FOR almost any other politician in any other country, a criminal conviction for conspiring to buy the silence of a porn actor would spell the immediate end of their political career and any hopes they had of leading their country.
But Donald Trump is not like any other politician, nor the United States like any other country.
Vanity and venality have been Trump’s constant companions since he turned his attention from The Apprentice to the White House and galloped onto the scene like the fifth horseman of the apocalypse.
His patently obvious unsuitability for high public office didn’t stop him becoming president in the 2016 election.
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Despite all that has happened since - defeat in 2020, the Capitol insurrection and a slew of legal actions - opinion polls consistently suggest that Trump is highly likely to win a second term.
That Trump’s return to the White House is much more than a dismally distant possibility is in large part due to the poverty of Joe Biden’s record as president. In the swing states that so often prove decisive in presidential elections, Trump consistently polls ahead of Biden.
It seems doubtful that Trump’s conviction, a historic first for any US president, will dent his appeal, however bewildering that is for those of us watching aghast from this side of the Atlantic.
Trump has the ability, presumably thanks to a Faustian pact, to take what would be a fatal setback for anyone else and photosynthesise it into political energy. He is an awful man, who is awfully good at being awful.
Trump has the ability to take what would be a fatal setback for anyone else and photosynthesise it into political energy. He is an awful man, who is awfully good at being awful
Railing against the jury’s unanimous verdict in his “rigged, disgraceful trial”, he launched into one of his trademark jumble of non sequiturs.
In a classically Trumpian, almost childish, turn of phrase he insisted he was a “very innocent man”. It’s difficult to imagine Barack Obama or Bill Clinton saying that. Trump manages to make even George W Bush sound like Cicero.
“I’m fighting for our country. I’m fighting for our constitution,” he continued, completely evading the inconvenient truth of why he’d been found guilty.
“I think it’s just a disgrace. And we’ll keep fighting, we’ll fight till the end and we’ll win because our country has gone to hell.”
There is the alarming possibility that Trump will be proved right on November 5 - that enough voters will regard the cases piling up against him as a form of witch hunt, as evidence that under Biden the US has indeed “gone to hell” and that only Trump, the martyr, can save it.
American voters face an invidious choice: back Trump, a convicted criminal, or Biden, the president who continues to give Israel the arms to attack Gaza. Democracy isn’t always neat.
