Strange priorities

Judge Aileen M. Cannon, in what appears to be a very unjudgmental decision, split the difference between Special Counsel Jack's Smith request for a speedy trial and Donald Trump's attempts to evade justice by delaying his trial until he might be in a position to direct the Justice Department to drop his case.

To a Brit the situation seems utterly bizarre and Kafkaesque. First Trump's argument that the trial might interfere with his political campaign is mind-boggling.  Defendants in criminal cases generally don't get to use the argument that they can't go to trial because they can't get time off work.  So clearly not everyone is equal in the eyes of our justice system. 

Second, that notion that it is possible to campaign for an elected office that could be used to alter the course of ones own criminal case equally baffling. To suggest that this would create a conflict of interest is, even for a Brit, an extraordinary understatement.  It's as if Jeffrey Dahmer stood for election to the governor of Wisconsin in order to stop his case going to trial or to grant himself a pardon were he to be convicted. 

While there may not be constitutional or legislative guard-rails that prevent a presidential candidate from either the delaying of a trial or the possibility of self-pardon or of stopping an ongoing prosecution, the Founding Father's almost certainly would have not approved of such self-dealing.  The constitution does seem to suggest that public service requires people be of "good moral character";  and what that meant may, to the Founding Father's, have seemed completely self-evident. 

However while they may have met or been aware that individuals as unscrupulous as Trump existed, it probably never crossed their minds that the electorate would ever entertain such as absurd notion as electing such a person to the highest office in the land.  Yet the morality that the Founding Father's considered sufficient to keep individuals lacking "good moral character" out of the White House seems to have evaporated. With the increasing polarization of American politics both sides are willing to turn a blind eye to a lack of "good moral character" if their side stands to gain.  What is  particularly ironic is that the GOP, which routinely rails against the decline in societal  morals, is willing to entertain the candidacy of a deeply immoral person ostensibly in order to restore the country's morals.