Too Slow for the Times

Of course I want Donald Trump to be charged and found guilty of the various crimes he committed since his rise to power. That's because I believe he committed multiple crimes, and he should be held to the same standard as other people, if they had done the same acts.

I don't want him to be indicted or charged because he's a Republican, or he's Donald Trump, or because he was president. I didn't want him to ever be president. I wish he'd never ridden down the gold escalator in 2015.

When one of the many legal talking heads on MSNBC says that Trump is innocent until proven guilty, and the process will take a long time, and there will be appeals — all true — it makes me remember that none of this should have been allowed to happen.

Trump should have been barred from office because of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. His business dealings, not least of them the Trump Hotel, were in clear violation. (As belated evidence, bookings at the hotel from foreign governments and influence groups have plummeted since the Trump Organization sold the hotel after he left office.)

But no court would consider the emoluments case in a preemptive way, and the slow-motion, post-hoc case that was filed has now been ruled moot because Trump is out of office, which is ridiculous. He has filed to run again, duh, and it was fairly obvious that he would.

Our legal system is not cut out to prevent much from happening, or to deal with things in the amount of time that it needs to, as I've said before. That made some sense in the 18th century, but it makes a lot less sense now.

All sorts of bad actors take advantage of this, like Trump with his history of appeals and delays. The Roy Cohn school of law is made to undermine the judicial system. 

One final point about Trump, which I know is not original. 

It seems obvious that he would be happier if he had never been president, or even made a serious run for the office. (The dog that caught the car and all that.) But he's a twisted narcissistic man, so I don't know if happiness is a thing that he can feel.