Conservative voters across America are outraged by the abusive and lawless prosecution of Donald Trump.
I am among them.
But – even though many are now predicting a landslide Republican victory in November – as someone who has never voted for Trump before, I still won’t.
This hush money lawsuit was, in effect, extremely indefensible.
The prosecution and the judge shattered precedent and, in my opinion as an attorney, violated the law in numerous ways to mislead the jury and achieve a conviction.
This should alarm all Americans, and I don’t blame anyone who now feels more sympathy for Trump.
But he is not yet fit for office.
Conservative voters across America are outraged by the abusive and lawless prosecution of Donald Trump. I am among them.
But even though many are now predicting a landslide Republican victory in November, as someone who has never voted for Trump before, I still won’t.
Politicians do not have to be saints, and few of them are.
But Trump is a man of singular bad character. That’s been obvious long before he started running for office.
He has been unfaithful to his wives on multiple occasions, he has deceived his investors and he lies as easily as he breathes.
He is rude and a sore loser who always claims that the other person cheated on him. He treats promises and the law as if everything were negotiable.
Nor is it just about its private nature. After all, one can easily forgive a president’s private misgivings if he is publicly a good and honest man. You need look no further than serial womanizer JFK.
But the Trump we saw in the Oval Office was the same dishonest Donald.
He made his big appearance in politics by promoting conspiracy theories such as that Barack Obama was born in Kenya.
And speaking of JFK, remember when Trump claimed that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in his assassination?
Trump does not respect the line between personal interests and public duty.
Maybe all the foreign money he poured into his hotels and resorts during his presidency wasn’t as blatant an influence-peddling scam as the Biden family, but it still sucks.
Certainly one of the worst things about the current generation of Democrats is how they try to delegitimize American institutions every time they lose an election, a court case, or a legislative fight.
But Trump has not only imitated them, he has taken it to the extreme.
He personally goes after judges even in simple civil cases involving his business affairs. He claimed the election was rigged against him even in the 2016 primaries.
And then, of course, January 6th arrived.
Being a lifelong sore loser led to Trump’s most inexcusable behavior: his post-election tantrum that nearly tore the country apart, wasted valuable public and judicial time, and ended with a riot at the Capitol.
January 6 went beyond political dishonesty, and the Senate should have convicted him in his second impeachment trial, so he could not run again.
Simply put, Trump is reckless, careless, and constantly attacks his subordinates whom he then has to insult in public. Who hired them all?
Democrats did not force Trump to pay con man Michael Cohen as his lawyer for more than a decade. He didn’t have to employ completely disgraceful people like Steve Bannon.
Politicians do not have to be saints, and few of them are. But Trump is a man of singular bad character. That’s been obvious long before he started running for office. He has been unfaithful to his wives on multiple occasions, has deceived his investors and lies as easily as he breathes.
The truth is that many of the trumped-up criminal charges against Trump (including this hush money prosecution) were made possible only by his own ineptitude.
At the secret trial, he stupidly made his attorneys waste time arguing that the Stormy Daniels affair had happened instead of focusing on the obvious weakness of District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case.
Trump’s uniquely toxic personality drives everyone around him crazy, not just his friends and employees, but his enemies as well.
Democrats and the press have broken one rule after another to attack Trump. He keeps giving them the rope and they are using it to hang our Constitution. Enough already.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m still a Republican. There is no way I am voting for Joe Biden. He is still the same corrupt and unprincipled liar he was four decades ago and, what’s more, he is now decrepit.
But while Trump may not be in such a bad situation, he would still be 82 years old at the end of a second term.
To be sure, there are millions of conservative voters like me who simply can’t pull the lever to support Trump.
Some will now be convinced of the injustices of last week.
But I’m holding on.
I voted third party in 2016 and wrote on behalf of Mike Pence in 2020.
It didn’t matter because I live in deep blue New York, but I will write again to someone else. Because Donald Trump is still bad news, even when his enemies are worse.