By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published in December 10, 2022
An Editorial Opinion
On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump formally announced his candidacy for president of the United States with a campaign rally and speech at Trump Tower in New York City.
On August 2, 2015, I wrote and published an article titled, “Donald Trump’s Newest Art of the Deal – Winning the American Presidency.” In this article, I predicted that Trump would win the presidency.
On February 4, 2020, I predicted Trump’s re-election, "barring divine intervention." Having survived an impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate and having survived Special Counsel Robert Mueller's criminal investigation into allegations that his campaign organization colluded with Russia during the 2016 campaign, Trump appeared to be invincible.
Divine intervention occurred in the form of COVID-19, which invaded America in March 2020. Eventually, this deadly pandemic would killed 1,092,099 Americans within in less than three years.
On August 10, 2020, I predicted Trump’s defeat due to his gross mismanagement of America’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump eventually lost the election by over 7 million votes.
On September 27, 2020, I reported that Trump did not plan to leave office, whether he won the November 2020 election, or not. After his defeat, Trump entertained a scheme to use fake electors and martial law to remain in office.
On February 28, 2021, I published an article explaining the nature and scope of Trump’s death grip on the Republican Party. In essence, Trump had converted the GOP into a cult of diehard supporters who idolized him.
On August 31, 2022, I predicted that Trump would win the Republican nomination for president in 2024 and would win the general election, "barring divine intervention."
Divine Intervention Has Occurred, Once Again
For the second time since March 2020, divine intervention has manifested itself on the American political scene. This time it has come in the form of a trifecta of events that threaten Donald Trump’s political life and freedom.
First, on November 18, 2022, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of Jack Smith as the Special Counsel who will oversee the criminal investigations into the retention of national defense information at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and parts of the January 6, 2021, insurrection. As explained in my November 28, 2022 article, Jack Smith is a prosecutorial “hitman” who follows orders from Department of Justice superiors, without blinking.
Second, Trump-appointed judges are acting in concert with other federal judges to shut-down all of Donald Trump’s legal challenges to Jack Smith's criminal investigation. This coordinated effort has deprived Trump of any legal redress in the courts while Jack Smith prepares for his indictment of Trump and his co-defendants for their involvement in the retention of national defense information and the January 6, 2021, insurrection.
Third, the so-called “red wave” that Republicans expected during the mid-term elections last month did not materialize. Trump-back candidates for major political offices in swing-states were defeated across the board. The poor quality of Trump’s candidates cost Republicans control of the U.S. Senate and prevented them from achieving a substantial majority in the House of Representatives.
Republicans across America now view Donald Trump as "toxic." This is especially true after Trump advocated that Americans terminate the U.S. Constitution and simply install him as president. At least two Trump-loyalists have publicly backed this crazy plan. They are Marjorie Taylor-Green (R-Georgia), who called for defunding the FBI, and Paul Gosar (R-Arizona), whose own siblings have questioned his mental health and distanced themselves from Gosar.
In a Yahoo News/YouGov poll released on Thursday, Florida governor Ron DeSantis leads Trump among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in a 2024 primary contest by five points, 47% to 42%. In a similar Yahoo News/YouGov poll conducted in October, Trump led DeSantis by nine points, 45% to 36%.
What Will Happen to Donald Trump?
Where does this trifecta of divine intervention events leave Donald Trump? The answer is simple. Trump is doomed.
Once Trump is indicted, he will formally enter America’s “rigged” criminal justice system as a criminal defendant. In the last month or so, Trump has experienced healthy doses of how federal judges he appointed to the bench treat the “targets” of criminal investigations. Last A week ago, these judges body-slammed U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon -- Trump's "pet" judge in Florida -- and forced her out of this game.
Eventually, Trump will be convicted on some, if not all, of the charges against him because his lawyers do not have a clue about how to defend an “outcast” member of society. They appear to be representing Trump solely because he is the best gravy-train available to them at the moment.
As is the case with 99% of all criminal defendants in federal courts, Trump will likely be "railroaded" during his trial because this is what the overwhelming majority of federal judges do. This is also what is expected of them when they are appointed to their judgeships. Very few of federal judges have the inclination, desire, or intestinal fortitude to engage in the fair administration of criminal justice.
One judge who does is U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Remember, Justice Jackson was berated by several GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee as a nominee for her Supreme Court judgeship because she had a history as a District Court judge of treating criminal defendants in her courtroom with respect and safeguarding their constitutional rights throughout the proceedings. The beat-down these GOP Senators administered to Justice Jackson was ugly, disrespectful, and hurtful.
After Trump is convicted, I expect he will be taken into custody from the courtroom because prosecutors likely consider him a flight-risk.
Once Trump is imprisoned, he will need to be placed in solitary confinement for the entire period of his incarceration, for his own safety.
Due to decades of systemic racial discrimination within the federal criminal justice system, the inmate population in most federal prisons is disproportionately black and brown. Most of these inmates do NOT like Trump. Furthermore, there are not enough white, GOP-leaning inmates in federal prisons to adequately protect Donald Trump in the general prison population.
A synopsis of the threat-level for an inmate like Donald Trump can be found in the December 8, 2022 Department of Justice, Office of Inspector General, report on the 2018 brutal murder of gangster/FBI informant James “Whitey” Bulger. The report describes just how easy it is for inmates in the general population to eliminate a hated or undesirable inmate.
America, we are witnessing the end of Donald Trump as a national GOP political force and power-broker. He’s done!
No human being in the history of mankind has ever been able to overcome divine intervention of this scope and nature.