Another chapter has now been added to the horrible and interminable saga that is the Age of Trump and the rise of American neofascism. He is now the only former president to have been charged with federal crimes. These alleged violations of the Espionage Act are so severe that, if convicted, Donald Trump may spend the rest of his natural life in prison. But as Trump is not just a man but a leader of the tens of millions in the MAGA movement — a movement with a proven propensity for violence and terrorism — America's democracy crisis continues.
One of Trump's biographers told me that the former president imagines himself as the main character in a comic book or superhero story – that he himself is the author of. But now Trump's fate is, quite literally, in the hands of Attorney General Merrick Garland, Special Counsel Jack Smith, the Department of Justice, and a larger American legal and court system that is finally holding him accountable for his decades of law-breaking and utter contempt and disregard for societal norms and rules.
