Brute force is not unleashed in vain. The effects are transformative. It changes the course of things. A single shot opens up a whole horizon of uncertainty. For someone fighting for power, coming out unscathed from an attack changes their life. And even more so if they know how to pose cleverly in a photo as providential as the shot that was aimed at their head. Saved by a slight gesture or perhaps by the breeze that diverted the trajectory, that minimal distance between the ear and the brain acted like the holy oils with which a Trumpist god anointed the chosen one of destiny and history.
All he needed was that gift from heaven, which adds to the numerous gifts from the judges and from his adversary, who is increasingly diminished by the ailments of age. Complete impunity for his past misdeeds is within his grasp. The sentence imposed by Manhattan judge Juan Merchan for the 34 crimes of falsifying documents to cover up the bribery of the pornographic actress Stormy Daniels during the electoral campaign still weighs on his immediate future. It is four years in prison at most, but circumstances may advise the magistrate to lighten the form of the sentence so as not to hinder his triumphant electoral campaign.
In this case, too, the Supreme Court judges have lent him a helping hand. Thanks to the recognition of an almost absolute and lifelong immunity, his defense has appealed against the guilty verdict, in case the evidence to convict him were covered as official acts by the new presumption of immunity that protects him. After the attempted assassination, Judge Merchan will find it more difficult to impose a harsh sentence in September, just five weeks before the polls. It is not easy to put behind bars a criminal with charisma and a presidential future.
More expeditiously, Aileen M. Cannon, an inexperienced Florida judge appointed by Trump himself, has shelved the most dangerous case facing the former president. There were 40 crimes of illegal removal of documents classified as secret, committed after leaving the presidency and, therefore, without coverage of the recently granted immunity. This judge has found a dubious philosopher’s stone in the dissenting opinion of the very conservative Supreme Court judge Clarence Thomas on the ruling on immunity. It seems as if both were coordinated, because it is very likely that they are coordinated.
Thomas is a prime example of neglecting the essential appearance of bias, given his wife’s Trumpist militancy and the gifts he received from billionaire supporters of the real estate magnate. It is not surprising, therefore, that he has challenged the constitutionality of the appointment of prosecutor Jack Smith to pursue federal crimes committed by Trump in relation to the assault on the Capitol, interference in the electoral vote and the violation of official secrets. In this way, he will at least achieve the delay of this process and the complication of all the others, since without a special prosecutor, there would be no case.
Under such a protective astral and judicial configuration and such an alarming paralysis of the democrats, once consecrated as the leader of the populist extreme right of the 21st century, King Donald attracts like a talisman the Patriots for Europe, the parliamentary group sponsored by Viktor Orbán, Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini and Santiago Abascal. With the significant addition of a lieutenant like JD Vance, more Trumpist than Trump and as Putinist as Putin, the appeasement and end of the war at the expense of Ukraine is already at the top of the agenda in Washington.
