Abby Zimet: Holy, Holy, Holy | Guilty As F-ck Of Absolutely Everything

Wow. Just like the “stable genius” and “very innocent man” predicted, it turns out “even Mother Teresa could not beat these charges” – ’cause she too evidently had Michael Cohen pay off an adult film star she banged – which is why a blessed jury of regular Americans found Trump guilty of all 34 charges in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the 2016 election so we wouldn’t know what an utter scumbag he is. Now, of course, we do. A good day.

Along with his endless squealing and whining about a witch hunt – aka a demand for accountability for just a few of his many crimes – Trump this week outlandishly compared himself to Mother Teresa, the Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning Catholic missionary canonized in 2016 for her humanitarian work with the poor in Kolkata, India. God knows she had her own issues: Skeptics called her “an emotional con artist,” anti-abortion zealot and outright sadist who clung to often-inadequate care of the sick and dying because their suffering brought them closer to God, just like Jesus would have wanted. Still, the Narcissist-in Chief adding her to the lofty, bonkers stable of luminaries he’s just like – Lincoln, Washington, Mandela, Elvis and of course Jesus, along with the more dubious Al Capone and Hannibal Lecter – was a bridge of cognitive dissonance too far. “I’m sorry,” said one baffled observer. “Did Trump pretty much just say Mother Theresa slept with Stormy Daniels and paid her off?” Yes. Yes, he did. Nothing to see here.

Starting out, he also – E.B. White wept – charged Judge Juan Merchan with “confliction.” As in, “I would say, in listening to the charges from the judge, who’s, as you know, very conflicted and corrupt, because of the confliction, very, very corrupt…” he blathered, before launching into the killer claim that, “Mother Teresa could not beat these charges.” “These charges are rigged. The whole thing is rigged. The whole country’s a mess…You have a trial like this where the judge is so conflicted he can’t breathe….It’s a disgrace. Mother Teresa could not beat those charges, but we’ll see. We’ll see how we do.” Well, now we know how he did. Watch Rachel Maddow and her straight-faced colleagues count down the guilty verdicts, 1 to 34. A moment for the ages. Each, for a class “E” felony, carries a maximum sentence of four years. Don’t hold your breath on prison for a first-time offender, but still: Now he’s a twice-impeached, legally adjudicated rapist with 34 felony convictions – who, hallelujah, can’t get a real estate license. 

“This is a very sad day for America,” the perp sulked. “The whole world is watching.” Yes, gleefully. It’s also “a very sad day for New York,” which will now lose “trillions” of dollars in business because he was “treated very, very badly.” Just like the massive outraged crowds, numbering five or six sad slouches, who daily converged at the courthouse to demand he be freed from “these fascists and these thugs that are destroying us (with) everything they do,” also from a jury of random New Yorkers, each braver than every slimy GOP lawmaker (sic) who trudged there in fealty. When the verdicts were announced, hear the cheers outside as the guilty counts roll in: “Count 1,2,3,4,5…12…up to.24…guilty on all 34 charges.” See the giddy headlines: “Queens Man Convicted.” Read the shiny new Wikipedia entry for Donald John Trump: “American politician, media personality, businessman and convicted felon.” And on behalf of Mother Teresa, see Franklin Graham’s plea yesterday to join him in prayer for DJT: “We pray that God’s will be done.”

First published in Common Dreams. Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Abby Zimet has written Common Dream’s Further column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning journalist, she moved to the Maine woods in the early 70s, where she spent a dozen years building a house, hauling water and writing before moving to Portland. Having come of political age during the Vietnam War, she has long been involved in women’s, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues.