It’s pretty extraordinary how often former President Donald Trump has been vindicated from the relentless attacks against him, which have been coming since the fateful day he came down that escalator and announced he’d be shaking up the American political scene forever.
His critics were wrong about his chances at winning the presidency. The hysterical Russia conspiracy theorists were wrong, several times over.
A historic pair of impeachments failed to satisfy his angry opponents.
And even now, after leaving office, the vindication just keeps coming.
Former President Trump has scored a pair of courtroom victories, which he declared, in true Trumpian fashion, to be “totally vindicating.”
On Friday, a former contestant for “The Apprentice,” Summer Zervos, ended her 2017 lawsuit against the media-and-real-estate-mogul-turned-populist-president in which she had alleged sexual assault.
Also on Friday, a judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by Trump’s notorious former lawyer Michael Cohen against the Trump Organization, which sought $1.9 million to cover legal costs incurred by the work he previously did for the company, as well as an additional $1.9 million related to his own legal trouble in the early days of the Trump administration, as Reuters reported.
The judge, while far from sympathetic to the former president, said the Trump Organization is simply not responsible for Cohen’s fees.
“In a nutshell, Mr. Cohen’s legal fees arise out of his (sometimes unlawful) service to Mr. Trump personally, to Mr. Trump’s campaign and to the Trump Foundation, but not out of his service to the business of the Trump Organization,” the New York judge said in the filing.
Zervos, for her part, did not elaborate on why she had abruptly withdrawn her lawsuit, a separate Reuters report detailed, but her attorneys did issue a statement explaining that she no longer wanted to pursue it.
“Ms. Zervos no longer wishes to litigate against the defendant and has secured the right to speak freely about her experience,” the attorneys said. They added that she nonetheless “stands by the allegations in her complaint.”
The one-time reality TV contestant had accused Trump of unwanted kissing and groping in 2005 and of damaging her reputation by referring to such allegations as “lies” and retweeting a post that derided Zervos’ claims as a “hoax.”
Trump had been seeking permission from the court to countersue.
“Ms. Zervos made the prudent decision to voluntarily drop her case without the exchange of any compensation or attorneys’ fees,” Trump attorney Alina Habba told Reuters in an email. “She had no choice but to do so as the facts unearthed in this matter made it abundantly clear that our client did nothing wrong.”
The former president himself said that it was “so sad when things like this can happen, but so incredibly important to fight for the truth and justice.”
“Only victory can restore one’s reputation,” he added.
While President Trump is admittedly far from what you might call a gentleman, it’s worthy of note that so far, none of the allegations of flat-out sexual assault or misconduct have ever stuck, just as the plethora of oftentimes wild conspiracy theories levied against him routinely fall flat.
This hasn’t stopped his opponents from constantly seeking the next silver bullet to take him down, as we saw through the whole of his presidency.
Trump, meanwhile, absolutely refuses to be taken down, which in large part embodies his appeal to an American populace that has for far too long been scolded and browbeaten by ideologues on the left who accuse them of heinous sins against their fellow man simply for loving their country, sticking to biblical values and resisting the radical social upheaval from the progressive left.
The left has often characterized Trump as merely a “symptom” of our supposedly wicked, unredeemable racist and bigoted national heritage, but by so doing, they’ve smeared millions of perfectly decent, moral Americans who believe in genuine equality along with him.
He’s a symptom all right — a symptom of an American populace who is tired of taking things sitting down. In him, they see a hero who would fight until the bitter end to make sure our country isn’t taken over by anti-American zealots who want to sell us out to our ideological and militaristic enemies.
He might have been forced to fade to the background now that he’s out of office, but the movement he sparked isn’t going anywhere — and his followers, despite his predictions, have yet to get tired of winning.