   exceptionalism which made the presidency sacrosanct shielded Trump from   
   prosecution. Happily, I was wrong – partly.   
      
   While I counted the chances that Trump would ultimately sit in the dock as   
   slim, I sensed that enlightened Americans were stirring in powerful   
   rebuttal to the cresting wave of ignorance, hate and evangelical lunacy   
   washing over them.   
      
   Slowly, the wheel began to turn. Belief began to emerge from resignation.   
   Courage began to trump cowardice. Action began to replace inaction.   
   Resistance, began, inch by inch, to move from rhetoric to reality.   
      
   These days, I believe the inconceivable is conceivable: Trump, I am more   
   than hopeful, will be jailed. Look at the number and breadth of the   
   charges set out with surgical precision in persuasive indictment after   
   persuasive indictment. Taken together, they catalogue a crime spree that   
   constitutes a “criminal enterprise” of breathtaking scope, with the intent   
   to silence his accusers, hoard a cache of sensitive documents, incite an   
   insurrection to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden as president,   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)