US voters face despairing choice

Donald Trump may be rising in the polls but sordid evidence at his Stormy Daniels hush money trial in New York and the Biden administration’s shameless use of lawfare to try to discredit him accentuate the awful choice US voters face in November. Whether the salacious detail Ms Daniels provided of her sexual encounter with Mr Trump almost 20 years ago was necessary in a relatively minor case involving the alleged falsifying of business records to cover a $US130,000 payment to keep her quiet is a moot point. Judge Juan Merchan said some of her testimony would have been “better left unsaid”.

As The Wall Street Journal noted: “It’s easy to believe the prosecution’s goal was as much to humiliate Mr Trump before voters as it was to sway the jury that Mr Trump is a sexual predator.” New York’s Democrat prosecutors “are willing to go to this extreme because the other criminal cases against Mr Trump may not go to trial before election day,” the paper said. “Those who want Mr Trump convicted before November now see (Manhattan District Attorney Alvin) Bragg as their last best hope.”

The embarrassing allegations reflect poorly on Mr Trump. They recall the damning Access Hollywood “grab ’em by the pussy” tapes of Mr Trump before the 2016 election. But no less egregious is the brazen use of lawfare against him by Democrat loyalists. The tawdry New York case adds grist to the mill of those who believe neither the 77-year-old former president, with his chequered past, nor the doddery 81-year-old incumbent should be seeking, much less given, another term in the White House. The US deserves far better than the two. Yet it says much about voters that despite what has emerged in the trial, Mr Trump has risen in the polls, particularly in battleground states, while Joe Biden retains the slight lead he got in the race after his State of the Union address in March.

Only dangerous despots such as Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Iran’s ayatollahs, with their malign ambitions, can take heart from the abysmal choice confronting US voters amid profound challenges. The US’s despairing allies, looking to Washington for resolute, coherent leadership of the free and democratic world, can take none.