The executioner’s clock ticked. The felon-elect paced the floor. Surely the Supreme Court would deliver a reprieve.
When only four of his man-servants – Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch — voted his way, he imagined a grim future that was already assured: no jail for his crime, no probation, no community service, not even 30 minutes in an “I’m a crook” sandwich sign.
Aggrieved that he was to face this — the softest pronouncement in penal history — he took to his chosen social medium in caramel-apple fury:
“For the sake and sanctity of the presidency, I will be appealing this case, and am confident that JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL.”
The next day after his “sentencing,” he was still furious. The judge had sent no flowers, not even an Edible Arrangement. One more affront from a justice system gamed so that he — and only he among all lawbreakers ever convicted — would face no music at all.
“Sanctity of the presidency”: four words that have defined and guided this man since his first sanctification by the Electoral College in 2016.
The sanctity of the presidency is what was on his mind, for instance, when from the resolute desk he signed checks to shut up a porn star.
Sanctity was a guiding principle behind his winking arrangement with the National Enquirer to harvest and erase all comparable matters about which prospective voters — and his loving wife — might hear.
Sanctity was on his mind when ketchup flew in the presidential dining room, and on Jan. 6, 2021, when he watched rioters deface the Capitol and pummel brave people defending it. He did nothing until later by video when he sent his love to them. (Then he blamed Nancy Pelosi.)
In service of sanctity, when informed those rioters wanted to hang his vice president, he reportedly said, “So what?”
It was all about the highest principles of governing when he told his vice president to disregard the principles of governing and ignore what voters had done. Laws are for pussies. Or what’s immunity for?
It was the sanctity of the office that, after his defeat, guided him to – until a threatened walk-out in the Justice Department – appoint a no-name to head DOJ and to lie that massive voter fraud had been confirmed.
In sanctity’s name he tried to get the Georgia secretary of state to “find” just enough votes to give him the state.
In sanctity’s name he pressured state election boards to not certify certifiable results.
In sanctity’s name the loser-elect would defame poll workers, court personnel, whole cities with large minority populations, and any state that didn’t award its electors to him.
Sanctity of the presidency was on the minds of non-electors who met surreptitiously to sign their names as electors for the purpose of causing utter confusion in the loser’s quest to retain office.
Sanctity and its pursuit caused the Dethroned One to tell the National Archives and then the FBI to bug off when they sought to regain highly classified documents.
“All political,” he said about all his criminal indictments, neglecting to say that all were authorized by grand juries – average citizens reviewing, you know, facts.
Let us not forget his impeachments, starting with the sanctified moment when in a phone call to Ukraine’s president he attempted to use the presidency and critical military aid to extort an incriminating lie about his chief political rival.
Now he prepares to return to office, warming up to the task by making irresponsible and loony statements about a horrific ongoing disaster in detestably blue California and calling his felony convictions a “despicable charade.”
“For the sake and sanctity of the presidency” — he is going to pick up exactly where he left off.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.