There Is Apparently No Accountability — Ever — for Donald Trump

We tell children — or at least we used to — that actions have consequences. What goes around comes around. Watch your behavior. You’ll answer for it someday.

Donald Trump is the living, lying contradiction of that.

He answers for nothing. He’s accountable to no one.

You thought that changed with a Manhattan jury’s verdict five weeks ago? With “guilty” on all 34 counts? How adorable. That only bound most of his supporters even closer to him. Only amplified the theatrical ardor with which Republican politicians pledged their devotion. Only increased donations to his presidential campaign.

Oh, and his sentencing has now been delayed and the conviction itself thrown into doubt, thanks to a supremely reckless Supreme Court.

Immunity, thy name is Trump.

The House of Representatives impeached him twice, but a cabal of collaborators in the Senate chose tribalism over justice and made it all go away. They said that it was up to others to decide if he’d committed crimes, up to others to punish him for those. It was up to them to get re-elected.

The voters repudiated Trump, but he simply pretended it hadn’t happened. He invented dark conspiracies and embroidered wild fantasies to turn defeat — by seven million votes, no less — into supposed victory. Into full-blown martyrdom. He cried “rigged,” he cried “stolen,” he stood by as a mob stormed the Capitol and stood mute as it chanted for his vice president to be hanged. For that ethical savagery the members of his political party lined up dutifully behind him once again. David Koresh never knew loyalty like this.