CHARLOTTE, N.C. (TNS) — When President Bill Clinton took advantage of a woman young enough to be his daughter and then lied about it under oath, Democrats sighed: No big deal.
Committing perjury to conceal an affair was natural, even noble. Clinton had a family to protect. And those evil Republicans were just out to get him.
For better or worse, Democrats won that argument. The country largely agreed that adultery and concealment were part of life and that while Clinton should be scolded, he need not be removed from office or prosecuted.
They have selective amnesia now because a similar, but not nearly as serious, charge is the way to accomplish their most-cherished political objective: Get Donald Trump.
Trump is charged in New York with trying to conceal a decade-old dalliance with a pornography actress, an affair and cover-up that he denies. If you talk about it, be sure to use the solemn tone of the Weight Of History because Trump is the first president charged with a crime after leaving office.
All that proves, by the way, is that we just haven’t been watching them all that closely.
In Clinton’s case, at least there was a principle involved. Yes, Republicans had been after the Clintons for years, and they were just as politically opportunistic when given the chance. But perjury strikes at the heart of our legal system. If the president can lie about an affair under oath, anyone can lie in court about anything.
We haven’t seen the full indictments yet, but New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case appears to be using a New York state law to prosecute what would be a federal campaign violation. If that’s how the case is constructed, Bragg is well beyond his jurisdiction, and any law-respecting judge should immediately toss the charges.
The Democrats who have let Trump live rent-free in their heads for eight years don’t actually care if he bought Stormy Daniels’ silence. They don’t care if somehow that payment broke election law. Their gloating makes clear: The end justifies the means. They’ll want to remember that when some ambitious Republican prosecutor ( Ken Paxton, anyone?) scours his or her state’s laws and finds a way to charge Joe Biden over Ukraine or China.
Trump’s case is similar to that of a one-time Democratic darling, John Edwards. The former North Carolina senator and vice presidential candidate liked to spin a charming yarn about how he and wife Elizabeth ate at Wendy’s on their wedding anniversaries, despite fantastic wealth he earned as a lawyer. Then, Edwards would leave the stage, go back to his campaign hotel and see the videographer with whom he had a child on the side.
He paid her to be quiet, and federal prosecutors brought charges of campaign violations. A jury acquitted him on one, and the others were dismissed.
The public again picked up what Democrats were putting down in the late ‘90s. It’s normal to conceal an affair. If it helps your campaign, that’s a side benefit, not a crime.
This is not a defense of Trump. He lacks character and should be nowhere near the presidency. Rival Ron DeSantis handled this best when he mused that the case was weak but that he didn’t know “what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair.”
There are plenty of legitimate reasons Trump should be charged with offenses, including encouraging the Jan. 6 riots and trying to force a Georgia official to falsify election results.
But if your bank-shot argument is that distorting the law to get Trump is like getting Al Capone on tax evasion, please note that the tax evasion itself was an actual crime. Go watch “The Untouchables” and get back to me.
In the 1990s, Democrats shielded Clinton by noting that Republicans were overreaching. Everything in politics is cyclical, so those same arguments come from Trump supporters now — and from the man himself. When he told a Waco crowd that “they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you,” he was pulling directly from the Bill and Hillary Clinton 1998 Playbook.
Which, let me remind you, worked.
Bug-eyed Democrats have never understood what Trump backers like about him. The reasonable ones know he is unstable. But they see him as a symbol of a system that gives them the shaft while others get the gold. Trump takes classified documents and has his home raided. Biden stashes them next to the Turtle Wax he uses on his Corvette and it’s fine.
Most people forget this, but a Clinton-era national security official, Sandy Berger, went to the National Archives and stuffed documents in his clothes to try to hide the administration’s failure to deal with Osama bin Laden’s rise. He was fined and sentenced to community service.
No, Trump shouldn’t be above the law. But the law shouldn’t be twisted to satisfy the urge to nab Trump, either.
Edwards, who has mercifully faded from the scene, liked to campaign on the idea that there were Two Americas, one of privilege and one taken advantage of. Trump has plenty of privilege, but there can’t be two Americas when it comes to rule of law.
If a weak prosecution of Trump goes forward, millions will conclude that is exactly the case.
