The view from on the road to nowhere

Peter Baker in the Newspaper of Record:

The novelty of a former leader of the United States being called a felon has somehow worn off. Not that the sweeping 98-page indictment handed up in Georgia accusing him of corruptly trying to reverse the state’s 2020 election results was any less momentous. But a country of short attention spans has now seen this three times before and grown oddly accustomed to the spectacle.

Multiple prosecutors have now cumulatively laid out an alleged presidential crime spree of epic proportions, complete with tangled intrigues, mysterious co-conspirators and intersecting subplots. The Georgia indictment went further than previous ones by charging 18 others with joining a criminal enterprise with the former president, including associates like Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman.

Yet most Americans made up their minds about Mr. Trump long before prosecutors like Fani T. Willis or Jack Smith weighed in, polls have shown. He is, depending on the perspective, a serial lawbreaker finally being brought to justice or a victim of persecution by partisans intent on keeping him out of office.

I forget who it was who said that if one person says it’s raining and another says it’s not, a journalist’s job isn’t to report that disagreement, but rather to look out the window.

The truth about Donald Trump is such a total indictment of our political system and our culture that it is literally unthinkable for the vast majority of people — and certainly un-reportable for 100% of establishment journalists.