First, it is far from certain that he will be sentenced to prison. Even if it is a criminal matter, it is a “minor” crime – even invented, say the pro-Trump people! — compared to the other, much more serious charges against him: taking top secret documents with him to his Mar-a-Lago residence when he left the White House, his role in the attack on the Capitol on June 6 January 2021 closely linked to his refusal to recognize the victory of Joe Biden, his participation in a conspiracy to invalidate the results of the election in the state of Georgia.
Unfortunately, we will probably not know the expected verdicts in these cases until after the presidential election. Trump’s lawyers have created all kinds of legal traps, many far-fetched, to postpone these trials indefinitely.
Uncertain future
Americans will therefore go to vote without knowing whether candidate Trump, if elected, will find himself behind bars during his mandate. By then, the United States Supreme Court will undoubtedly rule on presidential immunity: many fear that conservative judges – some from the far right – will free him from all these charges. How can we not see that things are very bad among our neighbors to the south?
It is therefore not impossible that immunity would be granted to him for actions taken during his presidency. In 2016, when he told the world that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue in New York and not lose any voters, we all thought he was delusional. Today, we are less sure.
Donald Trump was found guilty of all 34 counts against him (Seth Wenig/AP Archives)
Revenge wanted
Trump is angry, very angry to have been found guilty by a jury of his peers, a case fabricated by Joe Biden, he keeps repeating, of which he would be the innocent victim. For a guy who wants to project the image of a strong man, he likes to present himself as a victim, in other words as a loser, a “loser» as he himself would say. Strange, right?
The Republican Party plans to make the Democrats pay dearly for Trump’s guilt: some are talking about stopping funding the State of New York (nothing less) but above all about prosecuting elected officials and prosecutors opposed to Trump for completely invented crimes. coins, just to annoy them. It is also a question of investigating the Democratic members of the various committees of the American administration in search of the slightest flaw, in short of seeking revenge, a very funny way of operating in a rule of law, framed by a robust constitution. .
None of our business
I hear you sigh: what does all this concern us? It’s the Americans’ business, we have nothing to do with it. Although our parliamentary democracy protects us from the numerous abuses of power detected in the United States, our geographic and cultural proximity – we are North Americans whether we like it or not – requires us to be cautious. Authoritarianism is on the rise, especially since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Who knows how far strong-arm tactics can intrude?
Canada and Quebec are not fertile grounds for dictatorship, but there are people who dream of leaders who would act like Trump, a guy who flouts conventions, defies norms and even laws to lead the country with a Iron hand. The idea that autocracy is superior to democracy is gaining ground in many parts of the world. We see it even in Europe, a continent which has suffered so much from the authoritarian ambitions of enemies of freedom, whether it be Hitler’s dream of world domination or Soviet control of Eastern countries.
The magazine The Economist recalls in its latest delivery that only a quarter of Americans say they are satisfied with democracy. I would like to know how we see democracy in these troubled times. Do we also want populist leaders who can control the supposed elites? And I’m not talking about Pierre Poilievre who may well copy certain habits of Donald Trump in his way of presenting things to Canadians but, seed of a dictator, he is not. While Donald Trump dreams of it.
Yes, it is too early to rejoice in Donald Trump’s discomfiture in the New York court. The verdict and sentence imposed will serve as fuel in his quest for absolute power, he who dreams of becoming an American Putin or Xi Jinping, a dictator before whom the people will bow down – whether they like it or not – because he will have been sold the idea that an authoritarian government knows better than anyone what is good for it.
