Trump didn’t do those bad things, according to GOP legislators, bankers, and Trump himself. And if he did, they didn’t count

OJ Simpson decided he could make some “blood money”, as he called it, by writing a “hypothetical” book on the murders of his estranged wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman entitled If I Did It. When it was announced in 2006, the outrage was so overwhelming that the publisher, HarperCollins, owned by Rupert Murdoch, fired the editor, Judith Regan, and cancelled a scheduled Fox network special. The OJ book fiasco appeared to be a rare moment of Murdoch sensitivity, but he was concerned that the association besmirched his own reputation.

A week after Donald Trump’s attorney argued in the DC district court that he could not be prosecuted for his attempted coup culminating in the January 6 assault on the Capitol and could order the assassination of any opponent, Trump took to his Truth Social account on 18 January to insist that he “MUST HAVE COMPLETE & TOTAL PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY” even for “EVENTS THAT ‘CROSS THE LINE’”. If the glove fits, you must still acquit.

Trump’s If I Did It moment was followed, not with repulsion, but instead with his former warm embrace by Murdoch’s Fox News, reflexive bended knee by the entire Republican leadership, and Polonius-like advice from JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to Democrats to “grow up” and “listen” to Maga.