The Jordan Rule

So let me get this straight: Putin personally approved and orchestrated the cyber-shenanigans that leaked hacked emails and perpetuated fake news against Clinton and in favor of Trump, but the beneficiary of and perhaps co-conspirator in his actions gets to keep the job obtained through these misdeeds.

There is a long tradition of how we handle cheaters, or those who benefit from the cheating done on their behalf. Think way back to Ben Johnson, the Olympic sprinter – disqualified and stripped of Olympic Gold. Or Pete Rose, who broke Ty Cobb’s record for hitting, then got banned for life from baseball for betting on baseball games.

How about Tonya Harding, the skater who had her husband whack the knee of her opponent and was stripped of her championship title or Maria Sharapova, the tennis player who was banned from the sport after a doping scandal. Or Barry Bonds who was not only prosecuted but lost his spot in the Hall of Fame for doping. And of course there’s the granddaddy of all doping scandals – Lance Armstrong, the bicyclist who was stripped of his 7 Tour de France titles.

The logic is clear – you shouldn’t benefit from cheating. But it seems that the most important job in the country and arguably the world is exempt from these common sense rules.

Even if they’re able to prove that Trump was complicit in Russia’s incursion into our election process – so what? So he gets impeached. Big deal, Pence will take over, and promptly pardon him as his first official act.

And frankly, it hardly matters whether Trump was in on the cheating himself as long as he benefited from it. When our allegedly democratic process is tampered with in an election in which a minority of voters (and the Electoral College) put the president in office, we should at least get a do-over.

I’ve heard nary a whisper from the designated talking heads on that suggestion, though. I guess Trump gets to enjoy the Jordan rules – you know the one that allowed Michael Jordan

to get a short suspension from playing basketball for betting on “golf.” Who knew the Trump Chump had something in common with Air Jordan?