30 March—On the subject of stupid, stupid, stupid, consider Donald Trump’s indictment announced yesterday—on as yet unannounced grounds—for doing what businessmen, politicians, judges, bishops, saints, martyrs, and messiahs have been doing for millennia. It’s stupid, stupid, stupid because on the off chance that Trump should be convicted by a sequestered jury not intimidated by his goons, he’s not going to do time nor pay a meaningful fine. But his feculent followers will be going to town.

Even less unreasonable Republican pols are critical of the indictment, likely fearing a Trump-generated primary backlash should they not affect fealty to the MAGA messiah. And, bless him, Connecticut’s own Democrat Senator Richie Blumenthal, never passing up a chance to mouth off, has reminded the nation that even Trump is innocent until proven guilty.

Presumably, Donald Trump’s alleged crimes in the Manhattan indictment ultimately involve manifestations of tax fraud. Doesn’t everything? Well, back in the seventies, Richard Nixon signed income tax returns containing various fraudulent claims about his pre-presidential and presidential archive. The tax fraud started at just about the time Nixon took office.

You’ll recall that Tricky Dicky (a nickname Nixon earned when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 1950) had disgraced himself for crimes only tangentially related to the way the country was actually run and was sensibly pardoned for being a total asshole by President Gerald Ford in 1974 at the cost of Ford’s own election in 1976.

So the lawyer who prepared Nixon’s tax returns and the appraiser who valued the papers were indicted by a federal grand jury for, among other things, conspiracy to commit fraud. The case against the lawyer was dismissed because he hadn’t had a fair trial. But the appraiser, who had also valued papers of presidents Hoover, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, was convicted. (You wonder why the specialist in presidential papers hadn’t valued the Roosevelt papers and if . . . No, of course not.)

Nixon boasted that he was not a crook. But he certainly must have been aware of the fraud. Yet he got off with paying back taxes and some civil penalties. That’s the way it is, for better or worse. And that’s likely what’s going to happen with Trump. Fixer and fall guy Michael Cohen has already done his time. Another Trump henchman may well turn up and be another sacrificial stooge. But Trump, unfortunately, will go on until he eats himself to death . . .