Opinion | Donald Trump’s arrest did not break his spirit — it only made him stronger

Waiting for Donald Trump to vanish is like playing the lottery.

You always expect to win and never do. On Tuesday, at 8:22 p.m., Trump proved he has no plans to exit stage left. Instead, with the TV networks broadcasting live, he entered his Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach to rant and rave.

The ballroom was jammed with bootlickers and reality-starved superfans who have pledged eternal devotion to their Big Mac Messiah. The mood was giddy, a Burning Man for QAnon. Everyone was laughing. This was odd.

In New York, hours earlier, Trump became the first U.S. president to be charged with a crime or, more accurately, 34 felonies. In one surreal image at the defendant’s table, his lips are pursed in a frown. He stares morosely into the middle distance.

He looks broken. He looks desperate to vanish.

But we already know “The Trump Show” is powered by plot twists.

Trump left the Manhattan courtroom and beelined to LaGuardia for the flight home to Florida. Aerial cameras tracked the motorcade. Anchors provided play-by-play with dramatic flourishes, as if Trump was in the back of a white Ford Bronco with O.J.

But even before Trump Force One was at cruising altitude, the narrative crashed.

Pundits who had speculated since Thursday about a “devastating blow” were baffled by the unsealed indictment. Where were the new allegations? What was the secondary crime required to elevate bookkeeping misdemeanours into felonies? Is this really just about falsifying business records over hush money payments?

The “devastating blow” morphed into “disappointing.”

The “historic” backslid into a collective … huh?

This was a possibly catastrophic error by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg. Yes, such white-collar cases are routine for his office. And, yes, nobody is above the law. Donald Trump is liar and breaker of rules. But forking out hush money is not a crime. If cooking the books to conceal those payments is the animating issue, does this really warrant charging a former president for the first time in history?

Then again, after many heinous crimes, Al Capone was toppled by tax evasion.

Now we wait to see what happens, emphasis on wait. Trump’s next appearance in Manhattan Criminal Court is scheduled for — wait for it — Dec. 4. I thought justice delayed is justice denied. You mean to tell me Trump could impregnate a porn star this weekend and that baby might be born before daddy is back in court?

In the interim, Trump is ready to rumble.

This lunatic will now haunt us for years to come.

Since he was indicted, his campaign has raised more than $7 million. It’s bananas. If he committed murder, some of his cultists would hand over the deeds to their double wides. Trump is hawking T-shirts emblazoned with a fake mug shot and “NOT GUILTY.” You can imagine future merch: repurposed MAGA hats — “Make Alvin Go Away” — and limited-edition Trump Phones branded as “Perfect Call.”

Felonies schmelonies. Trump has turned this devastating blow into a cash cow.

The man is a hydra. You cut off a serpentine head and two new ones grow back, each hissing with grievance and vows of revenge. On Tuesday afternoon, Trump seemed down and out. By nightfall, he was up and in. As he was tucked into bed, he probably asked his butler to bring him heating ointment and a neck brace to ease the whiplash.

Agent Orange was flatlining until the indictment.

The arrest was a shot of adrenalin. Now I need to go to the LCBO.

Not since Ulysses S. Grant was arrested in 1872 after racing his horse-and-buggy has a president had a worse day than Trump did on Tuesday. At least, that’s how it started. It ended with Trump heavy-breathing at Mar-a-Lago, slandering Bragg; the presiding judge, Juan Merchan, and the judge’s wife and daughter. Then Trump rage-warbled his Greatest Hits in Auto-Tune and ripped other ongoing investigations. This delusional narcissist all but confessed to taking classified documents from the White House.

I feared he might open a duffel bag and pull out the severed head of Hunter Biden.

This man is never going to vanish from the cultural and political radar. I thought maybe, just maybe, other possible 2024 Republican candidates could summon the bare-knuckle brawling needed to put Donnie Boy on the ropes. No dice.

They don’t have it in them. He is a cult leader. They are followers.

Mike Pence is a skittish jellyfish whose every utterance sounds like it was spit out by MilquetoastGPT. Donald Trump versus Nikki Haley is more inhumane than Godzilla versus the Little Mermaid. Ron DeSantis has made himself collateral damage in the impetuous culture wars he can’t stop waging. Dude, banning books or initiating hostilities with Disney is not a winning strategy on the national stage.

Trump will eat you alive.

He will eat us all alive. Beyond New York, there is legal peril in Georgia and from the federal investigations led by special counsel Jack Smith. But this could take months, if not years, to settle. In the short term, he is back in heavy media rotation.

The arrest of Donald J. Trump did not break his spirit — it only made him stronger.

I have no doubt he has committed many crimes in his day. I’m just not sure Tuesday’s case was the best potential exhibit of this criminality.

Now he is emboldened. Now we are stuck with him.

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