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Everyone hoping that the Manhattan District Attorney would finally take down Donald Trump was—let’s be honest—pinning their hopes on the notion that there would be a surprise dispositive smoking gun proving massive fraud. On Tuesday, those hopes failed to materialize.
When the indictment was finally unsealed, we were left with charges pretty close to what everyone was already predicting: a case that is largely about falsifying business records.
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Most of the observers I saw were underwhelmed. “[District Attorney Alvin] Bragg explaining why it was vital to indict Trump frankly sounds like a sales guy on a pro forma call,” tweeted Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle during Bragg’s press conference. “He knows you’re buying, and so do you, but he’s gotta say something.”
Personally, I was reminded of a less-quoted line from Col. Nathan Jessup (Jack Nicholson) to Lt. Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) in A Few Good Men: “Please tell me that you have something more, Lieutenant. These two Marines are on trial for their lives. Please tell me their lawyer hasn't pinned their hopes to a phone bill.”
OK, it wasn’t that bad, but as Melissa DeRosa warned in The Daily Beast on Monday, the case against Trump “appears to be little more than a books and records class A misdemeanor upcharged to overcome a lapsed statute of limitations and become a felony.” I’m not a lawyer (and neither is DeRosa) but it seems she was right.
Violations of New York state election law and charges of falsifying New York state business records are (I’m guessing) serious stuff. I’m sure we could find someone who went to jail for less.
No man is above the law, but Tuesday’s not-so-big reveal has me wondering if maybe there’s a reason other prosecutors have declined to pursue these charges in the past.
Even DA Bragg seems to understand this is a somewhat flimsy case. During his press conference, Bragg warned about “normalizing” the white collar crimes that Trump allegedly committed. I think it’s clear that’s already happened.
And that isn’t the only thing that has been normalized. Putting aside the lack of outrage over falsifying business records, I’m more surprised that the sex-scandal element of this story seems to have also elicited a collective yawn.
Imagine what would have happened 20 years ago if it came out that George W. Bush allegedly had sex with a porn star while his daughters were babies. Forget the part about paying hush money. You wouldn’t need the legal system to stymie his political future, just that one revelation would have defined his entire life, making him a laughing stock in history.
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Now, imagine what would have happened if 10 years ago we learned that Barack Obama had fathered an out-of-wedlock child, and then had a doorman paid off to keep it quiet (as Trump is alleged to have done in the indictment). Again, what would every Fox News host have said about his fitness for office and lack of character? It would have been a scandal of epic proportions.
These are not crazy analogies. I mean, the Trump indictment includes talk of payments to former Playboy model Karen McDougal and allegations of an out-of-wedlock child. In light of all of that, the general tenor remains, “Nothing to see here.”
I can’t help stating the obvious: Trump has burned out all of our outrage receptors. He has normalized what used to be scandalous behavior, to the point where even people like me (who can’t stand him) grade him on a curve. “All he did was pay hush money. That’s nothing compared to the time he tried to incite an insurrection.”
If you really want to appreciate how much Trump has redefined the appropriate behavior of a president, consider how he shamelessly responded to the indictment: by putting out a fake mugshot t-shirt.
Most people would want to cover up a mugshot. Trump creates one that doesn’t exist.
Now, I can understand why some Americans appreciate the moxie. But consider what that says about us as a society. We have long had political sex scandals, but they were things to be ashamed of (or, at least, to pretend to be ashamed of). If found out, the obvious response from a politician was to express contrition.
In the current postmodern society, infidelity can be flaunted. Donald Trump can (allegedly) have sex with porn stars and pay them hush money, and people like me say, “Yeah, but isn’t that old news? Didn’t we already know that?”
True, the rules for Trump don’t always apply to everyone else. But give it a few years. Unless there’s some compelling #MeToo element of abuse or harassment to it, there may never be a U.S. politician sex scandal again.
Trump’s biggest contribution to the American way of life has been defining deviancy down. Hold onto your hats, ladies, his arraignment on Tuesday was merely the latest and greatest low.
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