Donald J. Trump is a man cornered.
Four criminal cases, a total of 91 felony counts, await the former president.
And although he will most certainly amp up the velocity, shrieking about the unfairness of it all, he’s trapped himself.
He’s spent much of his lifetime germinating a sense of privilege that underlies virtually every charge he faces.
Not satisfied with the outcome of the 2020 presidential election? Strongarm officials to “find” votes. A little less than 12,000 in Georgia will do.
Angered that one of the many women who’ve accused him of boorish and unwanted sexual advances won a $5 million fine in civil court? Flip the tables and try to claim that it was him who was defamed by the woman, the writer E. Jean Carroll. A judge has already dismissed this nonsense from Trump.
For much of his 77 years, Trump has cultivated a belief that the rules of civil society do not apply to him.
Sadly, far too many people have allowed it, continuing to stoke his outsized and dangerous ego.
Remember, he’s the man who bragged he could shoot someone in the middle of New York’s 5th Avenue and not lose votes. He’s not wrong. The man still leads the GOP’s field of presidential candidates.
But Trump’s form of entitlement is often delivered in toxic swirls of sexism and racism. This brand, among his most practiced, is about to be challenged in ways he hasn’t previously faced.
It’s life full circle that two African American women will be at the forefront of Trump finally being forced to defend some of his most serious offenses – his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
He’s already called both women names, like a bratty little child might do.
Georgia District Attorney Fani T. Willis is “the racist D.A. from Atlanta” to Trump. He’s called her “corrupt” and helped encourage his adoring fans to lash out with so many threats toward her that Willis sometimes travels with armed guards.
Trump has called Judge Tanya S. Chutkan – in whose court the charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith will be heard – “very biased and unfair.” She’s had to warn him that the usual stew of taunts and accusations that are his hallmark simply can’t be allowed anymore as the case moves forward.
Witness intimidation is a legal standard by which he’ll be held accountable. Being a former president won’t protect him. Neither will his right of free speech if he crosses certain lines, which he probably will do.
Chutkan is the daughter of an Indo-Jamaican father and an Afro-Jamaican mother. Former President Barack Obama nominated her to the U.S. District Court of D.C. Here’s an interesting twist: a Jamaican-born judge whose route to the bench came via a nod from the first Black president, who Trump has mercilessly tried to claim wasn’t born in the U.S.
Remember that nonsense about Obama’s birth certificate? The accusation spun from an attempt to paint Obama as some sort of unqualified, swarthy foreigner who was somehow undeserving of being an American.
It’s part of the screed that had him denouncing would-be refugees as unworthy and from “shithole” nations like Haiti, African nations and El Salvador.
So often, the forces that Trump tries to stir, most horrendously on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol, are those that look backward to another era because they fear progress, change, and perhaps being forced to share the nation with such new arrivals.
They’re the MAGA masses, uncomfortable with what used to be called “the browning of America.”
The latest is that a Texas woman has been charged with making racist threats to Chutkan. And the Georgia grand jury is being doxxed.
These are Trump’s people, ardent followers who want him returned to office and apparently are willing to attack whoever might get in the way.
Chutkan is quite familiar with those attitudes. Dozens of defendants in the Jan. 6 coup have been tried and convicted in her court. And she’s not known for leniency.
And now Trump will appear before her.
Similarly, Trump’s brand of belittling attacks was also directed against two Black women who were
election workers in Georgia. The horrendous smearing of the reputations of the mother-daughter duo of Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss is part of what Willis and her investigators have spent more than two years documenting.
Willis is the first woman to serve as Fulton County’s top prosecutor. Her father was also a lawyer.
In recent years, there’s been so much pushback against efforts to broaden opportunities in the U.S. for more people of differing backgrounds.
Disillusioned, some believe that hard-won gains are being lost.
But the lives of these two women, Willis and Chutkan, show otherwise.
The putrid stew of sexism and racism that is Trump’s world just got trumped – by two women of color. It’s the type of progress that he’s feared his whole miserable life.
Readers can reach Mary Sanchez at msanchezcolumn@gmail.com and follow her on Twitter @msanchezcolumn.
©2023 Mary Sanchez. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
