Your correspondent is not sure whether it is harder to acknowledge that Donald Trump is innocent or harder to admit he’s guilty. The answer lies on which side of Trump you see.
He claims he will be arrested tomorrow on an indictment stemming from the Stormy Daniels hush money case. If it happens, it’s likely to be the first of a series of indictments.
For now, he is innocent of everything that dominates the speculation that flows from the mouths of the talking heads on left and right alike. The reported imminence of indictments has both sides showing signs of froth at the corners of their mouths.
But until a prosecutor makes the case without a shadow of doubt, Donald Trump is innocent and free to go wherever he wants to go.
If he is indicted, however, there is one way for him to be fitted for a one-piece, orange suit. Immediately.
It can happen if Trump continues to be Trump.
If he takes to Truth Social or at his tasteless planned rally in Waco, Texas on the thirtieth anniversary of the David Koresh compound tragedy, and goes full Trump against any judge that might by then be involved in any case that might by then be filed, said judge should waste no time finding him in contempt and sending him to jail.
It would not be surprising if he expands his attacks on prosecutors and former associates to include a judge. He is a man with no respect for authority who quickly could get a change of address if his lawyers can’t make him behave.
And if his arrest should materialize and his calls for protests trigger violence, again, it might be a good while before he sees his golf course again.
But regardless of the bombast and the disrespect we might get from this man, let us remember this simple fact:
He is innocent until he is proven guilty of whatever charge or charges he will face.
Even if he does not respect our system of government, the governed should respect it. Even those who cannot describe the depths of their disrespect for him must respect the system that will determine if he has exceeded the bounds of the law as much as he often seems to exceed the bounds of decency.
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