This is just the beginning of America’s reckoning with Trump

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Accountability — legal, moral and political — is knocking at Donald Trump’s door. Call it justice or karma, a lifetime of sociopathic misbehavior is finally catching up with America’s artful dodger.

Don’t be fooled by the flimsy case brought by Manhattan Attorney General Alvin Bragg against Trump. The former president is in a world of legal trouble, and his 34-count felony indictment in New York is just the beginning of the reckoning he faces.

Bragg also spent several years investigating the Trump Organization’s dodgy business dealings, which resulted in the conviction of its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, on tax evasion charges.

Now he’s accusing Trump of falsifying business records to hide payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels, allegedly to buy her silence about a sexual affair. Some think Bragg did Trump a favor by focusing public attention on the most trivial of his misdeeds, lending credence to the Republican mantra that Democrats are criminalizing political disagreements .

In this view, Bragg actually empowered Trump to do what he does best – play victim to the evil forces – otherwise known as his political opponents – he says he wants to “destroy our country.”

But even if he is acquitted or convicted of only misdemeanors, his hometown arrest further mars a dismal legacy that includes at least six bankruptcies, an impressive catalog of more than 30,000 documented lies and falsehoods during his four years as president, two impeachments and his insane rejection of US voters in 2020. Now, he is also the first former president to be criminally indicted.

Over the next two years, Trump may find himself spending almost as much time in courtrooms as on the campaign trail. Besides the New York case, he is the target of three other criminal investigations.

Perhaps most dangerous for him is federal special prosecutor Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s ludicrous but violent scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The Justice Department (DOJ) issued twelve -dozens of subpoenas to former Trump officials and lawyers, focused on his attempt to strengthen Vice President Mike Pence for rejecting valid state election votes and replacing them with the records of fake Trump electors.

In Georgia, Fulton Country District Attorney Fani Willis asked a grand jury to look into voter fraud as well as Trump’s infamous post-election call to Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. In that call, Trump can be heard telling Raffensperger to “find 11,780” votes – more than the margin by which he lost the state.

Smith is also overseeing the DOJ’s investigation into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents he took home after leaving office. His inexplicable refusal to turn them all over to federal authorities triggered a dramatic FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

Finally, Trump’s hush-hush payment to Daniels isn’t the only sex scandal he’s facing. Later this month, she may be asked to testify in a civil lawsuit filed by writer E. Jean Carroll, who claims Trump raped her in a dressing room at a New York department store in the 1990s.

Some analysts worry that the legal dragnet tightening around Trump could lead Republicans to rally behind him in the nomination race. Maybe so, but it’s hard to see how a raft of new criminal charges will help Trump broaden his appeal in a general election.

Although he kisses NFTs himself in a superhero costume, Trump is no Superman in the polls. His electoral record consisted of a lopsided Electoral College win over Hillary Clinton, followed by a series of losses. In 2016, Trump won only 46 percent of the popular vote, 2.8 million less than Clinton. Four years later, he recorded 46.9 percent, more than 7 million behind Joe Biden.

The composite of polls by 538 websites shows that only 39.5 percent of US voters approve of Trump and a solid majority (54.2 percent) disapprove. And while Trump may be consolidating his lead with Gov. of Florida Ron DeSantis (R), he has lost touch with Republican voters in general, especially suburbanites and college-educated independents.

Although he continues to poke fun at some blue-collar whites, signs of Trump fatigue abound. A recent poll found that 61 percent of US voters do not want Trump to be president again, compared to 38 percent who do. More importantly, 64 percent of independents do not want Trump back in the White House, and 21 percent of Republicans say the same.

Also working against Trump is an angry backlash against radical Republican judges and legislatures trying to decriminalize abortion. In a reminder of how he has stacked the federal courts with radical anti-abortion ideologues, a judge in Texas last week ordered the US Food and Drug Administration to withdraw its approval of an abortion pill that has been used safely by US women for 23 years.

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Trump will almost certainly remain in the presidential race despite his unpopularity and even if he is hit with additional criminal charges. For one thing, his hunger for attention — and revenge — is insatiable.

Additionally, Trump knows that the only sure way to avoid accountability for his attacks on democracy, honesty and common decency is to be re-elected president, so he can issue a full pardon.

Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI).

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