Donald Trump has spent most of the campaign ranting about Hillary Clinton being corrupt. But what most of his followers don’t know–or, more likely, don’t want to know–is that Trump is staring down the barrel of some pretty serious legal problems of his own. How serious are they? Well, according to social sciences guru and longtime New Yorker reporter Malcolm Gladwell, they’re serious enough that Trump could be behind bars before 2017 is out.
Gladwell sat down with CBC News’ Wendy Mesley, weekend anchor of CBC’s “The National,” to talk about the election. Watch here.
Gladwell, who is himself Canadian, thinks that if Trump wins the election, he won’t have a lot of time to enjoy his victory. Roughly seven minutes into the interview, he told Mesley that even if Trump wins, “I think he’ll be in jail within a year.” Between the scandals surrounding Trump University and the Trump Foundation, as well as links “that we don’t know much about” between Trump and Russian businessmen, Gladwell thinks Trump is going to spend a number of years “huddled with his lawyers.”
Mesley asked what a lot of people outside the United States have asked–how in the world is the American press so fixated on Hillary’s emails when Trump faces legal problems that could potentially put him in prison? Gladwell’s reply? “Welcome to the great mystery of the American election, 2016.” He noticed a report that showed Hillary’s emails literally got more coverage than every other policy issue in the campaign put together. “You tell me whether that’s a media problem,” he said.
There’s a reason Mesley sounded so incredulous. In Canada and most other democracies with more civilized electoral climates than ours, these legal disputes would have been enough to force Trump out of the race. Indeed, as I have mentioned on numerous occasions, Trump has engaged in a number of outrages that would have ended his candidacy within hours had this been Canada, Australia, or the UK.
Gladwell also mused about why Hillary Clinton is so despised by many elements of the American people. He believes that Hillary doesn’t conform to the “set of traits” that female politicians are supposedly “allowed” to have. In his experience, he’s seen that many people expect female politicians to have “a kind of modesty in positions of authority,” and Hillary is seen as being too ambitious. It’s a trend that dates back to Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory. To his mind, the outrage about Benghazi, the emails, or her overall integrity is just a smokescreen for concerns that she doesn’t act the way a woman in power is “supposed” to act.
This report, more than any non-American report on this election that I’ve seen, sums up why most of the world is rolling its eyes at how Trump is even in the game at this point. After all, when a presidential candidate facing potential jail time isn’t news and a bunch of nothing burgers surrounding his opponent leads every newscast, something is very wrong.
(featured image courtesy Ed Schipul, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
