Start of the Criminal Case Against Trump in Manhattan

Year in Review: Week 16 (April 15-21, 2024)

A description of all photos is at the end of the newsletter.

In our review of the eventful year 2024, we have arrived in week 16. This year may become pivotal in American history, joining the ranks of 1776, 1865, 1917, 1941, 1969, 1989, and 2001. We don't know that yet, but we do know that in 2024, most American voters chose to re-elect a president whose actions and rhetoric made clear he did not support democratic norms.

His 2016 election may, in hindsight, be seen as less consequential; four years later, the US seemed to return to normality, although the failed coup d'etat on January 6 and other unprecedented behavior left a bitter taste.

This time, there is a severe risk that Trump will end the functioning democracy as we know it. I am confident that there will be elections in 2028. However, I find it hard to imagine these will be fair elections. By then, Trump will likely have structurally changed the US, and it will, in many aspects, be unrecognizable from the democratic country we know.

Week 16 started on the day the criminal case against Trump began in Manhattan. Just ten years ago, no fiction writer would have had the creativity to write a novel about a presidential candidate who would pay a porn star hush money -and thus interfere with the elections- and then falsify the bookkeeping.

Looking back, I remember my surprise at the slowness of the American justice system when it involves influential people. It took eight years to reach this point, and it was already an election year. This starkly contrasts the stories I have often read of poorer defendants who frequently face quick trials and harsher sentences for minor offenses. As a European, I think that financial power influences legal outcomes in the US as much as it influences politics. Fairness is sacrificed for the power of money.

Future historians will have difficulty describing what went wrong in 2024 and how the democratic election of a man who doesn't believe in the democratic process was possible in the US. They will likely say it was not the start of fundamental change in the US but a symptom of all kinds of other characteristics of a society that had changed more than most people recognized.

The US I knew was a country where politicians could see campaigns collapse for comparatively minor scandals; it makes it harder for me to understand how prolonged controversies around Trump, like the Manhattan trial that started in week 16, didn't diminish his support among his supporters.

Like every day, I also share some of my memories of each week; it contrasts with the big events in the world. And I always enjoy reading your memories of each week.

I have been writing daily for 16 days and still have 36 to go. I will take a break for a few days with this series, but I will be back soon. You can, of course, continue to share your memories in the chat. Tuesday is week 17 (April 22-28), and Wednesday is week 18 (April 29 - May 5). Here are my memories:

Week 16

In week 16, I returned from Colorado to Ottawa. I don't have many photos of those days, but I remember my beautiful walk in Gatineau Park with good friends. It's the one with the bare trees and the shadows on the ground. Every year I lived in Ottawa, I was struck by the continuation of winter long after the colors and flowers had returned to the Netherlands.

The opening photo I took on a highway in Quebec is colorful, although it mainly shows the blue sky and striking clouds rather than the green of the trees. The next photo, where I overlook the Ottawa River close to the Prime Minister's residence, shows how that green hasn't returned to nature's palette in Ottawa in mid-April.

It made the explosion of colors in the Netherlands even more stunning when I returned later that week. I captured the narrow canal in the field through the window of one of the buses I took to get home from the airport. The street with the trees is the "High Street" of my village (still with cars, it's now being restructured and will be car-free for half the year and parking is no longer allowed there). The last photos capture a good memory of a long walk in the dunes.

Please keep the chat alive:

Did you know that clicking on the ❤️ at the bottom or the top of this post will help others discover my publication? You can also share it with others. The best way to support my work and not miss anything is by subscribing to this newsletter.