(Dobbs) Putin and Trump, In Mutual Disgrace
Each will pay a price, even if neither pays a penalty.
Does everyone see the delicious deviancy here?
In the short space of 24 hours this weekend, President Vladimir Putin of Russia had an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The charge? War crimes for the “illegal deportation” of Ukrainian children to Russia. And, former President Donald Trump of the United States, suspected of deliberately and illegally falsifying business records to hide hush money to a porn star, prophesied an arrest warrant against him by the District Attorney of Manhattan. He made the prediction on his website with this angry and ego-laden ALL CAPS announcement: “THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE AND FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”
Part of his message fills me with fear. Although Trump’s grip on the nation’s most fearsome fanatics seems looser than before, we shall never erase from our personal memories or from our nation’s history the onerous outcome the last time he called for his disciples to protest his fate. Reportedly law enforcement agencies already are drawing up a game plan to deal with angry crowds at the Manhattan Criminal Court if he is indicted and does surrender, on Tuesday or at any time thereafter, for mug shots and fingerprints.
But the other part fills me with joy. Just imagine this treacherous and treasonous man finally doing a perp walk. Ideally it would be the first of several— another in Atlanta for illegally trying to change the outcome of an election, yet another in Washington DC for sedition.
Forgive me while I gloat.
What these two malicious men, Putin and Trump, have in common is the belief that they can get away with murder, literally in Putin’s case and metaphorically in Trump’s. But the crimes for which each is accused, and the degree to which each might have to face the music, are as different as night and day. In one way to Putin’s advantage, in another way to Trump’s.
It is gratifying to contemplate that the Russian president’s indictment and the warrant for his arrest put him in the company of killers like Serbian leaders in the Balkan war and Nazis during World War II. But odds are that unless Putin makes a serious misstep about where he travels and who he spends time with, he won’t ever actually go to trial. That’s the beauty of running a country where you write the rules. But since 123 of the world’s 195 nations are signatories to the International Criminal Court— including virtually all of Europe— the indictment and arrest warrant leave far fewer places than before where Putin can go without fear of arrest and deportation.
As for Trump, if he is right about a forthcoming indictment and arrest, it puts him in the company of two-bit punks who, since the beginning of time, thought they were smarter than the system. That’s no surprise. We’ve seen time and time again since he went into politics that Trump thinks he’s smarter than everybody. However, although he has always openly admired the authoritarian president of Russia, he doesn’t have Putin’s power to steer clear of liability. An arrest warrant, even for a comparatively minor charge in Manhattan of fraud, would end his decades-long avoidance of accountability in his personal life, his business life, and his political life.
So for the legacies of two men who have held the world in their hands, it was a very bad weekend. It is imaginable that neither might ever spend a night behind bars. But it is inevitable, if Donald Trump is formally indicted as Vladimir Putin now has been, that the picture they each want history to paint of them will be smeared by the memory of their mutual disgrace.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 36-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
The most concerning aspect of both of these men is that they both have a cadre of supporters who seem oblivious to their morally deficient natures. What does that tell us about the future of our species?
Yes Sir! Thanks once more, Greg.
In Wolfe's BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES, he describes the "maw" of justice, grinding slowly, yet inexorably. In Trump's case, I'm increasingly confident that after a lifetime of escaping consequences, his time is coming. In Putin's, I think it'll take 5 or 6 buddies to take his keys and urge him to retire to his pleasure palace in Crimea....from which he'll likely never, successfully be extradited....But, I'll settle for Trump in several courts in the US, until he has to pack a bag a Mar E Lago and move to a gentleman's prison (Still hoping his roommate will be Bubba).