The ultimate get-Trump plan
President Joe Biden isn’t alone in being a little long in the tooth. Donald Trump, born in 1946, is getting up there in years too.
The grim actuarial reality is that Trump just might check out before he can be declared guilty of this or that malseveration.
And so, it would be prudent to make arrangements for Trump to receive the Pope Formosus treatment. About which, a quick history review.
In the year of our Lord 897, Formosus, then well-deceased, was exhumed and put on trial for crimes against the Church.
His successor and archenemy, Pope Stephen VI, summoned a Vatican synod to try the dead pope, whose corpse was propped up on the papal throne and found guilty as all get-out, exactly as charged.
Formosus’ three boney fingers on his right hand were then cut off, lest he attempt to bestow postmortem benedictions, and his remains were disposed of in Rome’s Tiber River.
Given the glacial pace of our jurisprudence these days, and given the evident difficulty of making a case that sticks against the wily, evasive Trump, preparations surely need to be made for Trump’s posthumous prosecution.
Just in case. Otherwise, he might escape “justice” by shuffling off his mortal coil.
It may take a while longer yet to find an offense on which Trump can finally be nailed. Previous attempts, which looked promising at first, fizzled. Two impeachment efforts collapsed due to flimsy and/or doctored evidence.
A third, current attempt to collar Trump for the death-penalty offense of treason — based on alleged technical violations of record-keeping regulations — looks to have doubtful legal footing.
So does an endless, on-going effort to indict him as the mastermind of the Jan. 6 “insurrection.”
And myriad private and governmental civil lawsuits pending against Trump grind on and on, in slow motion.
In any event these cases will, at best, result in fines, which he’d likely keep at bay through endless appeals. Or maybe he’d evade the fines altogether through bankruptcy maneuvers, at which he proved adept during his Atlantic City casino days.
Arrangements for the posthumous prosecution of Trump would acknowledge an undeniable truth: Trump is the best darn thing that ever happened to the modern Democratic Party. He has become, for Democrats, the Essential Distraction.
If Trump didn’t exist, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, not to mention the View and the Washington Post, would have to invent him.
All misfortunes and catastrophes, it turns out, have a handy, one-word explanation: Trump!
— Tsunamic crime surges? Trump!
— Plunging stock market? Trump!
— Skyrocketing gas, oil and food prices? Trump!
— Global warming? Trump!
— Fentanyl crisis? Trump!
— Bungled Covid pandemic? Trump!
— Illegal alien stampede at southern border? Trump!
— All forms of bigotry including rampant, systemic, omnipresent white supremacy? Trump!
— Plunging educational achievement scores? Trump!
— Soaring public debt and depleting retirement accounts? Trump!
— Socially and economically deteriorating, oneparty cities? Trump!
— Disastrous military meddling in foreign quagmires? Trump!
— Acid reflux heartburn, joint pain, constipation and warts?
Trump, Trump, Trump and Trump!
Here’s news that Trump’s insatiable ego should welcome: America needs Donald Trump now more than ever.
Without him, who’re we gonna blame?
We’re gonna need Trump even after he’s gone. Thus the urgency of arranging, as with Formosus, for Trump’s posthumous prosecution.
There is, however, an unsettling historical footnote to Pope Stephen’s prosecution of the dead Formosus.
Stephen didn’t have long to savor the guilty verdict over his archenemy. Soon thereafter Stephen’s adversaries gained the upper hand. They dispatched him by strangulation.
Such seems to be the nature of vengeful, give-noquarter politics.