Donald Trump will skip another Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night because no one will punish him for not being there.
No other Republican front-runner could so contemptuously snub his party’s second on-stage forum and do his own thing – in this case, a speech about the autoworkers dispute in Detroit as he cranks up a general election campaign months before the first primary votes are cast.
While getting away with it is the ex-president’s quintessential political skill, his talent for evading consequences is facing a grave challenge in another sphere – the courts. A New York judge on Tuesday underscored the growing threat to Trump from his mountain of legal challenges, ruling in a civil case that the ex-president and his adult sons were liable for fraud. The judgment, which poses a severe threat to the future of the Trump Organization, comes ahead of the ex-president’s four criminal trials in other matters.