Not even America’s legal system can stop Trump

‘I beseech you to control him if you can,’ Justice Arthur Engoron told Donald Trump’s lawyer in court yesterday. To which the only sensible reply is: ‘Good luck with that.’ 

Nobody can control, or stop, the 45th President – least of all, it seems, the legal system. The trials of Trump will drag on and on in the coming months, all sound and fury, signifying nothing. The Trump train will chug on towards the Republican nomination – and, perhaps, to the White House again. 

‘This is not a political rally,’ said Engoron, who himself seems to be enjoying the theatre a little too much. ‘This is a courtroom.’ But we all know, in our hearts even if we can’t admit it, that the manifold prosecutions and judgments against Trump are political. 

In this particular case, aimed squarely against the Trump business, the judge may well find that, as reports always claim, the Trump family ‘systematically inflated’ – systematically is an inflationary word – his assets on financial statements to get more favourable rates from banks and insurers.