ROGER KIMBALL: Merchan’s Verdict: A Conviction Without Consequence.
Jimmy Carter’s administration is remembered as a period of “malaise” and waning American prestige. Because Donald Trump is not shy about repeating himself, everyone now knows that the Panama Canal, one of the great engineering feats in all of history, cost some 38,000 American lives. The transoceanic passage was built by Americans, paid for by Americans, and was undertaken to serve a vital national security interest. In 1977, Carter sold the canal to Panama for one dollar, thus marking one of the nadirs of his term in office.
The “vibe shift” that Trump’s victory precipitated is, first of all, a matter of feeling and emotion, not doctrines. As with Reagan’s “morning in America” motif, the MAGA moment involvespolicies. But it is fired by an uptick in energy, enthusiasm, and cultural confidence. From where I sit, it seems like “morning in America” on steroids. Donald Trump will not be sworn in for another week, yet already he has utterly changed the conversation on both domestic issues and, especially, foreign affairs. He has spoken early and often about retaking the Panama Canal, absorbing or otherwise laying claim to Greenland, and making official Canada’s status as a dependent of the United States. World leaders and various celebrities have flocked to Mar-a-Lago to receive his blessing or just to bask in the reflected glow of “the Trump Effect.”
All of which makes John Roberts’s and Amy Coney Barrett’s defection to the anti-Trump wing of the Court puzzling. Merchan sentenced Trump to—nothing. No fine, no jail time, no probation. Only the obloquy, such as it is, of having officially been found guilty by Juan Merchan. As the judge put it in delivering the sentence, “The only lawful sentence that permits entry of a judgment of conviction without encroaching upon the highest office in the land is an unconditional discharge.”
“Unconditional discharge.” Is that what these months of harassment have been leading up to?
In passing sentence, Merchan indulged in a bit of stern-sounding legal persiflage about the rule of law, the gravity of Trump’s offenses, and the distinction between the privilege due to the office of the president and that due to an individual who just happened to be a former president as well as current president-elect.
Read the whole thing.