Former President Donald Trump has been indicted. He will be arrested. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
And naturally, the internet is celebrating.
While we have been waiting for this for a very long time, some have been waiting longer than others. Remember: Decades before he was President, Trump was harassing people, scamming people, and generally ruining lives.
One of those people was Dr. Yusef Salaam, one of the “Central Park Five,” a.k.a. The Exonerated Five, who was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for the assault of Trisha Meili in 1989. Barely two weeks after Salaam’s arrest, Trump took out a full-page advertisement in four major New York papers (The New York Times, The Daily News, The New York Post, and New York Newsday) calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty in the state, specifically because of the Central Park Five—who, I remind you, were all later exonerated and reimbursed by the city.
Trump never apologized or retracted his statement, and in 2019, went so far as to say, “You have people on both sides of that … They admitted their guilt … If you look at Linda Fairstein and if you look at some of the prosecutors, they think that the city never should have settled that case—so we’ll leave it at that.”
So upon hearing the news of Trump’s indictment, Salaam had a one-word response: Karma.
That is what this is in its purest form: all of the hate Trump has spread and the criminal actions Trump committed are finally having some consequences.
While a part of me wishes Trump could have been indicted for the accusations of sexual assault against him for the extra irony, it’s good that he’s being indicted for influencing the election. The state of American democracy feels more tenuous every day. Part of repairing it means holding accountable those who sought to undermine it in the first place.
Even better, Dr. Yusef Salaam is running for City Council in central Harlem, working on a public safety plan to keep the NYPD and department of corrections accountable and challenge the school-to-prison pipeline that punishes underprivileged youths.
Yes. This is indeed karma of the best kind.
(featured image: Scott Olson, Getty Images)
