When the news broke that the board and leadership of the Trudeau Foundation had resigned, en masse, Justin Trudeau – he whose surname is affixed to said Foundation – was all sad face.

Alighting in Toronto for a meeting about something or the other, Himself sniffed: “It is a shame to see the level of toxicity and political polarization that is going on in our country these days.”

Dramatic pause.

“Those people who are trying to get short-term political gain by increasing polarization and partisanship in this country, by launching completely unfounded and ungrounded attacks against charities or foundations, must not succeed.”

Well, if that’s what “those people” are doing, they’re in fact succeeding, big guy. The Foundation’s board and the CEO all resigned, but not because of “completely unfounded and ungrounded attacks.” Nope.

Nor did they all quit, as the Foundation itself claimed – in a press statement that was as full of self-pity as it was devoid of self-awareness – because the “political climate…has put a great deal of pressure on the Foundation’s management and volunteer Board of Directors, as well as on our staff and our community.”

Well, no, folks. You all had to resign because of you. You, and your apparent inability to conduct business with a modicum of ethics and morality.

So, if the “political climate” has changed, it is because of the aforementioned Justin Trudeau. No one in Canada has done as much to dismantle the good reputation enjoyed by the Trudeau Foundation – and it possessed such a reputation, at one time – than the boy-man whose name is affixed to it: Trudeau.

But that fact always escapes the Trudeau-era Liberals, doesn’t it? When you bona fide oppose one of their policies, they will say you are a mouth-breathing troglodyte. When you critique them, you are accused of being against Canada itself. When you inevitably raise your voice, because you are frustrated that they never change and never listen, you are called racist.

A pithy illustration of this belief that Canada is the Liberal Party and the Liberal Party is Canada was found, comme toujours, on Twitter. After the Trudeau Foundation’s board resigned, having been caught covertly taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from a man who now very much resembles a Chinese agent, an otherwise thoughtful Liberal MP, Anthony Housefather, tweeted:

“WE charity improved the lives of thousands of kids. The #TrudeauFoundation has helped thousands of students. While charities need to be accountable & merit scrutiny, politicizing them & turning them into punching bags cannot be what is best for Canada.”

See that? To express legitimate concern – about the Chinese regime’s thuggery and criminality, about the willingness of certain elite Canadians to smile and accept graft – is to be against “what is best for Canada.”

Again: no. We’re not.

We – the entire Canadian media, the 72 per cent of Conservatives and 71 per cent of Liberals, respectively, who want a public inquiry into Chinese election malfeasance – are Canada, actually.

We believe, too, that the casual corruption of the Trudeau cabal – as seen with the Aga Khan, with SNC-Lavalin, with the WE “charity,” and now with the Trudeau Foundation – reveal a pattern of casual corruption that is replete with self-dealing and palm-greasing.

So who is to blame for the collapse in trust of government, now hovering – pollsters say – around 80 per cent of us?

It’s not the pesky news media. It’s not the political Opposition in the House of Commons. It’s not the federal ethics commissioner, who quit a few weeks ago, telling the National Post: “The public has to believe that ethics are taken seriously, and they have yet to have any big evidence of that since 2018.”

“2018.” Which precisely coincides, Mr. Trudeau, with your term in office. With you, and your cavalier and craven approach to the most basic rules of conduct.

Want to know why charities and foundations are no longer trusted, sir, and why they’ve been “turned into punching bags,” quote unquote?

Look in a mirror.

You did it.

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Charging Donald J. Trump with crimes — as he was, Tuesday, with nearly three dozen offences — was a really, really bad idea.

The prosecutor is a card-carrying Democrat — so the charges look like political payback. And the unprecedented decision to criminally charge a former Republican president, whose career and fortunes were decidedly on the wane until he was indicted, has unified Republicans like never before.

The State of New York vs. Donald J. Trump may well guarantee Trump the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, in fact.

And that’s why — in a dark, dastardly and Machiavellian kind of way — it may be a stroke of political genius. Legally doomed to failure, yes.

But politically brilliant. Here’s why.

Last year, in the lead up to the midterm elections, Democrats were trailing everywhere. President Joe Biden was extremely unpopular, Democrats were fighting amongst themselves in the Senate and the House of Representatives, and the party did not seem to have a clear message on the economy.

And the U.S. economy was not doing well, thanks to surging inflation.

The only group that seem to be more unpopular than the Democrats, in fact, were Trump-affiliated MAGA Republicans.

So, Democrats got to work doing something that had never really been done before out in the open: supporting Republicans who were seen as close to Donald Trump. The ones who denied the 2020 election results, the ones who said the most outrageous things, the ones who embraced the most extreme policies.

As political strategies go, it did not seem very ethical or moral. After all, how can you claim to object to Donald Trump when you are helping out Donald Trump’s closest allies?

But help them they did. In New Hampshire, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Illinois, Arizona, Democrats quietly schemed to fundraise for MAGA Republicans, run ads promoting them, and get their names on the ballot. They spent millions doing so.

Incredibly, the dirty-tricky strategy worked. NPR analyze the results following the midterm elections and concluded: “In high-profile races where Democratic candidates or groups successfully used the strategy during the primaries, all of the Republicans they helped have either lost or are trailing, two days after Election Day.”

Added NPR: “The strategy seems to have paid off.”

Many Dems didn’t care. “It’s dishonorable, and it’s dangerous, and it’s just damn wrong,” said Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips. But the results told a different story: boosting Trump-linked MAGA types in Senate, House and gubernatorial races worked, big time.

And, quietly, Democrats may well be doing it again, with the biggest MAGA Trump Republican of all: Donald Trump himself.

They know that Biden isn’t nearly as popular as they’d like. They know he’s seen as too old by too many voters. They know Biden could lose, badly, to Florida’s Ron DeSantis.

So, they’re putting their Democratic fingers on the scale, and quietly scheming to get their biggest asset back on the presidential ballot.

That is, Donald J. Trump — the guy who will likely win in a court of law.

But who will almost certainly lose in the court of public opinion as a result.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best.

“When you strike at a King, you must kill him.”

The parentage of the American essayist’s words have been claimed by many, but one thing can’t be denied: if you indict a former president of the United States, you’d better not lose.

And this writer – who worked, full disclosure, for Hillary Clinton in three states in 2016, including at her Brooklyn headquarters – thinks Manhattan’s District Attorney is going to lose. Badly.

As everyone is noting, this has never happened before: a president – or a former president – being indicted for a crime. In the 247 years that the American republic has existed, no president had ever been charged with a crime. Ever.

Impeached, yes – Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton, once, and the aforementioned Donald J. Trump, twice. But arraigned, fingerprinted and photographed like a common criminal? That’s a first.

It also won’t succeed. As much as this writer detests Trump, the fact remains: successfully prosecuting a president – any president – is doomed to failure.

Forget about the “no one is above the law” piffle. If O. J. Simpson showed us anything, it’s that celebrities in the United States are judged by a different standard. And Donald Trump isn’t just a celebrity – he’s arguably the biggest celebrity of this era.

I also think he’ll walk. Five reasons.

One, if you read any of the news stories about Trump’s indictment, you will repeatedly see two words:  “legal theory.” The “legal theory” relates to whether it was inappropriate to mix Trump Organization funds – and presidential campaign funds – in some Byzantine way to pay off a porn star.

If you are ever going to try out a “legal theory,” best not do it with a former president in front of an international audience. Experiment at home first, sure. Not on the front pages of the world’s newspapers.

Two, the principal source of the allegations against Trump come from one man: his former lawyer, a convicted criminal. Michael D. Cohen was the one who allegedly arranged for the hush money to be paid to porn star Stormy Daniels. Problem: Cohen is a crook, a convicted fraudster and perjurer. He’s been jailed for those crimes. Why would he be believed now? For the prosecution, it’ll be a big hill to climb.

Three: the other star witness is one Stormy Daniels, a porn star. The pneumatic Daniels is no dummy – she showed a rapier wit on social media – but she is also a bit of a loon. Among other things, Daniels bills herself as a “paranormal investigator” – and stars in the “Spooky Babes Show.” She has testified previously that her house is haunted by “a non-human thing with tentacles.”

While those of us who have gone through divorce can empathize with that description, it isn’t going to do much for Stormy’s credibility on the stand. Spooky, indeed.

Four: the Manhattan prosecutor in the case, Alvin J. Bragg, is a registered Democrat. He went to  Harvard, he’s a good Dad, he taught Sunday school. No matter. The Right Wing Death Machine is about to pluck Bragg from obscurity, and pop him into a political Cuisinart. Every mistake, every misstep that he has made in his 49 years is about to get the proctologist’s treatment. He is going to become a human piñata, and fodder for every Republican presidential candidate.

Five: and that is the biggest reason why indicting Donald J Trump is a mistake. It will unite all of the GOP presidential aspirants like nothing else. A black, Harvard-educated Democrat prosecuting a Republican former President who still tops most polls?

That’s not all. A line has been crossed on Thursday in Manhattan.  When the GOP retake the White House – and they will – they will return the favor, with extreme prejudice. They will indict Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton – and the Kennedy brothers, if they can.

The criminal prosecution of Donald Trump will unleash a Civil War in American politics like has never been seen before. It’ll be ugly.

Trump is a crook. Everyone knows that.

We didn’t need a doomed-to-failure prosecution to remind us.

 

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