After video games became popular, board games lost popularity. One that persists is Monopoly.
It features a jail for players who make mistakes in the board game. It offers a Get Out Of Jail Card.
Donald Trump, whose entire business life has been a case of winning by ignoring the rules and morality of American life, desperately needs this card. He knows how to get it: winning both the Republican nomination for president in 2024 and then the national election is critical to his freedom and future.
He recently lost a $5 million dollar lawsuit for defamation to E. Jean Carroll, which is nothing compared to what he faces for violating the Espionage Act, the first of a string of potential felony indictments:
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Organizing an insurrection against his government in January 2020 to retain the White House.
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Threatening the governor of Georgia to find 11,000 votes necessary to award Georgia's 16 electoral votes to Trump.
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Encouraging other states to create false slates of electors to corrupt the Electoral College vote tally.
Let's be clear here. Refusing to give back classified documents that belong to the government was not a smart move. Inexplicable but perhaps consistent with a Trumpian view of exceptionalism. I know Donald does not look in the mirror each morning and see an angry 77-year-old duffer who lies about his golf scores and has led a charmed life claiming success while deceiving banks and governments for decades. Few of us can recognize our worst faults, but "The Donald" takes that skill to a level few politicians have ever accomplished.
If pending cases or other investigations lead to convictions, these cannot stop him from winning an election by his MAGA supporters. If voters do not care enough about democracy to fault him for abusing presidential responsibility, that is their right.
Winning the White House in 2024 would give him a Get Out of Jail Card, effective January 20, 2025. He could order the Justice Department to withdraw any cases that involve him or his closest allies. He could pardon himself for any convictions and, best of all, from his perspective, would be able to launch a scorched earth attack on everyone he feels wronged him after he became president in 2016. Would that be the 81,283,501 voters who elected President Joe Biden in 2020?
Remember that when Richard Nixon faced impeachment, he would lose over the Watergate burglary. He relinquished the presidency as a Get Out of Jail card. That was August 9, 1974, also the date of my first child's birth, making it quite a busy and unforgettable day for my family.
The irony is that a year before, his vice president could sense that Nixon was in deep trouble giving Spiro Agnew visions of becoming president. When Agnew's involvement in a bribery scandal as a county government official in Maryland surfaced, he was adamant that he was innocent.
But 11 days after the story broke into public view, Agnew abruptly resigned on October 10, 1973, as part of an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department. It was his Get Out of Jail card to avoid trial by pleading no contest to one charge of income tax evasion and resigning as vice president. Nixon selected Gerald Ford as the new vice president. Ten months later, Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment, making Ford president, Both Nixon and Agnew's careers ended in disgrace but not in prison.
President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon for possible "offenses against the United States." The American concept of reconciliation that surfaced at the end of the Revolution, then after the Civil War, reappeared. Ford believed the "tranquility" the nation had found after Nixon's resignation (actually a sense of belief and disbelief, depending on your politics) would not survive the trial of a disgraced president. Ford believed Nixon was a man "who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States."
For half the people in the USA, Trump's entire presidency has been a disgrace.
Has Trump finally run out of escapes after a lifetime of breaking the rules and flaunting the law? His lack of honesty has never been in question. He comes across as an insecure braggart, desperate to cling to his status after an embarrassing fall from power. Six business bankruptcies should have prepared him for this. This cavalier attitude about taking classified material will play a decisive role in the outcome of his case.
A conviction based on harsh facts will be unacceptable to his political supporters. Will they gift him with the Get Out of Jail card he desperately needs?
A six-year political nightmare is not over.
By: Kenneth Tiven