In an extraordinary confluence of events, America mourned one former president as his body lay in state in the United States Capitol, while another former (and soon-to-be-again) president was sentenced after being found guilty of 34 felonies by a jury. Jimmy Carter had become almost the personification of decency in his post-presidential life, while Donald Trump has always been the personification of something a lot more tawdry.

Trump's sentence didn't actually amount to much. Officially, he was sentenced to "unconditional discharge," which sounds more like an embarrassing medical condition than a legal designation. What it amounts to is the state of New York sternly admonishing Trump by saying: "Tsk, tsk!" while perhaps wagging a disapproving finger at him. Trump will not serve a day in jail, he will not have to pay a penny in fines, and he won't even be subject to probation. None of these options were really available to the judge, since in ten days Trump will become president once again.

But even with the lack of any real punitive judgment against Trump, it will still stain his record. He is the first president to ever be convicted of a felony, and he will also be the first convicted felon to be sworn in as president once again. To use one of his favorite put-downs, this is nothing short of a national disgrace.

Trump fought hard to prevent the sentencing from even happening. If he were a normal citizen, he likely would have been sentenced last summer. But he asked for (and received) sentencing delays because of the election. This week, he appealed all the way to the Supreme Court in an effort to prevent the sentencing from happening just before he is sworn back into office. He even called up his buddy Sam Alito earlier in the week in an obvious effort to sway the court. But the Supreme Court rejected his plea, so Trump had to sit and take his medicine today. The most beautiful thing about the sentence? Trump cannot pardon himself, because these were state crimes, not federal. Barring the election of a Republican to the office of governor of New York, the sentence will remain. Trump is going to appeal it through every venue he can, but his chances of having his sentence overturned are slim, at best.

Other than his numerous civil cases (which he keeps losing), this is likely the only legal price Donald Trump is going to pay for his crimes. The other three cases against Trump will not go forward now, or likely ever. Trump will walk away from the consequences of not securing national security documents (and refusing to hand them over to the rightful owner, the National Archives, even after being subpoenaed for them), his blatant attempts to interfere in the presidential election results in Georgia (which were actually caught on tape), and his culpability in the January 6th attempted insurrection and attack on the United States Capitol and the Congress itself. No jury will hear the evidence in any of those cases -- at the very least, until after Trump leaves office again. Justice was delayed, and justice was denied in all three of these cases.

This is, more than anything, a condemnation of the justice system in this country. Prosecutors had four whole years to hold Trump accountable, and (led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, who bears much of the blame) they wasted entire years of this time. Then Trump ate up the remaining time with his endless appeals of every single aspect of the cases he could come up with. So here we are, four years later, and Trump beat the rap because he has enough money to pay lawyers to endlessly throw sand in the gears of the justice system. America's two-tier justice system -- one tier for the wealthy, another for everyone else -- has been shamefully on display throughout all of this.

There will be one coda -- hopefully, at least. Jack Smith is preparing two reports on the cases that never made it to a jury, and while one of them is still ongoing (because Trump had two co-defendants in the documents case) the other is now over for the time being, so the Justice Department will be releasing a redacted version of Smith's report before Trump gets back into office. This should lay out the case against Trump for his involvement in January 6th, so at least we'll all get to see most of what that investigation uncovered.

Meanwhile, Trump is offering a preview of what we can all expect for the next four years, which can be summed up in two words: angry chaos. Showing his masterful ability to hijack the headlines with complete nonsense, Trump has been trolling the nation's journalists with the concept of returning to the days of Manifest Destiny and American imperialism. He wants Canada to somehow magically become "the 51st state," he wants to buy Greenland, and he wants the Panama Canal returned to America post-haste. Also, he got a bee in his bonnet and wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America" instead, just for good measure. He hinted that in the cases of Greenland and Panama, he might just send in the Marines if the people there don't go along with his expansionist plans.

None of this will lower the price of a dozen eggs, of course. But that's beside the point -- the point is that Trump successfully got everyone talking about it, and he will continue stirring everyone up as long as it gets him new headlines.

The chaos got even angrier when Los Angeles started burning. Major areas of Southern California are being devastated by some of the most-destructive wildfires California has ever experienced, so of course Trump decided to wade into the crisis and spout lots of lies and propaganda in order to blame Democrats for somehow creating the Santa Ana winds. Or something. This is a quick reminder (or it should be) that Trump's first response to any disaster anywhere is to always point the finger of blame elsewhere, while spreading plenty of lies about everything. It's how he operates. And we may very likely see Trump decide how to dole out disaster-relief money based on the political affiliation of those impacted -- which is an absolutely terrible thing to do, of course. But it'll likely become par for Trump's course in the very near future.

President Joe Biden has entered into the swansong phase of his presidency, and while he is actually doing some notable things -- creating two new national monuments, blocking offshore drilling for a huge swath of ocean, extending legal status for almost a million immigrants -- one has to wonder how much of it will survive Trump's anticipated rollbacks of everything Biden has accomplished. Team Trump is reportedly preparing 100 executive orders for him to sign on his first day, and that'll just be the start of it.

Congress has returned to Washington, and Speaker Mike Johnson actually got re-elected to his leadership position on the first ballot. This used to be routine, but it's the first time it's happened since Republicans retook control of the chamber. Well, it was actually two rounds of voting but officially it was only one, for technical reasons -- but either way it's a lot more impressive than what had preceded it. Johnson will still hold an incredibly weak position -- he's got one of the smallest majorities in American history to work with -- but the Republicans basically decided to let him keep going because they couldn't think of anyone else who would do any kind of better job than the one Johnson has been doing.

Speaking of herding Republican congressional cats, their plans of quickly passing a big and impactful bill and putting it on Trump's desk to sign seem to be falling apart at the seams. They are now arguing among themselves whether to attempt one gigantic bill that would include a rewrite of the tax code and an extension of all the Trump tax cuts, or to split it into two bills so they can pass some border money for Trump to use more quickly. Both of these (or one, if they do settle on combining them) will be contentious and will have to pass on purely party-line votes. Which it's not clear they'll be able to do. Democrats may be comforted by the sheer ineptitude of the House Republicans to get their act together, since it'll mean far fewer things actually getting done.

And to end on some good news this week, Virginia held special elections for a few seats in the statehouse, and Democrats managed to hold onto their (very slim) majorities in both chambers. This will effectively tie the hands of their Republican governor, so it is worth celebrating. And due to their odd rules about multiple terms, the current governor will not be able to run for re-election later this year, so Democrats have at least a decent shot of taking back the governor's office.

This one is easy, and it's self-explanatory.

The Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week was James Earl Carter Junior.

We wrote about Carter earlier this week, if anyone needs any justification. Jimmy will be missed, and his longevity record among former presidents may never be broken (he reached 100 years old, the first one to do so).

[You may pay your respects at the Carter family's tribute webpage, if you'd like to let them know you appreciated his efforts.]

Senator John Fetterman keeps charting his own course, which increasingly seems independent from the Democratic Party. In fact, we wouldn't be surprised if he starts being called the "Democratic John McCain," since he seems to be charting a full-blown maverick personality. This is different, it should be noted, from merely wallowing in corporate money and doing their bidding (à la Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema), since Fetterman is more about charting his own ideological course than just raking in campaign donations. So while Fetterman's announcement that he'll be heading down to Florida to meet with Donald Trump disappointed many Democrats, but it's really just building his maverick brand.

Which is why we decided to instead hand out the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week (once again) to Bob Menendez. Gold-Bar Bob was back in the news this week because his sentencing hearing is looming. And the prosecutors have asked for a stiff 15-year prison sentence. Here's the (continuing) story:

Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York described Menendez as a historic figure in a sentencing memorandum filed this week: He is the first U.S. official who has been found guilty of acting as an agent of a foreign country and the first whose corruption offenses had reached the top position within a Senate committee. Menendez was the ranking Democratic member and then-chairman of the influential foreign affairs panel during the bribery scheme, which ran from 2018 to 2022, according to records from his trial.

Over nine weeks in Manhattan federal court last year, prosecutors showed how three businessmen -- Wael "Will" Hana, Fred Daibes and Jose Uribe -- showered Menendez and his wife with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash-filled envelopes and checks, gold bars, jewelry, household items and a Mercedes-Benz convertible, all in exchange for Menendez's help securing business deals with officials affiliated with the governments of Egypt and Qatar. Menendez also tried to disrupt several active criminal investigations into Daibes and Uribe's associates, witnesses testified.

"Menendez, who swore an oath to represent the United States and the State of New Jersey, instead put his high office up for sale in exchange for this hoard of bribes," prosecutors wrote in a filing to U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein, who presided over the trial.

Lawyers for Menendez have requested no jail time at all, arguing that he has already become a "national punchline," and that should be punishment enough. Good luck with that one, Bob.

The sentencing is scheduled for January 29th, so we'll likely have another MDDOTW award for him then, but for now we're going to hand him the one from this week, just on general principles.

[Bob Menendez is no longer in office, and it is our policy not to provide contact information for private citizens, so you'll have to look it up on your own if you'd like to let him know what you think of his actions.]

Volume 778 (1/10/25)

We've got a mixed bag this week, as we kick off a new year. We find we can't directly address what the new Republican Congress is doing, because they haven't actually managed to do much of anything yet. But there'll be plenty of time for that in the coming weeks. For now, here's what we've got.

   Felon

We've seen one phrase emerge this week, and we have to say we approve.

"America is ready to inaugurate a president who has been impeached by the House of Representatives not once but twice and who just got sentenced after being found guilty of 34 felonies. So there's a few firsts for the history books -- the only twice-impeached 34-count felon to ever enter the White House. Maybe someday we'll limit ourselves to only presidents that children can look up to as role models, but that'll have to wait until the end of the second term of the twice-impeached 34-count felon is over."

   No drama at all

This shouldn't be noteworthy, but it is.

"On January 6th of this year, Congress met for the official counting of the Electoral College votes for president and vice president. There was no drama and the entire exercise only took about a half-hour. This is the way things are supposed to work, of course. Up until four years ago, most Americans weren't even aware of this ceremonial congressional duty, but of course all that changed after Joe Biden beat Donald Trump. I sincerely hope in the future that January 6th once again becomes just a parliamentary footnote in the peaceful transfer of power in this country. Because what happened four years ago was an absolute disgrace, and I hope nothing like that ever happens again."

   A very liberal 51st state

Has Trump really thought this through?

"You know, if Donald Trump could wave a magic wand and make Canada the 51st American state, it would have the effect of making the Senate, the House, and the Electoral College a lot more liberal. Canadians are going to want to keep their national health care, just for starters. And it'll make it much harder for any American conservative to get elected president. I mean, has Trump really thought this whole thing through?"

   DOGE already dialing expectations back

By half.

"Elon Musk has already backed down from his promise to slash $2 trillion from the federal budget and has now announced he'll only be targeting $1 trillion in federal spending instead. Kind of a remarkable moving of the goal posts, don't you think? Musk is fast learning what a whole lot of armchair conservatives find out when they get to Washington -- talking about slashing spending is one whale of a lot easier than actually doing it."

   Florida man considers his future

Shamelessness abounds down in the Sunshine State.

"I see that Matt Gaetz is seriously considering running for governor of Florida, because why not? The days when a politician's career would be considered over after getting caught in some horrendous scandal appear to be over -- just look at who is about to enter the White House, right? If the voters of Florida decide that a man accused of having sex with minors is the man to lead them, then who am I to say differently? Good luck with that, because what could possibly go wrong?"

   Nothing but contempt

There was some other court news this week, in case anyone missed it.

"Rudy Giuliani -- the man who led the legal effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election -- was found in contempt of court not once this week but twice -- in two different courtrooms, by two different judges. I don't blame them -- I've felt nothing but contempt for Rudy for years now...."

   Don't forget what he actually ran on

Hammer this one home as often as possible.

"Remember when everyone said Trump got elected because the price of eggs was too high? Well, the price keeps going up and up, when you can even find eggs in the supermarket. In fact, the price will probably continue to climb all this year, since bird flu is out there decimating the egg-laying chickens across the country. And Donald Trump is not exactly known for steering America out of a pandemic crisis (to put it mildly), so I don't expect things to get better with bird flu any time soon. But in the midst of all of Trump's blather about Canada and Greenland and the Panama Canal, I hope some journalists keep asking him: 'When are you going to make good on your promise to get the price of eggs down?' Because if that's really what he got elected on, it's only fair to measure his presidency by it, right?"

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground