Why the Trump Guilty Verdict Is Wildly Destabilizing

When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.

President Donald Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies. Many are cheering this, and I don’t know why, because nothing good comes from it. It’s the epitome of “cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

This is America’s “crossing the Rubicon moment.” A former president has never even been charged with felonies, much less convicted of them, much less while they’re running for another term in office.

Photo by Tabrez Syed on Unsplash

Make no mistake, this verdict is wildly destabilizing for this country. Anywhere from 40-50% of Americans now seen the system as illegitimate.

Legitimacy, in political science lingo, is the underpinning of a stable government. The “consent of the governed” and all that. In plain English: we put up with arbitrary rules and taxes only because we get the sense that the government acts through consent and not coercion. Of course, all power flows from the barrel of a gun, but once the illusion is shattered, things fall apart very quickly.

Let’s look at 3 factors in this trial that could cause half of the country to question whether the government is legitimate.

The System Clearly Plays Favorites

Let’s be really clear about something: our system of “laws” is incredibly arbitrary. There are so many laws that no one can really keep track of them and you’ve undoubtedly broken a bunch yourself. Ayn Rand isn’t my favorite author, but she had some banger quotes, and this is one of them: “There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them.”

You see this in action whenever you hear about someone getting arrested for something fairly small and then having a few dozen more random charges piled up on them. If the system wants to nail you, it will, and it has the tools to do so.

A recent example is golfer Scottie Scheffler, who was arrested and charged with a felony for the crime of… trying to get to a golf tournament. Thankfully, those nonsensical charges have been dropped because he’s Scottie Scheffler the world’s top golfer and not Scottie Scheffler, bus driver.

OK, I stole that joke from Chris Rock, who said of the recently departed O.J. Simpson: “Because if O.J. wasn't famous he'd be in jail right now. If O.J. drove a bus, he wouldn't even be O.J. He'd be Orenthal the bus driving murderer.”

That joke is nearly 30 years old, but it conveys an essential but uncomfortable truth: the justice system is not applied equally. Modern conventional wisdom would tell you that it works much better if you’re white and rich, though it seemed to work okay for Orenthal the football-playing murder.

It’s also worked pretty okay for another notorious figure of the 1990s, Hillary Clinton, who—along with her husband—have dodged more scandals and criminal suspicions than any political family I’ve ever seen¹. As you might remember, her big scandal in 2016 was running her own email service (in a bathroom)² during her tenure as Secretary of State.

The common refrain for this is “butter emails,” but mishandling classified documents is a big deal—they raided Trump’s home over it. Clinton’s bizarre handling of classified materials was concerning enough that the FBI investigated it.

Those who watch politics closely have not forgotten then-FBI director James Comey’s statement, in which he basically admitted that Clinton committed felonies, but that they wouldn’t charge her, well, because she’s Hillary Clinton:

Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.

In short: did she break laws? Yes. But we don’t feel like charging her. I also think the “regarding intent” phase is hilarious, because judges love to rattle off about how “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” Intent wouldn’t have been considered if Hillary the Park Ranger had been routing her employee email through a bathtub Synology.

Besides, I don’t know if Trump intended to commit… wait, what did he do, exactly?

The Average Person Can’t Explain Trump’s Crimes

Some of my readers are lawyers and will probably be happy to itemize all 34 of President Trump’s felonies, but I doubt 99% of Americans could name a single one.

In fact, any time I tuned in on the trial or the media coverage, the focus was always on Trump cheating on his wife with Stormy Daniels, which is wrong but isn’t a crime³. The end result is most people have the impression that Trump is possibly being locked up over something that isn’t even a crime.

Tom Gara, who used to be an editor at BuzzFeed and is no friend of Donald Trump’s, admitted that he has no idea what his actual crime is. Imagine what the typical person who doesn’t watch the news thinks.

In the marketing world, this is what we call a messaging problem. When you’re doing something as extreme as making a former president and current candidate beloved by millions a felon, you need to do an impeccable job of explaining why you’re doing that. Solid charges. Solid evidence. Something like: there is a dead porn star with multiple stab wounds and we have a clear photo of Donald Trump standing outside her house holding a bloody knife.

So what exactly did Trump get convicted of? In the simplest terms, as I understand the case, Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen (apologies to my friend Michael Cohen who is unrelated), paid Stormy Daniels six figures in hush money so she wouldn’t talk about sleeping with Trump.

That’s not a crime. The crime is that the Trump Organization shuffled around business records to hide it, which is only a misdemeanor.

So how did that become a felony? The convoluted legal reasoning is that since Trump was running for office, it counts for election fraud.

But don’t take my word for the legal reasoning being convoluted. That’s the opinion of a left-leaning law professor.

The Trial Looked Sketchy

The entire trial, start to finish, looked incredibly fishy. I won’t wade into the argument about whether Judge Merchan’s confusing instructions were misinterpreted or not. Instead, let’s look at the opinion of a legal expert who is opposed to Trump.

Law professor Jessica Levinson, writing for MSNBC—not exactly a Trump-friendly outfit—wrote:

“Let’s be honest with each other. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case was convoluted, and the jury convicting Trump shows that he got lucky in this case.”

“But by itself, the falsification of business records is a misdemeanor. So to kick this up to a felony, prosecutors needed jurors to keep clearing hurdles.”

“Add to that the fact that this was a complicated and serpentine case that most prosecutors probably wouldn’t have brought at all.”

Levinson, who recently did a podcast on “The MAGA Ideology,” seems thrilled with the verdict, even if she’s baffled by the case itself, writing, “That’s why today’s verdict feels like a catastrophe averted for those who believe in the rule of law and have been screaming from the rooftops that our former president threatens it.”

If someone like Levinson thinks the trial looks strange, imagine how it looks to the average American.

This Election Is Win or Die

On top of how arbitrary and political the prosecution looks, it’s now kicked this election into high gear. It may be Donald Trump’s only chance to dodge what amounts to a lifetime prison sentence. And Joe Biden is in a similar boat, because he undoubtedly fears revenge against himself and his family if he loses.

As the show says, when you play the game of thrones you win or you die. Except in this case it’s almost certainly true, and this election suddenly got a lot more dangerous.

Personally, I’m all for locking up as many politicians as possible. But after decades of letting the likes of JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and W get away with various and sundry crimes, it looks arbitrary to suddenly throw the book at a former president over questionable charges. It’s not as if Trump brought hookers into the White House, made up a fake attack to escalate a war, spied on political opponents, sold weapons to Iran, sold access to the Lincoln bedroom, trashed the Oval Office on his way out, committed war crimes, or ordered drone strikes on American citizens.

Maybe it’s time to file criminal charges against more politicians and presidents. After all, it’s only fair.

1. I know someone will object to this, pointing at all the Trump scandals, but the key word is “dodge.” Trump has been impeached twice, convicted of 34 felonies, and is involved in more court cases than I can count.

2. Forget whatever laws were broken. What kind of maniac runs their own email server, much less in a room with running water?

3. It probably should be, but ironically many of the people who reflexively hate Trump would also hate that, yelling something about the Handmaid’s Tale.