The *Asterisk* Presidency

I’m not going to bore you with a long recitation of the evidence, or even enter into a prolonged debate with the disbelievers.  There are some who think the earth is flat as they fly east to China and continue east to get back, and still don’t manage to fall off their discoid planet. Others think there is no global warming as they swelter in the third or fourth or fifth year of highest temperatures ever recorded, watch chunks of ice the size of Delaware calve off the Antarctic ice shelf, and watch hurricanes and typhoons with winds so high they require a new category to even describe.  I don’t want to talk to those people.  It’s like banging your head on a wall: It feels really good when you stop.

For the rest of us, it’s not a matter of proving things beyond a reasonable doubt.  It’s not a murder trial.  The criterion is rather a preponderance of evidence, and by that measure, does any sane person seriously doubt that Donald Trump and his inner circle were in cahoots with the Russians to get him elected?  There are connections upon connections tying Trump to Russian oligarchs, businesses, banks, and officials.  Whether it’s Mike Flynn or Paul Manifort or Donald Jr., they all seem to have more than a little Stolichnaya flowing in their veins.

The latest revelations over the Donald Trump Jr. emails are the proverbial smoking gun. It’s right there in black and white, plain as day:  The “Russian government effort” to elect Donald Trump and defeat Hillary Clinton.  Is any part of that unclear or ambiguous? Those emails are just the frosting on the cake of Trump obstructing justice by firing the director of the FBI and then admitting on television before god and man and everyone that he did it because he was tired of the “Russia thing”.

So it’s really not a question of guilt or innocence at this juncture. We’re well past that. Seventeen US intelligence agencies stated unequivocally that Russia interfered with the US presidential election with the clear intent to put Donald Trump in the Oval Office. We now know beyond any shadow of a doubt that the highest ranking individuals in his campaign were aware of the effort, did nothing to thwart it, and even encouraged the Russians to proceed. The various times these individuals outright lied about their knowledge and involvement are too numerous count.

Nah…they’re guilty, guilty as sin. Given enough time, every bit of the evidence will be made clear, every midnight phone call and clandestine contact and every cash infusion through offshore accounts.  But we don’t need that.  There’s more than enough now to impeach Trump and probably imprison a goodly number of his minions.  So what are we going to do about it?

Well, I know what we’d do if Trump was the coach of an NCAA team that was caught cheating.  Just punishing the coach with future suspensions and scholarship restrictions and recruiting limitations wouldn’t be enough.  The wins that had been the product of cheating would be vacated, and the championship game would be reversed, giving the trophy to the second place team. That would be the way to reinforce the notion that “cheaters never prosper”.

And in a fair world, that’s what would happen here. Hillary Clinton would be awarded the presidency that she actually won in the popular vote and would have won in the electoral college if not for Russian interference. Neil Gorsuch would be removed from the Supreme Court, his nomination also having been the product of the cheating. All the regulations that Trump has summarily removed in the last six months, including things like protecting rivers and streams from mountaintop mining would be reinstated forthwith.

And like the home run kings of the steroid era, the Trump presidency would forever be marked with an asterisk, denoting that his record would always be regarded as the product of cheating.  But that’s not how it’s going to go, is it?