Old News

Why yesterday's Trump conviction already feels dated.

It already feels like old news, doesn’t it? A former President of the United States, and the current Republican nominee for that same office, is now a convicted felon. By the time I went to bed last night, I was already over it.

Maybe it feels like old news because that’s, literally what it is. The nation has been preparing itself for this eventuality from the moment Citizen Trump first descended the goldish-plated escalator to announce his candidacy for the presidency. There has always been an eau de merde about Trump. The whiff of illegitimacy has trailed him since he muckety-mucked his way out of backwater Queens and into the chrome and disco-ball world of 70’s Manhattan with the intention of becoming, above all else, a star.

I can see Liza Minelli from here!

Over the decades, we’ve grown used to Trump’s frequent shuttling between courtrooms, suing somebody here, settling a case there. Donald Trump and court go together like Steve Bannon and bathtub meth. So it’s surprising to learn that this is not only his first criminal conviction, but his first criminal case. Wasn’t there something about Atlantic City? Or something about a lady on an airplane? Or… anything? How is it possible that Donald Trump has never before been a criminal defendant, despite decades of lies, fraud, and sexual assault allegations? Yet it’s the truth. Decades of skirting the law have finally caught up with the man who came of age in a city whose premiere mob boss was known as “The Teflon Don.” (Not for nothing, the man who earned that sobriquet, John Gotti, died in prison.)

So when this tawdry, legalistic case became the one that popped Trump’s criminal cherry, it felt almost deflating. Sure, the man was revealed, again, to be an inveterate liar and crook, but anybody with two eyes never had any trouble peering through those boxy blue suits to see the corpulent, flaccid man-child quivering underneath.Now that he’s been convicted, we have the satisfaction of seeing him exposed and humiliated thirty-four times over. But so what? Whatever satisfaction I may have felt in those initial few moments quickly receded, to be replaced with a gnawing sense that it doesn’t matter.

This is May, but a new month starts tomorrow, and there are many months still to come before the election. Months when the idea of a convicted felon running for president will become baked into the price of admission to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, the same way the Access Hollywood tape was priced into the 2016 election. It’s just another scandal in a life full of them. Yeah, the thinking will go, maybe he fudged some records, but wouldn’t you if you found some porn trying to screw up your run for the presidency?  Sure, you would!

It's what his supporters like about him. They like that he lives by id alone because it’s the way they wish they could conduct their own lives, clomping through the world without regard for what or whom they might trample in the process. To them, he represents freedom in the crudest interpretation of the word, the freedom to do whatever the hell you want, with whomever the hell you want, for whatever purpose you see fit. It’s adolescent anarchy, the dumbest possible interpretation of the greatest (supposed) feature of American life. If Trump gets spanked now and again in the service of freedom, so what?

Put another way, Trump is a Kid Rock song come to life. No wonder the two can’t help falling over each other.

In MAGA world’s interpretation, Trump has now joined the ranks of political prisoners; a friend of mine, Windsor Mann, tweeted that he spoke to a Republican friend who compared Trump to Nelson Mandela. Let me just repeat that for a moment – the friend compared Trump to Nelson fucking Mandela.

This is the win/win scenario Team Trump no doubt war-gamed from the moment Judge Merchan first gaveled his courtroom to order. An acquittal, to them, would obviously have been the best-case scenario, but a conviction is pretty good, too. A conviction means he gets to enwrap himself in Alito’s upside-down American flag. A conviction means he can nail himself to the biggest, best gold cross you’ve ever seen.

The original Teflon Don

What will change for Trump now? As far as I can tell, not a thing. He’s still running for president, still raising money, still inhaling two slices of chocolate cake when his guests only get one. Our Don’s Teflon may have been cracked, but it will take much more than a measly white collar criminal conviction to rid him from our lives.

So, sure, be happy that a jury of twelve citizens convicted the ol’ Turd Burglar on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Be happy that the man who has ruined so many lives will now have to report to a probation officer; my own tidings have been considerably gladdened. Not because I think anything will change, but because you have to take small satisfactions when they come, knowing less fortunate outcomes are surely just around the corner.

After all, they keep blowing up the Terminator and the damned thing keeps coming back. The American psyche demands it keeps coming back because the unrepentant ne’er-do-well is as much an American archetype as the rock-jawed do-gooder. Al Capone has always held a much larger place in the national imagination than Elliot Ness.

So, I don’t know what happens now, but I know I didn’t wake up celebrating. Trump has this country’s head so turned around that he’s going to spin his conviction as a win and about half the country is going to believe him. The other half, the nerdy, Elliot Ness half to which I belong, will continue to shake our heads and wonder at our fellow Americans. Like I said, old news.