I Still Don't Take the Hush Money Prosecution Seriously

Look, I know there is a growing consensus that there may actually be something to the prosecution of Donald Trump for paying hush money to Stormy Daniels.  But I still am not convinced.

The basic argument that the hush money prosecution is serious is that it is really an "election interference" prosecution, that the election might have gone the other way if the Stormy Daniels affair had come out, so really this is about unfairly swaying the 2016 election.

Sorry, but I still don't buy it.

Back during 2016 -- and 2017-2019, "election interference" referred to Russia's hack of the DNC and Tony Podesta servers and publication of the contents.  It was clearly illegal, both in the sense that the hack was illegal, and that foreign participation in our electoral process is illegal.  

It also violated certain unwritten rules of etiquette in the world of espionage, which recognizes that hacking sensitive information, though in violation of the domestic laws of the host country, is just what spies do, and therefore not blameworthy.  Publishing the contents in an attempt to sway an election outcome is a different matter altogether.  It is not considered to be just what spies do, and is seen as blameworthy.

Donald Trump and his supporters have attempted to obfuscate the reality of Russian interference in the 2016 by stretching the term beyond recognition to mean basically anything that can sway public opinion.  Really, taken to its logical conclusion, this makes the entire political campaign an exercise in election interference since it is intended to sway the outcome.  Everything becomes election interference, and if everything is election interference, then nothing is election interference.

Let's not adopt Trump's terms.

In fact, this reminds me of nothing so much as Republicans back in the 1990's getting into a tizzy about Bill Clinton and acting as if he were our first chronic womanizer President, which he wasn't, by a long shot.  

Neither is Donald Trump our first candidate to attempt to cover up an affair, by a long shot.   If attempting to cover up an affair is "election interference," then the term is being diluted beyond all meaning.