In March of 2019, a year before the pandemic, my wife and I took our eight-year-old daughter to DC for her spring break. We hit the usual tourist spots—the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Air and Space Museum, and also the National Portrait Gallery, where I don’t think I’d ever been before. At the time, the exhibit of presidential portraits was pretty mobbed, as the Obamas’ portraits—by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald—were fairly new then, and appropriately stunning. 

But as I walked into the gallery, I was seized by a terrible thought:

Someday, Donald Trump’s portrait would be here, too. 

It seemed unfair, and galling, that this criminal bastard would be in the company of Washington, Jefferson, FDR, Eisenhower, and—yeah—Barack. For that matter, it was galling that he would even be in the company of Franklin Pierce, Chester Arthur, or Millard Fillmore. He just seemed so….unworthy (and some of those guys were slaveholders). Perhaps irrationally, this had long been one of my greatest pet peeves regarding Donald: that he was not only so ghastly, but so unsubstantial.

I mean, we can’t deny that he was president, or put a Roger Maris-like asterisk by his name indicating that the Kremlin helped put him in power. (Can we?) We can’t deny this ugly episode in American history any more than we can deny many other ugly episodes in that narrative. Still, it bugged me.

But as I began to stroll through the hall and look at the portraits, I read the descriptions on the placards accompanying each one, and I began to feel a whole lot better. Instead of some anodyne or saccharine tribute, each sketch was startlingly candid, offering an unvarnished historical assessment of the man. (And yes, they were all men. Whaddaya know?) To go to the obvious example, Nixon’s portrait was accompanied by a blunt description of his crimes and scandals. So were Andrew Johnson, Herbert Hoover, Andrew Jackson, and some of the others near the bottom of the presidential food chain. Even Reagan—if memory serves—was came in for criticism as well as a list accomplishments and adoration, in contrast to the rose-tinted nostalgia that time has bestowed upon a genuinely destructive commander-in-chief. So all praises due the historians and the curators; they did a great job. 

Seeing that, I felt at ease with the idea that Trump’s portrait would hang there someday, safe in the knowledge of verbiage that will describe him as the first US president to be impeached twice, the first to be prosecuted for federal crimes, to be investigated by the FBI under suspicion of being an agent of a hostile foreign power, to question the legitimacy of his ejection from office, and—oh yeah—to foment a violent attempted coup in order to remain in power. Nice legacy, bub.

MY PRECIOUS

All that has been on my mind as the Mar-a-Lago indictment came down last week. Having now seen in detail the seriousness of the charges against Donald Trump, and the evidence supporting those charges, let me make a couple of points. 

First, people have gone to prison for a long time for offenses far less severe. The national security implications, and the danger to the lives of Americans serving our country, is appalling, as is the sheer gall of believing he had any right to hold onto these documents, for any reason at all. For a man who ostentatiously claims to revere the flag and the military, he sure has a funny way of showing it, although that is hardly news. But I am not holding my breath in hopes that his devoted fanboys, many of whom share that patriotism-on-the-cheap, will recognize that.

Secondly, the case against him is Gibraltar solid, and just in case it wasn’t, Donald has helpfully gone on television, repeatedly, and confessed—bragged, even—including the very night he was indicted. As to the claim that Trump is being held to a different standard than others, that is true: so far he’s been held to a far more lenient one. He was given every chance to cooperate and surrender the documents in question, which are voluminous. Instead, he lied, obstructed, hid the materials, ignored polite requests and even subpoenas, and directed others to do likewise. (As someone on Facebook quipped, “Trump tried much harder to protect his tax returns than the nation’s most sensitive info about nuclear weapons.”) Any other American who do that would have had a SWAT team kicking down their doors long ago, and their lengthy stay in a federal prison would be a foregone conclusion. 

As if to illustrate the point, soon after Trump’s indictment we had the instructive spectacle of the indictment of Jack Teixeira, lowly airman in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, who is charged with six counts of retaining and transmitting classified national defense material, for which he faces 60 years in prison and a $1.5 million dollar fine. Less than two weeks before Trump was arraigned, we saw another boy in blue, retired Air Force lieutenant colonel Robert Birchum, sentenced to three years in federal prison for storing files with classified information at his Florida home. (WTF is it with the USAF, and with Florida?) 

That’s how the average American who mishandles classified material gets treated. 

Lastly, to the chorus of whataboutism, as I have written before, the offenses of Hillary, Biden, Pence et al regarding classified materials are akin to forgetting you had a pocketknife in your luggage and having it seized by the TSA. (Or even voluntarily discovering it and turning it over.) Trump’s offenses are more like boarding a 737 with a boxcutter hidden in your carry-on, hijacking the plane, and flying it into the World Trade Center.

So the indictment that Jack Smith handed down felt ironclad, and a long overdue step toward justice and accountability for this shameless, venal sonofabitch.

THE OWN GOAL OF ALL TIME

When it comes to Trump’s defenses, I’m not sure which of them is the most ludicrous. 

One top contender is his claim that he had a standing order that anything he touched was automatically declassified, which would be a security nightmare even if it were true, which it patently isn’t. (We know that there was no such standing order, and Smith and his team have revealed that Trump and his people knew very well what the declassification protocol was.) 

Another is his claim—to Sean Hannity—that he could declassify materials just by thinking about it. That is nuts, of course, but to be fair, Donald hasn’t been right in the head ever since he had all that pig’s blood dropped on him at the prom. In any event, Smith’s indictment cleverly and correctly doesn’t even turn on the classification of the documents, just on the fact that they relate to sensitive matters of national security—which is the standard that the law applies—and oh by the way, are US government property.

Another howler is Donald’s insane contention that the Presidential Records Act—instituted after Watergate to prevent former presidents from destroying or absconding with official government records—authorizes him to do precisely that. Why he thinks, Golum-like, that Top Secret plans for nuclear warfighting are his personal property is a mystery, but still more headshaking evidence (in case you needed any) that we inexplicably put an absolutely deranged toddler in the White House in 2016.

The latest “defense,” which is absolutely beyond parody, is Trump’s contention in an interview with Fox’s Brett Baier that he didn’t return the documents because they were mixed up with his golf shirts and he didn’t have time to go through the boxes.

Jesus, Donald, now you’re just phoning it in. 

In light of this scattershot array of excuses, is anyone surprised that Trump is having trouble finding legal representation in this case? (Dog bites man.) The WaPo reports that he has been rejecting his own attorneys’ adviceon how best to handle the case, which is evident from the way he has been going around openly confessing to the crimes of which he is accused. I didn’t go to law school, but that strikes me as not the best strategy. I know he’s gotten away with that ploy before, but somehow I don’t think it’s going to work in a court of law. Neither, apparently, did two of his top lawyers, who quit on the eve of the federal indictment while my TV was still warm from them appearing on it protesting his innocence. 

Even OJ is advising him to shut the hell up. (Say what you will about the Juice, but the man does know how to get away with murder.)

On that same front, a judge has allowed E. Jean Carroll to sue Trump some more, after he continued to slander her (on live TV!) the very day he was convicted of slandering her. Let’s hope he faces consequences for bragging about the stolen documents at Mar-a-Lago (on live TV!) the very day he was arraigned for that crime. It will be very fitting if this man is—finally—brought down by his own overweening ego and arrogance, even as people around him tried in vain to keep him from destroying himself.

(Not really part of this story, but too funny not to mention: After his arraignment, Trump and his entourage stopped by the famous Versailles restaurant in Miami’s staunchly Republican Little Havana, where he promised “food for everyone!”, then left without paying. The NY Daily News reported: “Trump defenders on Twitter noted the GOP frontrunner only said there’d be food for everyone at the restaurant—not that he was buying it.”)

DOWNGRADED TO THIRD ESTATE

Then again, maybe Trump’s baffle-‘em-with-bullshit approach will work yet again. The media’s coverage of the Mar-a-Lago indictment certainly continues to proves that, collectively, the Fourth Estate has learned nothing in the past eight years. 

After the arraignment, the Washington Post ran a front page headline that read, “Trump indictment thrusts Biden into unprecedented territory.” So let me get this straight: on Day 2 after a historic federal indictment of a former US president under the Espionage Act, the top story isn’t his alleged criminality, but the political considerations for his presidential campaign and that of his opponent? Yeah, it’s an angle in this broader story, but is it the main one, this early in the game? Why is the media framing this story in terms of horserace politics, as if Trump and Biden are just two evenly matched guys, both with their pros and cons? 

Shameful. 

The New York Times did no better, with a headline that read, “After assailing Hillary Clinton for her handling of sensitive information, Donald Trump faces the same issue.” As if the cases are REMOTELY alike. 

Even the much-esteemed BBC was cocking it up. The morning after the arraignment, the BBC Newshour had on a progressive political science professor to discuss the matter, immediately followed—as if they are peers—by a right wing talk radio host from Michigan who spewed outright lies, whataboutism, hoary anti-Hillary BS, and the rest of the usual reactionary menu. When the BBC reporter tried to push back—ever so politely—the talk show host just barreled on and shouted over him. Soooooo informative for the listening audience. 

Nice job, Auntie.

COWARDLY LYIN’

The Republican reaction to the indictment, and more importantly, to the overwhelming evidence that Trump put national security and American lives at risk, has marked a new low. Every time I think the GOP has hit rock bottom, they get out their shovels and dig.

As The Bulwark’s William Saletan wrote, “If there’s anything Trump could do to forfeit the allegiance of his party—any crime he could commit, any dictatorial power he could claim—we haven’t found it yet.”

Of course, the reaction was also predictable, turning on risible arguments that Trump didn’t really do anything wrong, that others have done the same, and that the charges against him are politically motivated, emanating from a Justice Department that is doing Joe Biden’s partisan bidding.

Pull the other one, as they say in England.

The claim of Democratic “weaponization” of the DOJ, and the characterization of Merrick Garland as a partisan hack, are especially ridiculous, as Jill Lawrence, also of The Bulwark, writes: 

How rich is all that, given the ruthless GOP partisanship that denied Garland even a hearing on his March 2016 Supreme Court nomination, and Trump’s personal takeover of the DOJ the next year? He fired both FBI chief James Comey and his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, over the FBI-initiated Russia investigation; his second attorney general, William Barr, twisted that investigation to protect Trump before anyone saw the Mueller report; and after Barr refused to find nonexistent 2020 election fraud, he tried to install a hand-picked attorney general to help him stay in power.

But by now we know that the GOP operates according to fascism’s Rule No. 1: Accuse others of your own crimes.

Adding to the irony, the Washington Post recently reported that the FBI—long known to be a bastion of Trumpism—was loath even to investigate him over the Insurrection, and moved like pond water when it was finally forced to do so. How ironic that Trump & Co. attack the FBI as a tool of the left, when over and over again we’ve learned how the Bureau has been among his greatest protectors, slow-walking or even openly stymying investigations into his actions. 

That WaPo reportage also suggests that Merrick Garland himself was woefully slow in pursuing prosecution. Many of us on the left have long accused him of an abundance of caution and lack of aggressiveness and urgency when it comes to investigating Trump. After the Smith indictment, I was ready to concede that I’d been wrong and endorse the notion—oft preached to us by Garland’s defenders—that he is just an institutionalist who wants to make sure every “i” is dotted and every “t” crossed, to avoid even the appearance of bias. But what we’re hearing now suggests that the original diagnosis may have been right. 

As MSNBC’s Steve Benen writes, Garland naively seemed to believe that playing Gallant to the GOP’s Goofus would shame and impress the right wing and convince them of his moral superiority.

The attorney general and his team thought that if they just did everything by the book, exercised great caution, avoided politics and partisan games, and pursued cases in an independent and methodical way, no one could reasonably accuse them of politicizing law enforcement. So that’s what they did—and Republicans accused them of politicizing law enforcement anyway.

(T)o hear leading GOP officials tell it, Garland’s office is effectively an appendage to the Democratic National Committee, reality notwithstanding. The moral of the story is, there’s no harm in acting in a cautious way, but taking deliberate steps in the hopes of avoiding Republican attacks doesn’t work, because Republican attacks are going to happen anyway.

A few former Trump allies have seen the light, at least on the specific topic of the documents scandal, and spoken out against him publicly: Barr, Bolton, Esper, Pence, Pompeo, and Christie, to name the most prominent. Yeah yeah, I know these guys are punks and collaborators and enablers of Donald’s hateful regime, but their criticism is still welcome, and precisely for that reason. Remember, we made nice with Stalin to win the Big One, so……

Will it have any effect? Not on MAGA Nation, of course; they are far too far gone. (Far.) But this chorus might sway a few conservative voters in the squishy middle, which in a race as close as 2024 promises to be, could make all the difference. I don’t wish to slip into the horserace mentality I derided just a few paragraphs ago, for there is more than that at stake here. Though it may seem odd to speak of “moral authority” in connection with any Republican, but the condemnation of those former deputies, many of them at Cabinet level, does matter and it’s welcome, if long overdue.  

MUST I PAINT YOU A PICTURE?

Obviously, we don’t know how this case will be resolved. Trump may well beat the rap—his record of dodging bullets is pretty damned good, and with the Republican gaslighting machine cranked up to eleven, anything is possible. And the paths to cheating justice yet again are many.

He may get a friendly jury that acquits him outright—it’s Florida, after all—or even just a single sympathetic jurorresulting in a hung jury. He may get favorable treatment from his appointee Judge Aileen Cannon, who is inexplicably assigned to the case even after demonstrating outrageous bias toward the defendant in the special master brouhaha, for which she was soundly reprimanded by a trio of appellate judges on the 11^th Circuit, two of whom were Trump appointees themselves. Cannon could singlehandedly assure his acquittal, or just make life hell for Jack Smith, or get the whole thing thrown out as a mistrial, with prejudice, so that Smith can’t even file charges again.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The trial is unlikely to happen before the 2024 presidential election. (Cannon has set a court date of August 14, but most experts expect it to be pushed because of voluminous pre-trial motions and haggling over how to handle classified evidence.) That means that it will still be unfolding beyond election day. If the Republican candidate wins, whether it is Trump or someone else, that POTUS could simply order the DOJ to drop the case. 

In the event that the trial does place—and conclude—before November 2024 and Trump is convicted, a pardon will be in play. He might win the election and attempt a self-pardon. Or, to avoid the legal challenges to that patently unconstitutional and illogical ploy, he might invoke the 25th Amendment to abdicate the presidency for fifteen minutes so his VP (Kari Lake) can pardon him, before she goes back to the pistol range. 

If for some reason Trump is not the nominee and another Republican wins the White House, a pardon will be a foregone conclusion, as a promise to that end is fast becoming a loyalty test in the GOP primaries. (When Pence declined to make that pledge, a right wing shock jock called him “disrespectful” to his face. Because the Republican Party is now an episode of The Sopranos.)

So there are a great many plausible scenarios, and a fair number of them end with Donald John Trump again getting away scot free. 

It will be infuriating, of course, if Trump is ultimately acquitted in the documents case, or any of the criminal cases in which has been—or might be—charged. But I refer you back to OJ. His acquittal on a double murder charge didn’t exactly rehabilitate his reputation and cause the American people to take him back into the hearts. Nor will history. If anything, the howling miscarriage of justice has only tarred him more. Trump may well meet the same fate. 

In The Atlantic, Peter Wehner writes: “Other shady and unethical individuals have served in the White House—Richard Nixon and Warren Harding among them—but Trump’s full-spectrum corruption puts him in a category all his own. His degeneracy is unmatched in American presidential history and unsurpassed in American political history.”

I couldn’t agree more. And I presume the placard beside his painting in the National Portrait Gallery will, someday, duly record as much.

********

“The Visionary,” a 1989 portrait of Trump by Ralph Wolfe Cowan, which hangs in the bar in Mar-a-Lago.