Let me lay my cards out on the table: I don’t like Donald Trump. I never have. His faults are legion, and, aside from the significant exception of his Supreme Court picks, I was wholly unimpressed with his first term as president. He’s weak on abortion and gay marriage, he surrounded himself with swamp creatures while in office, and his actions in response to Covid were disastrous.

But do you know who I like far less than Donald Trump? His enemies. They are a veritable Who’s Who of the Worst People. From Deep State operatives to elite globalists to screeching Leftists, the people who hate Donald Trump are also the people who hate this country and hate me. The very fact that they despise Trump makes me pause in my own distaste for the man.

Since 2016, Trump’s enemies—and if you are a regular reader of this magazine, they are likely your enemies, too—have been hellbent (literally) to destroy him. At times I scratch my head as to why they hate him so much; contrary to what CNN or MSNBC will tell you, he didn’t rule as a dictator or try to “overthrow democracy.” He did post a lot of mean tweets, I guess. I suspect that much of the hatred toward him is that he didn’t have any interest in starting new wars, unlike almost every president for the past 60 years, and so the military-industrial complex and their friends in the Deep State wanted him out of the way.

So even before he stepped foot in the Oval Office in 2016 they have tried to pin the most ludicrous charges on him. He colluded with Russia (he didn’t). He attempted an insurrection (he didn’t).

Think about those charges for a moment. The sitting president of the United States was accused for both treason and insurrection, two of the worst possible crimes in any country. If true, he would deserve the death penalty in even the most civilized countries.

Of course, neither were true, which is why all the legal attempts to bring him down over the past few years have been unrelated to either of those serious charges. Instead, he has been charged with petty crimes based on novel legal theories (“Well, this isn’t actually a crime in the books, but if we look at the law while squinting and during a full moon, we might just get him!”). Now they have convicted him on 34 acts that are not even clearly illegal. It’s obvious this is a political witch hunt. Donald Trump’s crime is that they desperately don’t want him to be president.  Now they have convicted him on 34 acts that are not even clearly illegal. It’s obvious this is a political witch hunt. Donald Trump’s crime is that they desperately don’t want him to be president. Tweet This

To be clear, I think all modern presidents are criminals. So I’m not pretending that Trump is innocent as a dove. But he’s no worse (and much better) than someone like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama or George W. Bush. Those men, however, are feted and treated like royalty. They get to live off the riches that a life of “public service” now gets you. But Trump? He is treated as Hitler Incarnate while being prosecuted for petty crimes.

While I don’t know how this will impact the 2024 election, my first reaction is that the enemies of Donald Trump have overplayed their hands. I’ve already seen a number of people who either were undecided or were against Trump now leaning toward voting for him in November. I’m one of them. While I might not be convinced that Trump would be a great president, I am convinced that I don’t want to live in a country that uses the legal system like a third-world country, punishing political opponents under the guise of “justice.” If Donald Trump is in jail on November 5, I will vote for him even if I have to write his name in the ballot.

I do have two fears, however. The first is that this conviction will be used to keep Trump off the ballot, which would truly be a blow for democracy. For no matter what you think of Trump, he’s clearly the frontrunner to be the next president, supported by tens of millions of Americans. That leads me to my second fear. The justifiable frustration and anger among Trump supporters might lead a few of the less stable ones to do something stupid. This would then lead to January 6th type accusations and could even lead to canceling the election. If this sounds like paranoid conspiracy theory territory to you, then I’m afraid that you haven’t been paying close attention.

I do think there is a silver lining in all this. Our country has been living under an illusion for decades. That illusion is that our elected leaders look after our best interests, and that our justice system is unbiased and fair. I don’t think that’s been true for a long time, and now it’s abundantly clear to millions of Americans (as well as most of the rest of the world). By breaking the illusion, Trump’s conviction hopefully serves as a wake-up call. We don’t live in a democratic republic, a shining city on the hill. We live in a banana republic, a decaying country on its last legs.

The question remains: is it too late to save it?