Trump puts America on big exit ramp

If he stays ahead by Labour Day, the first Monday of September, he will be the favourite to win. In 2016, his opponent Hilary Clinton, former Secretary of State, suffered heat exhaustion, and collapsed around Labour Day.

She did not fully recover her energy through the rest of the campaign. Two strikingly strong debate performances did not help her. And then the ‘Deep State’ came for her by announcing that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) would look into Ms Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system during her time as Secretary of State.

Then FBI Director James Comey delivered the surprise, on October 30, 2016, saying the FBI had discovered additional emails on her computers, many of which detailed plans during the Obama administration to commandeer certain aspects of foreign policy from Congress including the invasion of Libya that led to chaos in the oil rich country that persists to this day. 

Ms Clinton and her staff were accused of using private emails while in office, and wiping their emails off State Department servers.

This time, the chants of “Lock her Up!” which unnerved many observers of American politics have been turned on Mr Donald Trump.

Mr Trump has been hauled to two federal courts, first for unauthorised handling of classified information, and second for engaging in a conspiracy to overturn the results of the November 2020 election.

He has already been convicted of paying hush money to a former porn star, and faces at least a set of more charges in Georgia for pressuring officials to overturn the results in Georgia.  In Arizona, similar charges remain unsealed.

Unlike the October 2016 surprise that played a part in denying Ms Clinton the presidency, the surprises for Mr Trump have had the opposite effect. Rather than banish him to the sidelines, the charges have turned him into a “Grover Cleveland” figure, the only US President to serve non-consecutive terms, first as the 22nd President in 1885-1889 and then as the 24th President, 1893-1897.

Judicial officers have been the first to run off the exit ramps. First a sharply divided US Supreme Court found that Mr Trump did enjoy some immunity for official acts in office, Their ruling left the definition so broad that it could possibly affect even the hush money conviction in state court. The Supreme Court sent the January 6 2020 case back to the US District Court to determine the scope of any new charges against Mr Trump.

Secondly, the classified documents case being tried in federal court in Florida fell apart after Justice Clarence Thomas in the immunity case dismissed charges on the grounds that the Justice Department’s Special Prosecutor Jack Smith was unconstitutional because he was illegally appointed.

In the past week, Democrats, hurrying for the exit, have booted President Joe Biden from the ticket, afraid that his hanging onto the ticket may cost them big in November. They fear they will be wiped from the American political map for a generation if they lose the White House, and both Houses of Congress. 

Mr Biden, an otherwise successful President, is suffering from different conditions associated with a man of his age. He is 81, more than eight years older than the oldest President, Ronald Reagan was when he ran for re-election in 1984 winning in an electoral college landslide.

President Biden wasn’t helped by physical and mental infirmities in a one-on-one TV debate on CNN with Mr Trump just three years his junior in June.

Then the unexpected happened, the assassination attempt on Mr Trump by a 20-year-old gun-slinger on TV while at a rally in Pennsylvania last week.  All doubts about Mr Trump faded. America may look like a third world “democracy” in November.

As my elder in these pages, Charles Onyango Obbo once said one time, it’s not the victory, it’s the margins. The exit ramps are open.

Mr Ssemogerere is an Attorney-At-Law and an Advocate.

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