There is a phrase I suspect every parent has used when trying to talk a child down from some overblown high, or to pick them up from a catastrophised low: things are never as good as they seem – nor are they as bad.
But on Wednesday in Washington, Donald Trump had a day every bit as good as it seemed. It was marvellous, unalloyed joy. And it came in two shapes – and within a couple of hundred yards of each other geographically.
The first was from the Supreme Court. The nine justices decided after much deliberation that they would rule on whether Donald Trump does or does not have immunity from prosecution following the attempted insurrection of 6 January 2021, and the role he played in it. Did he, as the special counsel Jack Smith has charged him with, conspire to defraud the United States by obstructing the electoral process? Can he be tried for it?
