To the vast majority of people, the media’s nonstop coverage of former President Donald Trump‘s trial was merely tedious. Names such as Michael Cohen, David Pecker, and Stormy Daniels meant nothing to someone struggling to afford groceries and gas. The few with any comprehension of the case were baffled as to why it was such a big deal in the first place.
After all, It wasn’t news to anyone that Trump paid off a porn star in exchange for silence, nor that he went to great lengths to keep his sexcapades out of the tabloids. Such behavior would seem to be standard operating procedure for celebrities and high-profile figures in government and industry. The media wanted people to be shocked by the tawdriness of it all, but the recent misdeeds of powerful men benumbed the masses to such episodes.
Unsavory as it may have been, the Daniels affair never approached the moral degeneracy of former Democratic mega donor Harvey Weinstein’s prolonged terrorization of women or former Democratic mega activist Sean “Diddy” Combs’s brutal assault of his ex-girlfriend Cassie. The legacy media wanted to make Trump into a monster over this, but all people saw was a run-of-the-mill philanderer. And thanks to former Democratic President Bill Clinton’s behavior a quarter-century ago, not to mention the accusations he’s faced in recent years, Trump’s tryst with Daniels wasn’t shocking in the least. When the porn star unleashed the steamy details in court, America yawned.
One had the sense that the whole of America was waiting for the payoff: “So Trump paid off a porn star… and?”
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Of course, lawfare apologists will point out that the affair isn’t the crime Trump is on trial for — that would be a campaign finance violation. Clinton’s persecutors in the late ’90s also tried to explain to the public that his crime wasn’t having sex with an intern but lying about it in order to cover it up. In both of these purely political persecutions, the intended target grew more popular with the public. Clinton’s job approval numbers skyrocketed during his impeachment, and Trump’s position within the electorate has only solidified while standing trial.
And now that he has become a convicted felon over the affair, he will almost surely retake the White House in November. Should the judge sentence Trump to even a second behind bars, his campaign will benefit immeasurably. The unnerving spectacle of a former president being locked up for something as relatively insignificant as a porn star payoff will cause an unprecedented backlash against the powers that be. Their corrupt grip on the rule of law would be exposed more than ever before, and it would be a mess of their own making.
Peter Laffin is a contributor at the Washington Examiner. His work has also appeared in RealClearPolitics, the Catholic Thing, and the National Catholic Register.