It's Friday, May 31st. I'm Akilah Hughes.
This is what I would've said on "What a Day" about our former felonious president.
Please rise for the national anthem:
You can feel free to let the national anthem ride throughout your reading of this, but suffice it to say, yesterday justice was served, and today I am proud to be an American (I mean in this specific instance, America could be doing a lot of better, different, less bomb-y things).
Yesterday, Donald Jail Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts in a hush money scheme involving his mistress, porn star Stormy Daniels, in the days preceding the 2016 election.
Reports from the scene described a jovial Trump yucking it up with his legal team when yesterday at 4:20pm (nice) eastern standard time, the jury had reached a decision…Because it’s New York the first week after Memorial Day, which means Friday is the first “summer Friday,” meaning if they (the jury) could wrap this up today, they could kind of phone in their office work tomorrow and leave with the free bagels by noon to enjoy their weekend. It’s also the first weekend in pride month (Happy Pride!) so no doubt the double-whammy of pride celebrations and political celebrations to open June helped them limp this decision over the finish line.
The case, as we are all aware by now, centers around Trump not only cheating on wife Melania…but I don’t really care, do you? with a porn star with more integrity and dignity than the entirety of the GOP, Stormy Daniels. But it obviously isn’t the infidelity that matters here. What mattered was that Trump signed off on his business paying her off in the days before the 2016 election so she wouldn’t tell us that he’s exactly who we’ve known he is, and then falsifying those documents. And then stiffing another party he was meant to pay off. And then letting Michael Cohen take the fall for it. All of that.
It’s hard to say in hindsight if knowing this would’ve been the nail in his campaign’s coffin. The infamous “grab her by the pussy” comments on Access Hollywood wasn’t enough to turn off the evangelicals of this country. In a bit of delicious irony, Seattle had to cut into an episode of Access Hollywood to report the news that Trump had been found guilty. Still, after a painstaking trial marked by Trump’s endless attacks on the DA, the judge, and everyone who showed up with receipts showing Trump is a lying ass liar, he was found guilty of 34 felonies.
I’d like to take a moment to just consider how you might feel if you just found out you were not only being charged with 34 felonies (one for every year of my life—doesn’t seem that young when you start counting), but then also you’d been convicted of all of them. I personally would pass away, but Trump kind of limply defended himself saying he’s, “very innocent.” I feel like you gotta switch up your excuses after you’re literally found guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty… x34.
And the pessimists who can’t just keep it to themselves (work on it, I beg!) will immediately shout down this gleeful schadenfreude, reminding us America fell into a wormhole in 2016 and good things don’t actually happen and he will wriggle out of this and live to eat burn steak with a healthy plop of Heinz for the rest of his days, and be president dictator and end the world—but in this very moment, he is a convicted felon. The future is untold, the sentencing could range anywhere from probation, to community service (LOL), to hard jail time, to weekends in jail, to house arrest. We don’t know. Personally I have had a good time imaginging the State of the Union opening on an empty podium, a speaker playing “You have received a call from an inmate at Rikers Island Prison Complex: PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP…would you like to accept charges?” and then someone pressing whatever the corresponding digit is to accept the charges and then we can listen to him ramble incoherently about toilet hooch and being jumped into a white supremacist prison gang.
And maybe you’re poo-pooing me for enjoying this. After all, the prison industrial complex and justice system are famously corrupt, and it is a sad day when the office of President of the United States is reduced to guy with bad spray tan being convicted of several dozen felonies. But you know who the justice system is corrupt towards. You know who gets the harshest punishments for crimes way less serious than this. Forgive me for knowing how to have a good time.
Ultimately time will tell what happens to Trump. I personally hope it sucks for him. I hope he hates it. I hope it’s a max sentence. I hope that some reasonable republicans will understand that they don’t actually have to lower their standards for leadership any further, the bar is already in hell. I hope that this means democracy lives to see another 4 years, even if the guy in charge is shitting the bed right now. Many argue that hey! at least he’s shitting it democratically.
::commercial music starts::
Little announcement
I am actually fully back now. Things are picking up with summer on the horizon, and so I will be in with the takes more regularly. One fun side project I started (because don’t we all love a side project?) is a new home instagram account for my interior design habit. If that’s so not your bag, fine! I also still have a regular instagram that you should follow if you haven’t yet.
