The lurid antics at Donald Trump’s show trial in Manhattan reached a new low yesterday, as the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels testified about the details of her 2006 sexual encounter with Trump.
It’s anyone’s guess how Daniels’s “missionary position”
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Further, yesterday prosecutors encouraged Stephanie Clifford, nee Stormy Daniels, to testify in graphic detail about the sexual encounter she claims with Trump in 2006.
Daniels agrees the encounter was consensual, and Trump is not on trial for rape – or even for paying Daniels not to discuss the encounter (which would not be illegal, since paying hush money is not a crime). We don’t prosecute adults for affairs either, not in the United States in 2024.
Why exactly was Daniels allowed to testify at length about this 18-year-old experience? The only possible reason is to smear and embarrass Trump.
So I am starting to wonder if Trump should take the nuclear option: get on a plane to Florida and refuse to participate any further in this nonsense.
The elite media, which has kept a straight face as it has covered the case, would surely thunder about Trump’s disrespect for the rule of law. But in so doing it might convince some people to take a closer look at the insanity of the charges themselves.
Ron DeSantis certainly wouldn’t agree to extradite Trump, and I doubt any other Republican governor would either. So he could continue to campaign in any state with a Republican governor. His biggest problem might be that seven swing states – Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – have Democratic governors.
But even if Merchan finds Trump in contempt of court and sentences him to jail, or to prison after a guilty verdict, would a Democratic governor really risk arresting and extraditing Trump to New York as he was at a Presidential rally in, say, Pennsylvania? How would such an arrest even work in reality, if Trump refused to turn himself in? Would the Secret Service allow it? What would the headlines be?
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Trump is a non-violent offender with no prior criminal history – who is also the leading opposition candidate for President. Would the Democrats risk imprisoning him against his will before Election Day? (Afterwards he will either be President-elect, or they won’t care anymore.)
I don’t think Trump will roll the dice this way. I’m not sure what would happen if he did.
But the mere fact this option is real shows how far down the rabbit hole we have already gone.