The first time it was – perhaps someone still remembers it – when spring had just begun. And actually not of one, but of 34 first times it had been treated. Because so many, 34, had in fact been the charges that Alvin BraggManhattan District Attorney, had, when April was upon us, brought against Donald J. Trump starting from an old and strange story of “hush-money”. That is: from the money that, in the year of our Lord 2016, the future president had paid roundabout – criminally violating a long list of tax and administrative transparency rules – to ensure, in the midst of the electoral campaign, the silence of Stephanie Clifford Gregory, professionally known as Stormy Daniels, busty pornstar with whom he had entertained a fleeting but very embarrassing extra-marital affair. Never before that fateful day – this, then, the media had pointed out in unison – had a president (incumbent or former) been formally charged with criminal offences. (Richard Nixon had indeed, at the time of the Watergate, just missed the record. But the resignation and subsequent pardon of Gerald Ford they saved him).
The second first time – second because it came after the first and first because this time it was far more serious federal and non-district crimes – it had occurred a little more than a couple of months later, when, last June 9, the Special Council Jack Smith had presented the bill to the former president (a “slap” from 34 counts“and counting” as they say in English, considering that almost every day, in this story, new crimes emerge) for the illegal concealment of documentsmany of which are top-secret, ended up in the most “intimate” (bathrooms, showers) or public (ballrooms) nooks and crannies of the Trumpian palace in Mar-a-Lagoin Florida.
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The third first time – third in order of time but very first in importance considering the historical-political weight of the disputed crimes – is only a few days old. And it finally points straight to the heart of this criminal story. That is to say: it reveals, with the unequivocal, almost didactic clarity of a user manual, the nature not occasionally criminal, but intrinsically – sometimes even caricatured – subversive and anti-democraticnot only of Trumpism, but of the entire Republican Party who has been hostage to Trumpism for years. In essence: Donald J. Trump is now officially accused, through three separate counts, of having, by waving the flag of a non-existent fraud, attempted to subvert the democratic order, preventing the peaceful transfer of power from one president – himself, who had lost the 2020 elections – to the other (Joe Biden who had won those elections).
Summing up. No one can accuse Donald J. Trump of failing to live up to the image – that of a I am narcissistically XXL (extra-extra-large) – who loves to give of himself. For a quarter and more of a millennium, no US president had known the shame of ending up on trial. In just over four months he ended up on the stand – with at least a couple of cases still under investigation – 78 times. The numbers obviously have a purely symbolic value in this affair, but they equally give an idea of which unattainable champion both, in criminal matters, the penultimate president of the United States of America. Anthony Linnews agency analyst Bloomberg he took the trouble to calculate how many years Donald Trump should be in prison should – which is evidently impossible – be sentenced to the maximum penalty for each of the crimes that up to now have been formally charged to him. And this is the number: 616 (six hundred and sixteen) years, Many more obviously than Trump has left to live. And also probably, given the latest data on the global warming – a phenomenon that Trump notoriously considers a “hoax”, an instrumental hoax put into circulation by China – many more than those that separate planet Earth from its crematorium apocalypse.
What does all this mean for the US and, inevitably, for the world? The battered boat of democracy is cruising, not just in America but globally, uncharted and stormy waters. And any peremptory answer would be nothing but a gamble. However, today the polls tell us two things very clearly. The first: in the light of current data, it is very difficult to imagine, in view of the 2024 presidential elections, a Republican candidate that it’s not really him, Donald J. Trump. On the New York Times, Nate Cohnexamined, figures in hand, the nature and strength of what – borrowing an expression from the “Italian politician” – we could call the “hard core” of Trumpism. That is: of that nearly 40 percent of potential Republican voters – the granite “MAGA base”, as Cohn defines it – for which there is no life beyond Trump. In theory (very much in theory) one of the other 11 Republican hopefuls could, by raking in the remaining 60 percent, snatch the nomination. But he would do it, in any case, for the price of one party split.
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Second thing: although still too preliminary, the latest investigations reveal, in a hypothetical but very probable clash-rematch between Trump and Joe Biden (the latter virtually unrivaled on the Democratic side, despite a popularity, or unpopularity, just above 40 percent) an unpredictable neck-and-neck. Which means that, yes, the one who was already the 45th president of the United States and who today is a defendant awaiting 78 judgments (three of which unequivocally speak of anti-democratic subversion) could come back to life, in January 2025, at the 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC.
It is in these panoramas that the electoral season is about to begin against the background of a democracy – proverbially the “oldest in the world” – in the midst of an epochal crisis. We will see some good ones. And these “beautiful” this blog aims to tell. Fingers crossed.