Why Trump’s “strange option” won’t work
The Huffington Post and others in the media are calling it Trump’s ‘strange’ option. It goes like this: if Donald Trump or another Republican wins the presidency they order the Department of Justice to stand down. That’s what Trump is hoping will happen and they (the media) figure he’s got a fifty-fifty chance of that. Problem solved.
In the current media fantasy world that ‘coin toss chance’ would make sense were it not for several unacknowledged problems. The first problem is Trump getting elected in the first place. Barring some absurd and vanishingly small shift in the current political landscape a Trump victory is highly unlikely.
The second problem is if some Republican other than Trump wins the presidency that person will probably hate Trump because Trump will see to it. Nobody beats Trump and escapes his ire. The last thing most successful Republican candidates would want to do would be to help Donald Trump.
The third problem is, even if a new Republican president did want to help Trump there’s nothing they could do about what Alvin Bragg has done and what Fani Willis and other inevitable state-level prosecutors are about to do. Presidents can only pardon federal crimes. Trump faces a raft of state-level criminal complaints, coming to a courtroom near you.
Between Bragg, Willis and any other prosecutor who wants to jump into the game, Donald Trump is toast on fire. All this publicity about Jack Smith and his 37 stunning indictments has caused everyone to forget that there are enough state indictments (and pending state indictments) to put Donald Trump in prison for the rest of his life. Forgetting about Jack Smith for a moment, Donald Trump is still in serious legal peril.
No, the way I see it now is Trump has two options in order to escape prosecution. I’m leaving out suicide because Trump is a narcissist and suicide isn’t what they do. Death by natural (inevitable?) causes isn’t an option but a circumstance beyond his choosing, of course.
The first realistic option is for him to flee to a Trump-friendly country that has no extradition treaty with the United States. That’s not consistent with what narcissists do either, so I think that’s the least likely option.
The final option is for Trump to make a deal with all the prosecutors. That’s not what narcissists do either but he’s really got very little choice. Besides, the deal in question could be a relatively sweet one. Trump has been known to compromise and stop fighting and accept deals handed to him. After all, he quietly paid five million dollars to the former students who sued him for his scam Trump ‘University.’
Any deal worthy of the name would have to include a substantial custodial term. But therein lies the juicy part. Trump might be able to swing an ankle bracelet deal, say five years at Mar-a-Lago. That and a promise to stay off social media, a voluntary permanent loss of his right to hold public office and an additional five years of parole after serving his term of incarceration might do it. Maybe.
It would have to be a deal that all prosecutors and all future prosecutors would agree to. Therein lies the challenge, of course. Some or all might be unwilling. But that’s part of the game we play when we roll the dice. Maybe it will work and maybe it won’t.
But his standard model of obstruction and delay isn’t working and it isn’t going to work. Trump’s days in court are coming at him like the steam engines of the days of old, fast and visible from a long way off. There isn’t anything else he can do to forestall what is looking more and more inevitable.
But my money is on Trump finding the most personally destructive route and taking that. It’s what he’s always done in the past. The fact that nobody has bothered to prosecute him for it is beside the point. This time they will prosecute him, and my only fear is that he dies before he has a chance to incur the full weight of justice.
Because nothing short of the full weight of justice can atone for the horrors Donald Trump has visited on me, on you, and on the greatest traditions and institutions of the United States. 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.