On the one hand, Donald Trump, the former and perhaps future president of the United States, seems uniquely hapless. He lost an election unlike any other before -- one in which insecure mail-in balloting proliferated, many states made constitutionally dubious changes to their voting procedures, and Big Tech put a decisive and perhaps outcome-altering thumb on the scale. Even worse, Trump last year became the first former president to be criminally indicted -- four separate times.
Tough luck, for sure. But on the other hand, there is one thing that should provide no small amount of solace to Trump and his many supporters. As we are seeing unfold across the country in real time, Trump is truly blessed with the best enemies. For all of Trump's bad luck, he is also aided right now by some very, very good luck.
Consider some of the current biggest enemies of Trump, as he marches through the Republican presidential primary and looks toward a general election rematch with President Joe Biden.
First, there is Biden himself. The nominal president of the United States is an indescribable embarrassment to the nation -- physically corpse-like, palpably senile, chronically misinformed, utterly lacking in judgment and generally clueless as to where he is and what words emanate from his mouth. He is a disgrace to his office, and it is a shocking public disservice that his wife and handlers even permit him to seek reelection in such a debilitated state. Special counsel Robert Hur's report filed last week, in which he explained that one reason he is not recommending criminal charges against Biden is because he is mentally unfit to stand trial, is an astonishing open admission of the harrowing reality Democratic Party elites have frantically tried to hide.
Second, there is former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Trump's final competitor in the Republican presidential primary. Haley is the very embodiment of all that was wrong with the pre-Trump GOP: She is a laissez-faire fundamentalist out of touch with Republican voters' concerns and priorities, a strident neoconservative personally corrupted by the military-industrial complex (viz., Boeing), an enthusiast for mass immigration who is guided not by voters' clearly expressed desire to close the border but by corporations' desire to keep it open, and a coward when it comes to the righteous prosecution of the culture war against the forces of civilizational arson. Haley's caricaturable nature makes her a perfect foil for Trump.
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Third, there is Alvin Bragg, the Soros-funded lawyer in New York City now prosecuting Trump on the laughable grounds that "hush money" payments ex-Trump fixer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 presidential election amounted to falsified business records in furtherance of ... well, something. Bragg's indictment never actually stipulates what the records were falsified in furtherance of -- and Bragg needs an additional crime in order to 1) overcome the falsified recording crime's three-year statute of limitations and to 2) enhance to a felony what would otherwise be a mere misdemeanor. Bragg's is a remarkably frivolous case, and the fact that this is how he expends prosecutorial resources in a metropolis now in the throes of a generational crime epidemic makes him another ideal foe for Trump.
Finally, there is Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis, whose courtroom meltdown this week, and the likelihood that she lied in court about the timing of her extramarital affair with her own appointed special prosecutor, has crystallized what already seemed likely: The Georgia prosecution, which once seemed the most dangerous of Trump's four criminal cases, is imploding. Willis came across as highly unprofessional during Thursday's hearing on her possible disqualification from the case. She snapped at Trump's attorneys, and she was warned numerous times by the presiding judge. At this point, Trump's Georgia case is not reaching a verdict before the election; the only questions are whether a trial commences at all and whether Willis ends up being the one to go to jail instead of Trump or his codefendants.
It is often said that it is better to be lucky than good. Donald Trump could still be derailed by special counsel Jack Smith's federal probe in Washington, D.C, and he is about to get smacked by an unjust verdict in New York Attorney General Letitia James' civil fraud case. But everywhere else Trump looks, Lady Luck seems to be shining.
To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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