MCCAIN: Left wants to get Trump… it'll make him president again

MEGHAN MCCAIN: If faithless liberals just got out of the way, Americans will vote Trump into oblivion. But these left-wing zealots insist on corrupting the system to get Don by any means necessary… and it’ll put him back in the White House

As of Saturday morning, former President Donald Trump was exactly where he wanted to be – on the top of websites, plastered across TV screens and trending on Twitter.

He’s at his best playing the victim.

After more than a week of leaks from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and other anonymous sources, it appears that New York prosecutors are planning to indict Trump on charges related to his alleged $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Trump denies having an affair with Daniels, but her story nonetheless made for dramatic gossip fodder during the 2016 presidential campaign and beyond.

In fact, Trump’s one-time fixer-turned-favored MSNBC guest Michael Cohen went to prison for financial crimes related to his coordination of the payment. And Daniels’ own attorney, the once ever-present media creep Michael Avenatti, went to prison for his own unrelated misdeeds.

As always, Trump, the master of public relations, got ahead of the news to twist it to his benefit.

Ripping the prosecution, he thundered in all caps on Truth Social that the case is, ‘BASED ON AN OLD & FULLY DEBUNKED (BY NUMEROUS OTHER PROSECUTORS!) FAIRYTALE.’

And as any good producer would, he teased ahead to the real drama. His potential arrest!

‘THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!,’ he wrote.

Now it’s highly unlikely that the former president will be perp-walked in legs irons in front of the cameras to a Manhattan precinct. Even the far-left progressive D.A. Alvin Bragg isn’t that stupid. And he’s pretty stupid.

As always, Trump, the master of public relations, got ahead of the news to twist it to his benefit.

And as any good producer would, he teased ahead to the real drama. His potential arrest! ‘THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!,’ he wrote.

Because guess what? Trump is largely right!

This apparent indictment is a joke. Not only does it face a massive uphill climb to a conviction, but it also undermines the American legal system and will likely help Trump in his campaign to be president.

Now, do not get me wrong, I despise Trump. His divisiveness tears at the social fabric of America and as a supreme narcissist he puts his own interests above those of the nation.

I am also friendly with Ms. Daniels. I interviewed her several years ago on ‘The View’ and she wrote about the experience in her book.

Daniels said that she had ‘crazy respect’ for me, because I did not unquestioningly believe her story like the rest of the mainstream media. But I maintained an open mind and today believe that she did have an affair with Trump for which he paid her to keep her mouth shut.

Yet here’s the thing – my hatred of Trump does not blind me to the reality that paying hush money is not a crime.

Read the opinions of today’s most influential legal commentators and you’ll realize that this pending indictment would be a travesty of justice.

George Washington University Law professor and legal scholar Jonathan Turley points out, while the prosecution may be ‘politically popular’ among Trump’s critics, it is ‘legally pathetic.’

As Turley explains it, the case faces massive hurdles. First, if prosecutors have any hope of convicting Trump they must prove that his payment to Daniels was a campaign expense, and thus, a campaign finance violation. They must convince a jury that Trump wrote the check to benefit his 2016 political campaign, and not to avoid public humiliation, save his marriage or shield his children from embarrassing revelations about their father.

It’s similar to a case that federal prosecutors brought against former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards – and lost.

Second, the Manhattan district attorney likely doesn’t even have jurisdiction to bring this case.

As made clear by the Edwards prosecution – campaign finance violations are federal offenses. Bragg’s predecessor already rejected bringing this case on those very grounds.

Another legal heavyweight, Alan Dershowitz has also weighed in. He writes, ‘After spending months searching the criminal code for a law that Mr. Trump might be accused of violating, Mr. Bragg has apparently landed on a highly questionable campaign contribution provision that has never before been used in a comparable situation.’

But both of these legal scholars have one thing that is in short supply in America in this day and age – integrity.

They know that no matter what one’s private feelings are – it is wrong to manipulate the criminal justice system to target one’s political opponents.

I am friendly with Ms. Daniels. I interviewed her several years ago on ‘The View’ and she wrote about the experience in her book.

Now it’s highly unlikely that the former president will be perp-walked in legs irons in front of the cameras to a Manhattan precinct. Even the far-left progressive D.A. Alvin Bragg isn’t that stupid. And he’s pretty stupid.

Guess who else may have inappropriately used campaign funds in the 2016 presidential election – Hillary Clinton. There is no doubt that Clinton’s campaign used intermediaries to pay former British spy Christoper Steele to compile the phony, debunked Russia Dossier, which plunged the country into years of unnecessary and divisive confusion. But I don’t hear the outcry to prosecute her?

Maybe I would if she ran for president again. Believe me – I don’t put it past Republicans either.

It’s not difficult to see how a society that spirals into retaliation, selective prosecutions and revenge ends in disaster. For Democrats who claim to be so worried about the future of the democracy, they might want to think twice about corrupting the legal system.

No, this case is not about justice. It is about getting Trump by any means necessary – and it will backfire.

By Saturday afternoon, Trump posted on Truth Social again.  Surely, not missing an opportunity to capitalize.

‘WE JUST CAN’T ALLOW THIS ANYMORE. THEY’RE KILLING OUR NATION AS WE SIT BACK & WATCH. WE MUST SAVE AMERICA! PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!’ 

Trump is responsible for his own words.  But why give him this opportunity?

Just as I wrote in the aftermath of the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago last summer, if they don’t have the goods on Trump, then his detractors will embolden him, and his supporters will view it as proof of a corrupt, partisan legal system.

Trump’s base voters believe – and not without reason – that an entrenched, unaccountable elite in Washington is out to get him. They’re justified in this belief, and frankly, I become more sympathetic everyday to that sentiment.

Months after the Mar-a-Lago raid, we still don’t know what Trump had that necessitated an unprecedented operation into the home of a former president. However, we do have reason to believe that President Joe Biden (not to mention Vice President Mike Pence) was guilty of similar acts. Biden received a kid-glove treatment, while Trump felt the heavy hand of the FBI.

Now we’re supposed to believe that Trump’s payoff to Daniels is so profoundly criminal that state prosecutors are justified in inventing a new legal precedent to indict a former president for the first time in history. Don’t they realize how ridiculous that sounds?

The left didn’t manage to pin him as a Russian plant. They couldn’t impeach him, no matter how many times they tried. They failed to prove that he directed an insurrection, though he rightfully wears the dishonor of the January 6th riots around his neck, so it’s on to the next attempt.

Trump’s one-time fixer-turned-favored MSNBC guest Michael Cohen went to prison for financial crimes related to his coordination of the payment.

The irony of this is that even if Trump is convicted (which I would not put that past NYC’s politicalized judges and juries) it won’t prevent him from being elected.

Believe it or not – even a convicted felony can become President of the United States.

‘Oh, absolutely, I won’t even think about leaving,’ Trump told reporters at CPAC in early March, when they asked him about a potential indictment.

‘Probably, it’ll enhance my numbers, but it’s a very bad thing for America. It’s very bad for the country,’ he said.

He’s absolutely right. This phony prosecution only fuels distrust in institutions, creates sympathy for Trump and undermines the mainstream media, when they cheer it along.

The only way that America will be done with Trump is by defeating him at the ballot box – again and again and again.

And actually, America is doing pretty well at that. Trump lost in the 2018 midterms, the 2020 election and the 2022 midterms.

If these faithless liberals would just get out the way, we can finish him off in 2024. But they keep throwing him a lifeline. They just can’t quit Trump.

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