And so the second series of What Donald Did Next has begun airing. We could recap the main points of the first series, summarise the various plots, subplots, subsubplots, explore the characteristics of the main players and their roles, the cause and effect of their wild and wacky behaviour, those killed off, metaphorically, those who have survived, but let’s not. Life is too short.
Everyone knows the main points. He won in 2016, then after four years, the series was axed and come time for renewal and despite all the evidence to the contrary he still believed he should have starred in the sequel, and should never have been booted out. He called on his supporters to take the battle to the set, that is the Capitol, then praised the January 6 rioters, not as insurrectionists but as patriots and hostages. Then, he won the next time around. What Donald Did Next is back for series II.
Life is not only short. It is strange. The White House is Donald Trump’s for the next four years. More than 77 million people voted for him. (Kamala Harris got 75 million votes.) Trump’s number is almost three times the population of Australia, given the population of America is 335 million. We can grant the 77 million their right to choose Trump. After all, that is democracy. He says he is going to make America great again, just like he did a few years back, before he was rudely interrupted by the will of the people. Life is strange. He’s back.
And he was back before the courts, too. Last Thursday, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision refused to halt his criminal sentencing for his conviction on 34 counts in the so-called hush money case.
And on Friday, he became the first felon who will be president after the inauguration on January 20. The first in 234 years to be both president and deemed a crook by a court of law. If nothing else punditry will get a surge in use. Trump’s felon fine! Democracy? It’s felon all right. The headline in The Washington Post was prosaic, but summed it up: Trump sentenced without penalty in hush money case, formalising his status as felon.
Perhaps he can be addressed now as the US President (status formalised as felon) Donald Trump. There are three other criminal indictments awaiting trial, but with his ascendancy to the White House these may never happen.
On Friday, Trump tuned into the sentencing via videolink. He called the case “a weaponisation of government”. He maintained he did not commit a crime. He was going to appeal his conviction.“It’s been a political witch hunt. It was done to damage my reputation so that I would lose the election, and, obviously, that didn’t work.”
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Not one to allow a small matter of being formalised a felon to hang over him. He has even before he is sitting ion the Oval Office, revisiting the dark corners, nooks and crannies of the office from last time, and bringing them back out into the world. Hello, Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, who seem to be enemies of the US, just for being there. Inoffensive Canada and Greenland – and a canal?
Trump recently raised the idea of Canada becoming America’s 51st state, and it’s one of those things that seems like a joke at first, but then you just never know. Canadians can rest easy, however, he has said he won’t send troops into Saskatchewan or Winnipeg or Prince Edward Island. No, he would use the forces of economics to turn Canada, into the 51st state. The pushback, of course, based on sanity, has been strong.
The Immigration Minister Marc Miller was even able to draw South Park into it. “There is no chance of us becoming the 51st state. I think that this is beneath a president of the United States,” he said. “I said a few weeks ago that this whole thing was like a South Park episode.”
Indeed, and would even South Park dare bring Buckingham Palace into its sights? Canada, like Australia, is a constitutional monarchy. It is not Florida mansion up for sale to expand Mar-a-Lago.
And almost in the same breath Trump brings up the thorny question of Greenland, well thorny to him. The problem is Greenland is for all intents and purposes part of Denmark, which is part of NATO, which is a friend of America. For a president of America, this does seem slightly obsessive. If these two, and a canal, are in his sights, what else? Tasmania?
And so What Donald Did Next has begun screening, including the almost predictable intro to the official launch of him attributing blame over the Los Angeles fires before offering empathy.
It takes some talent to stoke division from ash.
