Timothy A. Clary / AP
Former President Donald Trump appears in court for his arraignment, Tuesday, April 4, 2023, in New York. Trump surrendered to authorities ahead of his arraignment on criminal charges stemming from a hush money payment to a porn actor during his 2016 campaign.
Sunday, April 9, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Most Americans have never been arrested. I am happy to report — at least through today — that I fall into that category of people who have never had to go through that unfortunate and personally painful experience. And I plan to keep it that way.
But former President Donald Trump can no longer make that claim. Of course, he will continue to make all kinds of claims about his arrest Tuesday in Manhattan and, as history has provided us a guide regarding the veracity of those claims, they will almost certainly be false. Exhibit A is his rant Tuesday night when he returned to the comfort of Mar-a-Lago in front of an adoring crowd.
But that has been — and for far too many people in this country, is — the illusion of Trump.
The MAGA world says it believes what he says, which means those folks must continue to ignore what he does at the expense of the truth. That is their right, of course, but just because people want to deny what they know to be true, doesn’t make it true. Or, put another way, any less false. Imagine trying to explain that nuance to your 5-year-old!
Las Vegas is an expert when it comes to illusions. Our stages along the Strip have hosted the greatest illusionists in the world, much to the delight of millions and millions of tourists and locals who have left those shows in wonder and awe at what they have witnessed but haven’t really seen.
But those illusions are for the entertainment and pleasure of our customers. People want to believe an elephant can disappear and reappear in front of their eyes but almost every one of them knows that it didn’t really happen.
And yet, they continue to believe. It’s all part of the act.
The illusion of Donald Trump is different. Yes, he is real and all of this is really happening. And so many Americans want so much to believe that the Trump elephant really is more than an illusion. So much so that they have always had difficulty separating the fact from the fiction of his persona.
So now we must deal with another word: disillusioned.
The dictionary defines disillusioned as “disappointed in someone or something that one discovers to be less good than one had believed.”
The fall of Donald Trump — at least the beginning of a fall that may ultimately be heard in the forests of our federal courts and in the state of Georgia — is no longer an illusion. And the disappointment of a growing number of people in MAGA America should soon follow.
Not everyone, to be sure, because there are still many mini-politicians who have read Trump’s playbook and will carry on trying to fool as many people as possible. And there are still many people anxiously waiting to be fooled.
But Americans care about one thing more than they care about their own political and personal likes and dislikes. They care about their country. And that means they care about the concepts of liberty, freedom and equality under the law.
That is what America is and that is what Americans believe deep down — way below the waterline of petty politics.
If this arrest leads to a conviction or if this arrest clears the way for other jurisdictions to indict on far more dangerous crimes to this democracy, the disillusioned amongst us will grow. As a consequence, our belief in this American democracy will grow more.
We all make mistakes and we all come to realize them at different times. That’s the nature of man.
This time, though, the grand illusionist himself is being forced out from behind the curtain. His followers will finally see what the rest of the country has known — the elephant never actually left the stage.
It’s just an elephant and would-be emperor. And it isn’t wearing any clothes.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.
