Trump watch: 7 years later, is his Watergate finally here?

It seems the stress of the past few months has done nothing to dim the remarkable comic timing of former president and potential future jailbird Donald Trump as he posted on his Truth Social network this morning: “I hear that Deranged Jack Smith, in order to interfere with the Presidential Election of 2024, will be putting out yet another Fake Indictment of your favourite President, me, at 5pm.”

It’s the placement of “me” after “your favourite president” that does it; the slight pause and quiet clarification it implies, in case any of his followers on the small social platform — populated largely by QAnon followers who left Twitter when it was too left-leaning — thought Grover Cleveland was facing persecution by the state. This was followed by a shockingly predictable comparison to his situation and that of Nazi Germany.

Yep, after the aperitif of Stormy Daniels’ hush money, and the entrée of boxes and boxes of classified documents stored next to the toilet, the main course has arrived: Trump has been indicted on four charges as a result of special counsel Smith’s investigation for the Department of Justice into his attempts to overthrow the result of the 2020 election.

When we say “main course” we really mean it — these are by far the most serious charges he’s facing. The New York Times went so far as to say: “This third indictment in four months finally gets to the heart of the matter, the issue that will define the future of American democracy.”

If found guilty, he could collectively face more than 30 years’ jail. Incidentally, the indictment also makes reference to six unnamed co-conspirators, which… look, we might leave that one alone for now.

The historic moment has dominated the biggest news services around the world:

If there were an Olympics for the most common topics of media commentary around Trump’s political career, the podium spots would surely go to the pieces speculating that: A) a more dignified, restrained “presidential” Trump might finally have arrived; B) Trump might finally have crossed a line and taken his rhetoric or actions somewhere that most of his voters simply couldn’t follow; C) whether this or that scandal finally represented his Watergate moment.

Moments A and B never came, and those waiting for them missed the point: to the extent it had any coherent content whatsoever, Trump’s appeal was his offer to burn down the consensus his opponents in both parties had spent decades building — the disappearance of America’s industrial base, the wars of “regime change”, multiculturalism and “political correctness”.

The silver spoon real estate heir turned reality show villain — who got rich keeping the unions out of his building sites and kicking working-class (mostly Black) families out of their homes and stayed rich by playing warped versions of himself on any TV show or ad that ever asked him — reworked himself into a voice for the working man.

It was duplicitous, and his program was impossible to implement, and yet this — not to mention his obvious corruption, relentless vulgarity and chaotic administration — delivered him the second-highest vote in the history of the US (that his fairly uninspiring opponent received the highest is a measure of the depth of feeling Trump provokes in all directions).

But Trump’s Watergate might actually, finally be here — and it’s a fitting one. The man who promised to burn it all down and pull an America, both old and new, from the embers, may finally go down for directing his followers to invade and sabotage the very institutions and processes he rode to the highest office in the country. The possibility he could still celebrate victory in 2024 from a jail cell (though he might have a hard time voting) is just the cheese on the cold, congealing quarter-pounder.