Donald Trump’s so-called “hush money” trial amounts to a Stalinist horror show. For the first time in the nation’s history a former American president, who also happens to be the challenger to the sitting incumbent, has been taken off the campaign trail to answer charges that remain ominously unclear. Biden, the self-appointed champion of “democracy,” has heckled Trump for seeming fatigued while being forced through a sham process, while a partisan media is working overtime to try to legitimize the proceedings.

Trump is fighting an uphill battle, with a biased judge and, likely, a hostile jury disposed to convict. Happily for Trump and the country, this case—which is the weakest part of Biden’s lawfare operation—is likely to be the only one resolved before the election.

Bragg’s case is not the one the regime wanted to bring against an accused “insurrectionist.” The charges are vague and the prosecutor chosen for the dirty errand is a notorious ideologue with a reputation for targeting innocents. Trump, for his part, has been seizing on his downtime from the trial to campaign in unexpected ways. For example, he has been meeting with regular New Yorkers affected by Alvin Bragg’s deranged law-enforcement regime—all while the judge in the case threatens Trump with jail time for violating a gag order.

This is a spectacle practically tailor-made to support Trump’s narrative of political persecution.

The breathless coverage of the Biden propaganda machine cannot conceal that this “historic” trial is about nothing. The jury has heard that Trump engaged in a nefarious scheme to “catch and kill” embarrassing stories about alleged encounters with sex workers from nearly a decade ago, to boost his odds in an election. In other words, Trump tried to guard his reputation—as all politicians have done since the invention of the printing press.

On paper, Trump’s crime is “falsifying business records,” but to Bragg the case is about something much more, an esoteric and totally novel legal theory—but one that is ill-suited to the Democrats’ desire to prove that Trump is some kind of danger to democracy. Even if Trump loses the case, he can still win the battle for public opinion, as it makes him out to be a dissident, an unfairly punished champion for the people against an evil, authoritarian, and ridiculous ruling class.

It is a small consolation to Trump that he only needs to sit through one, rather than four, abusive prosecutions. But of all the ways his enemies could have crossed the Rubicon, this is surely one of the stupidest. The White House is already within Trump’s reach, despite the attempt to paint him as a would-be dictator. It is difficult to imagine that Trump’s alleged dalliance with Stormy Daniels will be his undoing. If anything, this show trial may have been the thing he needed to remind America of his peculiar virtues.