This is going to be the worst month of Donald Trump’s life (so far)
History may one day look upon August as an inauspicious month for rogue presidents. It was in August of 1974 that Richard Nixon saw the proverbial handwriting on the wall and resigned the office of the presidency on that account. Almost fifty years later, August of 2023 could see two more separate and devastating indictments of Donald Trump.
But Nixon stepped deftly out of the way of his oncoming judicial juggernaut. Unlike Nixon, Trump has no office to resign. Trump will have to take the full impact of the coming legal consequences head on. He has nothing with which to negotiate, and his legal woes are only just beginning.
First, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has said that her investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia is concluded. “The work is accomplished,” she told WXIA over the weekend. “We’ve been working for two and half years. We’re ready to go.”
In a separate action, an indictment may also be coming soon in DOJ special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and into the January 6 Capitol riot. In effect, Trump’s life is like global warming. The news just keeps getting worse. His 71 felony counts are about to get some hefty company.
The irony in all this is Trump’s current legal woes are the direct result of his last month in office. All he had to do was play golf and stay out of trouble and he could have enjoyed a relatively trouble free retirement. Instead he had to brazenly and repeatedly break the law.
Had he left the top secret documents in the White House where they belonged, staged no January 6th insurrection and made no infamous phone calls to various Secretaries of State he would probably be home free. The E Jean Carroll case would still be there of course, but that case carries with it no jail time.
Nixon at least had the satisfaction of knowing that his troubles were caused by the actions of others from two years prior, the culmination of an investigation that came right to his doorstep. Sure he knew about it and he tried to cover it up, but it wasn’t exactly like he personally broke into DNC headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. It wasn’t Nixon on the other end of the walkie-talkie directing the burglary.
Trump’s fingerprints are all over his current troubles. They are all over the documents theft, all over the insurrection, all over the fake electors and the pressure he applied to Brad Raffensperger in a recorded phone call. Whatever deniability he may think he has is strictly implausible. And he has no one to blame but himself.
Being a narcissist, blaming others is all he has left. But blame comes with a price. People are starting to notice that Trump quickly has no use for others he once described as friends. The body count under the Trump bus is getting long and nefarious.
If you’re in the Trump inner circle and you’re not on the body count list, just give it time. Trump is increasingly having to face his troubles by himself or, at best, with hired strangers. Most of his old friends are either in legal jeopardy themselves or have been disparaged and abused and betrayed by Trump in “Truth” Social.
Don’t think for a minute that Trump isn’t in hell. He is. It’s obvious from the frantic tenor of his hectic messages, desperately posted in the middle of the night. Because he is a coward, a weakling and a fool he lacks the patience and the courage to stoically hold his tongue. In the interest of his immature need for immediate gratification Trump is steadily and inexorably digging his own grave.
I believe that August will be the worst month of Donald Trump’s life to date. But each succeeding month will be worse still. When I think of the hundreds of thousands of Covid victims who died because of his ineptitude, the hundreds of women he’s sexually assaulted, the dozens of businesses he’s deliberately ruined in order to escape paying for their services and the seemingly uncountable times he’s betrayed the country of my birth, I cannot summon a single milligram of sympathy for him. May Donald Trump rot in the hell of his own making. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.