It's just that you seem to think that it's just happenstance that he's managed to place himself as one of the charismatic icons of America over the past decades. I don't see how you could argue that he's not excellent at selling his own brand. I get that he's not a political heavyweight. I'm not saying otherwise. I'm saying that the man has skills, and talents, and has built an empire (good or bad) which is familiar to us. He cares about that, and is good at it. I don't think he'd fight a losing criminal case after being impeached when there are much safer alternatives for him. Unless he sees a criminal sentence as a boon for his brand, he's not likely to be caught like a deer in the headlights by an impending trial.
C'mon. Post-impeachment, he has to know that he's already lost. Congress isn't interested in prosecuting a criminal trial against a POTUS. It tarnishes the credibility of the office and of themselves by correlation. They're not going to impeach him unless they're 99% sure that he broke laws. Look at Clinton. He clearly lied under oath in a criminal trial. They weren't going to say that he didn't, but they also had no intention of taking a sitting POTUS to trial over some lies about sex. If they were going to do that, he would have lost the trial. It was on tape, there were witnesses, he had no defense. We DO in fact know what the meaning of the word "is" is, and for him to use it in that context in that setting was 100% not "the whole truth."
If Congress wanted to pursue a trial, he would have resigned rather than go through it all, just to face the inevitable guilty verdict. Trump would be no different. He's a con man, probably, but he's not foolish when it comes to selling his brand.
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