Trump thinks he can erase the 'stain' of impeachment. But he can't.
How Donald Trump is like the alleged pervert who once threatened to sue me for libel.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is in an awful pickle, yet again. He has made a promise to Donald Trump that the House will expunge Trump’s two impeachments from the record — poof! they never happened! But his moderate members don’t really want to take that vote: Most Americans think January 6 was bad, after all. If he doesn’t force the issue, though, Trump might force an end to his speakership.
What’s a boy to do?
This paragraph from the Politico story caught my eye.
Regardless of its likelihood of passage, Trump world plans to hold McCarthy to account on his promise. While the former president knows he is unable to stop the myriad indictments expected to come his way, he believes the House has the power to erase the stain of impeachment from his name.
Well, that’s not going to happen.
The House might expunge Trump’s impeachments, who knows? But the stain is already there. Depending on the outcome of all these legal cases against the former president, the impeachments will go in either the first or second paragraph of his obituary. We’ll remember. Trump may claim vindication, but that’s what he always does. We’ll remember.
I’m reminded of an incident about 20 years ago, when I was a young-ish junior editor at a small-but-scrappy newspaper. I got a call one day from a man who asked for me to erase a story from our archives. He had been arrested for some upskirt photography — gross and wrong — but eventually managed to have incident expunged from his official record. The problem? It was still in our record, and prospective employers were still finding the story when they Googled him up.
“Because it was expunged, it never happened!” he told me. “Which means I can sue you for libel for keeping the story up!”
I told him I didn’t think it worked that way. I never heard from him again.
These days, I’m somewhat more sympathetic to the idea that young people with minor offenses shouldn’t be haunted by that factoid lingering on the Internet for the rest of their lives. Maybe not upskirt photographers, though. And certainly not former presidents.
Donald Trump, we know, has always been prone to magical thinking. If he just believes something hard enough it will be true, even if it’s not true. I suspect his thinking about expungement is somewhat similar to the alleged pervert’s: If the it happens, he can claim it never happened.
Americans have extremely short memories. But I don’t think it’s that short. We all know what happened. The stain isn’t going away.
He’s also finding out (I didn’t say he’s learning) that judges and prosecutors don’t roll over or play dead just because he gets mad at them. Trying to navigate potentially four criminal prosecutions and a presidential campaign may be a challenge. I’m here for it.