The US Goes All Third-World Again. By John Hinderaker.

So Donald Trump has been indicted again, this time in connection with his retention of classified documents at his home in Florida. …

The special counsel’s hardest task is to try to distinguish what Trump did from what Joe Biden, Mike Pence and many others have done. …

Will it work? I doubt it. I think most people will see no significant difference between Trump’s actions and Biden’s, and will consider this prosecution another manifestation of America’s two-tiered system of justice. They will be right to do so …

I don’t think any of these charges have merit. On the other hand, all of them stem, to one degree or another, from Trump’s poor judgment and personality flaws. Together, they add up to an amount of baggage that many Republican primary voters will consider unacceptable.

He is scheduled to go to trial in the New York case at the end of March–the height of the primary season. It may well be that during most of the primaries, Trump will be appealing a criminal conviction and a jail sentence.

Democratic voters have a elected a mayor or two from a prison cell, but that may be a bridge too far for Republican presidential primary voters.

When on election night 2020 six crucial battleground states (only) closed counting before announcing a result — a first — and reopened the next morning after many thousands of votes had apparently arrived overnight and boosted Biden from behind to the lead in those states — we though the US was looking like a third world joke.

Trend confirmed.