No, seriously. Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels, and Michael Avenatti are back in the news, and the prosecutors are claiming that, by paying off Daniels to keep quiet about her alleged affair with him, President Trump committed “election interference.” In other words, this case is essentially yet one more attempt to “prove” that the 2016 election was stolen.
That this, of all things, is the tack which prosecutors are taking frankly leaves us incredulous. Ever since the many nonsensical cases against President Trump were railroaded into the legal system, we assumed that the Left must have some sort of master plan: some devious strategy to bloody up Trump with lawfare that would, even if it did not result in a conviction, remind voters of all sorts of unseemly elements to his character. To be sure, the New York prosecutors’ choice to call Daniels – hardly anyone’s idea of a credible witness – could yet serve that purpose. We shudder to imagine the many agonized David French columns that will result from Daniels’ testimony…or we would, if anyone read them.
However, looking at the legal strategy evinced by the prosecutors’ opening arguments, we find it hard to believe that any plan, masterful or otherwise, is at work. Rather, it seems to us that the whole New York trial is less an exercise in legal reasoning than in post-traumatic psychosis. Even now, the fact of having lost to Trump in 2016, and the need to avenge all the pussy-hat wearing #Resistance members who couldn’t cope with that loss, seems to be all that the prosecutors are after.
Will it work? Under normal circumstances, a trial with witnesses as easy to discredit as Michael Cohen (a perjurer), Michael Avenatti (ditto), and Stormy Daniels (who denied the affair herself in writing) would be the stuff of the Keystone Kops, not the actual American legal system. However, the prosecutors are clearly expecting that a New York jury will convict a ham sandwich, if you put a MAGA hat on it. That they may be right is a far more concerning warning about the state of American justice than their case, whose legal basis is so laughable that even Vox had to admit to its flimsiness.
However, while sharper legal minds than ours have (and will) shoot holes in the case’s legal aspects, we have to pause to note the absurdity of its implicit political case, as well. Because it is simply impossible to miss the implicit argument behind the prosecution’s hysterical charges of “election interference.” That is, they seem to believe that if only the American people had known of Trump’s alleged affair with Stormy Daniels, Hillary Clinton might have won the 2016 election.
Not only is this an absurd notion, but it shows how little the Democrats have learned (or may even be capable of learning) from 2016, itself.
Seriously? If Trump had been accused of consensual sex with a porn star, he would have lost in 2016? What, the infamous “pussy grabbing” tape wasn’t enough? They seriously think the thought of Trump and Stormy Daniels in flagrante delicto would’ve made up for the competing claims against Hillary Clinton’s own husband for nonconsensual sex? They think that hundreds of thousands of voters in the Rust Belt would’ve forgotten all about their economic woes, or the fact that Hillary Clinton didn’t even campaign in their states, merely because a porn star was mentioned? And forgive us, but silencing a potentially compromising story is “election interference” now? Isn’t the removal of potential dirt part and parcel of political campaigning? Isn’t that precisely what Joe Biden’s campaign did with the story of the “laptop from Hell,” or what Hillary herself did to protect her husband from the exact accusers who Trump brought to the second debate? In fact, not to be ungentlemanly, but didn’t Hillary settle with the Federal Election Commission for the exact same crime Trump is accused of, with only a cursory fine as punishment, rather than jail time or arrest involved? Yes, we know that Democrats are fine with their side doing it, but this is the law we’re talking about. If it’s illegal for one, it’s illegal for all, at least in theory.
More to the point, does the prosecution seriously believe that all 12 members of the Trump jury are still yearning to break out their pussy hats so much that they’ll convict him on totally untested grounds just to get revenge for 2016? Do they have such a low opinion of New Yorkers that they think they haven’t moved on from 8 years ago? We have no doubt that the prosecutors haven’t, but surely, they can’t assume that all jurors are equally beleaguered.
Then again, maybe they do assume that, and if they are right, then who knows? This bizarre approach may work. However, we think it more likely that the question of whether their case is relatable never occurred to the prosecutors. Just as the question of whether Hillary was likable never occurred to her campaign managers.
Which is really the point: To Hillary supporters, the idea that decent people could have voted for Trump was (and, in the case of the prosecutors, apparently is) unthinkable. The idea that Trump’s agenda could serve legitimate needs for anyone who was not a bigot (a “deplorable,” in Hillary’s infamous parlance), let alone a majority of America, is simply not something their neoliberal arrogance could fathom. Which means that, rather than understand why their agenda lost what Human Events senior contributor Jack Posobiec jokingly calls the “mandate of heaven,” their only psychological refuge was in believing that Trump cheated. Because they couldn’t believe that America – their America, as they see it – could actually have wanted him. Their America, like their Democracy (TM) had no room for Trump, because their America was always on the “right side of history,” as defined by the faculty lounge at Harvard and the Obama speechwriting team. The only way Trump could win, therefore, must be through deception. And so, in their minds, Vladimir Putin’s Russia must have hacked the voting machines. And even if they didn’t do that, Trump must have colluded with them. And even if there was no evidence for that, he must have obstructed justice to prevent its coming out.
And even if – even if – that evidence never existed, he still must have cheated. Even just by ensuring they couldn’t attack him for allegedly sleeping with a porn star – something they would regard as a prudish irrelevance if anyone said it about their candidates – he must have cheated. He must, because the alternative is that America is not really their America. That maybe, it never was. Which would mean that their ideas of the arc of history were triumphalist nonsense, that their notion of “democracy” was an artificial, censored sham, and that their ideals were nothing but childish, adolescent hogwash which America foolishly trusted in the aftermath of the Great Recession, but now have decisively turned against after seeing its honest woke face. Which would mean that they, not Trump, are on the “wrong side of history.”
We admit, there may be 12 jurors in New York City who are willing to forestall the reckoning with these uncomfortable ideas and convict Trump, handing the Left the psychic revenge for 2016 which it so desperately craves. But that revenge will be temporary. The reckoning will come, and if fate is kind, it will come this November. And then, perhaps, the arc of history will bend not toward the Left’s false notion of “justice,” but toward the vengeance which the American people have owed them since 2016 itself.
