President Donald John Trump... so bad they impeached him twice

WATCHING the impeachment of Donald John Trump, at times you felt that you had wandered into the wrong courtroom — that instead of legal argument about whether the defendant should face the mandatory death penalty or have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment, they were nailing him for violations of the Road Traffic Act.

You felt that he was getting away with it again. That the very slowness of the Representatives droning away for hours was itself a perfect symbol of how impotent these institutions can be against the delinquency of the mob and its leader — and this was actually the fast-forwarded version of a procedure which is usually more Byzantine.

Outside, in these days leading to the Biden inauguration, there were already thousands of troops guarding the Capitol against the threat of terrorism on the part of supporters of Donald John Trump.

But the man himself appeared to be still president, still free to make a video purportedly calling for calm, in truth leaving the big lie out there about the election being stolen.

Or at least the latest big lie. Donald John Trump (the ‘John’ has a pleasing echo of the police officially charging some notorious fugitive) has told so many big lies, there’s a kind of a lie-inflation kicking in, with a big lie becoming just a little lie compared to the even bigger lie that’s coming next.

Even though he is clearly a desperate man, making that “peace” video under duress, he understands from looking at the impeachment that these institutions which he has been destroying are in trouble, too.

He figures they are doing this impeachment thing, because in truth they don’t really know what to do.

We are seeing here a textbook case of a state trying to deal with an existential menace, but finding in this instance that perhaps the best they can do is the disqualification of Donald John Trump from holding office in future.

This will happen only in the unlikely event that his party can overcome its own degeneracy for long enough to vote in sufficient numbers against their terrorist leader.

Even now the GOP struggles with that — even in the case of Donald

John Trump, so bad they impeached him twice.

Of course if it’s states dealing with existential menaces that you’re looking for, there’s this place called Ireland that has some useful experience in that domain. Indeed some would say we’re still living with our own little issues of violent nationalism — and that we can learn from watching where the Americans are going with this, just as they could learn from us.

Certainly our instincts tell us that American democrats may not know what to do with Donald

John Trump, but they know what they want to do. As the ‘conservative’ commentator David Frum tweeted on the night of January 6: Impeach. Remove. Indict. Incarcerate. Now.

Well they’ve done the impeach bit, but the removing and the indictment and the incarceration remain to be seen. And as for the now…

Well if he’s helping the police with their enquiries one minute after the Biden inauguration, that would be a start.

Astoundingly, today he is still the president. He’s left the latest big lie out there, which means he’s getting away with it as surely as our own Provos got away with it, by never acknowledging their big lie — which, broadly speaking, was that 30 years of violence was morally justified. Indeed they’ve never even moved towards admitting that, well, maybe the first three or four years were justified, the other 27, not so much.

This may provide an insight into why some of us aren’t that keen to ‘move on’ from the history of IRA/ Sinn Féin — since they have not retracted a word of their ideology, it’s a bit like letting bygones be bygones with Trump while he is still claiming the election was stolen, and the call to Ukraine was perfect.

Last week perhaps the best assessment of how to deal with this kind of badness was provided by security analyst Juliette Kayyem: “The path to safety is not in unity, but in total and complete isolation of a terror movement’s tactical and ideological leader… until then, Trump can have no second acts.”

In this light, Trump being evicted from social media can be seen as an American version of our old Section 31 broadcasting ban, though many who loved the Twitter ban would still consider Section 31 to be wrong, because... well, I’m sure they’ll work that one out to their own satisfaction.

Indeed, in a fantastic paradox, while Trump couldn’t give a fiddler’s about Northern Ireland — there was no percentage in it for him — the same cannot be said for the incoming administration.

Friends of Sinn Féin

USA were able to tweet a YouTube video of incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, with this uplifting message: “The road to Irish unity is more in reach today than at any time in memory... I wish you the best in your critical efforts to build support for a truly United Ireland.”

Impeach. Remove. Indict. Incarcerate. Now.

‘They know what they want to do: Impeach. Remove. Indict. Incarcerate. Now...’