The echo of “guilty” had barely subsided from Acting Justice Juan Merchan’s courthouse before a new meme waddled its way toward centerstage.
“Felon.”
That was going to be the new meme of the moment.
The piece itself is mostly rabid anti-Trump boilerplate, but there is one bit that I hope people who still read the former paper of record will take to heart.
It comes at the end: “The jurors have delivered their verdict, as the voters will in November. If the Republic is to survive, all of us—including Mr. Trump—should abide by both, regardless of the outcome.”
Let’s see if the NY Times and its readers do, in fact, abide by the high-minded injunction come Nov. 5.
Watching the early progress of the new Democrats’ meme, I have grave doubts that the story of the 2024 election will unfold in a manner the NY Times and its readers will find acceptable.
Screaming “Felon”—or, for those who like their memes redundant, “convicted felon” (since a “felon” by definition has been convicted)—was supposed to smear, undermine, and cast doubt upon President Trump.
Mr. Schumer prefaced that remark with a sentence that contains at least three falsehoods.
“The undeniable fact,” quoth the senator, “is Donald Trump went through the same legal process that all Americans go through, he was tried according to the facts and the law, and he was found guilty by a jury of his peers.”
Except that (1) the process that President Trump endured was not the same judicial process that other Americans go through when they are tried.
On the contrary, everything about that prosecution was tailored for one man: President Trump.
(2) We don’t know that he was tried according to the facts and the law because we still don’t know what his alleged crime was.
I suspect that the effort to weaponize the word “felon” (or “convicted felon”) is going to have a hard time getting traction.
The problem is that the word “felon” has not only lost its sting, it’s quickly being adopted as a badge of honor.
Now, instead of trying to keep felons behind bars, he wants to see one particular felon in the White House.
Everywhere outside the corridors of the NY Times and the hallowed halls of academia, people are rushing to support President Trump.
Far from recoiling from the news that he has been convicted of multiple felonies, they embrace the word.
One sign of the public’s support is the extraordinary outpouring of cash that has flowed into President Trump’s campaign coffers.
I write 2 1/2 days after the verdict. By this morning, he had raised more than $70 million in small donations, more than $200 million including major gifts.
That’s 2 1/2 days.
In fact, I suspect that the Democrats have made a major miscalculation in thinking that calling President Trump a felon is going to hurt him.
First, he castigated the painters around Henri Matisse as “Les Fauves,” the “wild beasts,” because he thought their paintings lacked refinement.
Then, he disparaged painters such as Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso for filling their work with “little cubes.”
The names stuck, and thus, “Fauvism” and “Cubism” were born.
Unfortunately for Vauxcelles, both the painters and their patrons adopted the intended slurs as honorifics.
When you are dealing with a state that appears to deploy lawfare to destroy its opponents, appeals to the “rule of law” or deploying scare words such as “felon” no longer get any traction.
Remember, the word “lawfare” is patterned on the word “warfare.”
It describes a process of political combat that perverts and distorts the kinetic elements of the law not to enforce the law but to weaponize it.
The public seems to have cottoned on to this subterfuge, which is why I very much doubt that applying the word “felon” to President Trump will do him any damage at the polls.
On the contrary, I suspect it will aid him.
Thus, to adapt Shakespeare, does “the whirligig of time bring in his revenges.”
