Hitting Trump's pockets is only the first step

Hitting Trump's pockets is only the first step
Booting Donald Trump off the ballot and fining the Trump Organization into oblivion won't make MAGA disappear

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 20, 2024 6:00AM (EST)


(Salon) You won’t like Donald Trump when he gets angry – and right now he is very, very angry. If you were fined the equivalent of more than 400 million dollars for business fraud and other financial crimes, as Trump was by a New York judge on Friday, you would be very angry too.

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The unfortunate reality is that Friday’s 355-million-dollar judgment against Donald Trump (and the E. Jean Carroll verdict for more than 80 million dollars before that), as well as his still upcoming criminal and civil trials will only serve to fuel his followers’ fantasies of persecution – which means they will further embrace even more political violence, terrorism, and thuggery as necessary means of self-preservation.

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I have been of at least two minds about Trump’s criminal and civil trials and what they mean (or not) for the country’s democracy crisis and the growing reality of a 21st-century American fascist order. Donald Trump should be held responsible under the law for his many crimes against democracy and punished to the maximum extent allowed. This includes a very long prison sentence and being barred from office per the 14th Amendment. However, I am also deeply worried that these civil and criminal trials against Trump for financial fraud, hush money and stealing classified documents are sideshows and distractions from what should be the main focus: putting him and his confederates on trial for the crimes of Jan. 6 and the larger plot to end democracy.

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My greatest worry and anxiety about Trump and his legal saga are that he and the MAGA movement and the Republican fascists and the other “conservatives” need to be resoundingly defeated by the American people at the ballot box — repeatedly. Putting Trump in prison and/or forcing him off the ballot does not accomplish this goal. Moreover, such an outcome may instead fuel a type of neofascist Lost Cause narrative, which in the end will be a Pyrrhic victory for America’s pro-democracy forces. ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/02/20/hitting-pockets-is-only-the-first-step/