The Inevitability of Donald Trump Finding Out

and what it means for the immediate future

Maddie McGarvey/NYT

This past weekend brought a new development in the prosecution of Donald Trump— one that raises a strong possibility that the former president may have finally crossed a line that will result in his detention. After being warned by the judge overseeing the January 6th prosecution not to threaten witnesses or public officials, Donald Trump took to TruthSocial and did exactly that.

The immediate response was a motion for a protective order, filed by the Special Counsel, that would prohibit materials disclosed to the defense from being discussed by Trump online or anywhere else. The judge ordered his attorneys to respond by 5 p.m. ET today. When those lawyers asked for more time, that request was denied.

And in the interim, Trump again took to TruthSocial to incite violence and propose another insurrection.

These are not the actions of a man who is used to consequences, nor one who is able to control himself in the face of his own potential imprisonment.

If he keeps it up– and we all know there’s a certain way in which he can’t help himself, because he needs his narcissistic supply– he will be placed in pretrial detention, in jail, until the trial begins.

And we will know a trial date within the next few weeks, because the judge has indicated she intends to set a trial date at the first pretrial hearing later on this month.

Donald Trump, it seems, is finally going to do some finding out.

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Meanwhile, in the background, it seems more and more likely that Trump will be the Republican nominee in 2024, as there is no other candidate who seems capable of challenging him, desperate as they all are to have his frothy-mouthed white nationalist base in their own folds.

It’s a crazy prospect– that one of the candidates for president in 2024 may be in prison by the time of the election.

And yet, without the ability to campaign, to access social media, to do, well, anything outside of prison walls, Trump will be impotent, and little more than a figurehead that the GOP props up.

Even after all these years as a commentator and organizer, I still find myself more than a little stunned that the GOP doesn’t seem to have any real Plan B.

How are they going to hold a convention next July with an incarcerated candidate, hypothetically?

How is the debate stage going to look?

All rational political thought is long gone in the GOP, I know, but there is still a level of incredulity to where we find ourselves eight years from that infamous descent on the escalator.

What I keep coming back to is what a laughing stock America will look like given this sort of a result. Thank goodness we have some stability in the Oval Office now, and on our side of the fence, as we prepare for what will doubtless be an absolute circus.

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None of this is to say that the story of Trumpism in America is over. Far from it. I’ve actually come to expect further political violence, whether lone wolf or organized, from Trump’s supporters, dwindling though that part of the base may be after more than 1000 January 6th prosecutions to date. 

However, what I have wanted all along, and what so many of us have wanted since that fateful night in November 2016, is some measure of accountability for a man who has broken the law his entire life, and brought our democracy to the brink of destruction.

It seems we may finally be on the verge of getting it.