GOP 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump is all of a sudden something more than a past president. He is a convicted felon, branded as such by a recent, dubiously fair trial portraying him as dangerously evil. He is eagerly summed up that way by more than a few Democrats, themselves accused of diminishing democracy.

Naturally enough, they have vigorously applied their talents to achieve Trump’s disappearance from public life, seeing him as a self-modeled buffoon shed of character or depth of understanding. He is, however, not the least bit “woke,” thank you, and not so frightening as 81-year-old, forever-confused Democratic President Joe Biden, getting so much wrong at home and abroad.

From the start of Trump’s unexpected election in 2016, the least privileged Americans have largely seen a helping hand while many of the most privileged looked down their noses. Consider how fascinated media were by an investigation disrupting his first two years as president. It was a $32 million search for a Trump election conspiracy that was not found.

The Constitution is as clear as clear can be that impeachment is about evicting an official from office through a Senate vote and then ponder this: A failed Democratic attempt to impeach Trump came when he was already out of office. The utterly stupid, devious idea was to employ a constitutional clause that would have then prohibited him from running for president again.

Since then we have had Biden’s Department of Justice and others come up with three more cases unlikely to proceed for another four years if Trump is elected. The most serious case in my mind concerns the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and here I myself find Trump amiss in many ways if not a criminal participant.

The recently adjudicated Manhattan case was a tyrannical jumble. Despite the DA and his predecessor once feeling the tortuous idea was too weak to proceed with, the polls were not flattering Biden, and so the gang reached into obscurity and pulled out this allegation that Trump had falsified 34 private business records referring to legal expenses. Trump was instead said to be reimbursing his lawyer Mark Cohen for $130,000 in “hush money” he sent to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.

Falsifying a business record is a misdemeanor unless the incorrect information abets a felony and then the records, too, are deemed felonious under New York law. Federal officials had dismissed felony charges against Trump even though it was argued that release of the Daniels information could have cost Trump the election. The jury this time around said it was a felony on the basis of a New York law. The judge will announce a sentence in another month, and Trump’s lawyer will appeal the guilty verdict.

The paranoia about Trump includes the idea that, if he becomes president, he will so arrange things that that there are no more presidential elections. The true believers include Hillary Clinton and New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman, who see rescue in the Manhattan trial. Remember how Krugman told us not to worry about inflation?

Tribune News Service