I keep seeing
this CNN article around social media and it spawns A LOT of thoughts. Gripes, mostly. I agree with the sentiment — I think the social stigma often unfairly applied to people shouldn’t matter one single bit. But I’m not naive.
Through my passion projects, volunteering, and doctoral work, I interact with a lot of people who are formerly incarcerated or incarceration-impacted. I would love to believe that a future President being a felon has the power to change public opinion, but his experience is vastly different than real people out in the real world.
One of Two Things
This means one of two things:
Option 1 — He Doesn’t Get It
He doesn’t “get it,” and even after his own experience, he was shielded enough that he truly believes what he’s saying. His exposure to the justice system was so insulated from the real thing that it didn’t produce any understanding of how the system actually works for people without his resources.
Option 2 — He Does Get It
He does “get it,” but has no desire to use his power and influence to make the world better and change the tide of public opinion regarding formerly incarcerated individuals. The understanding exists. The will to act on it does not.
He has power and money. That’s it. It’s kind of like Judges who get caught drunk driving and get away with it, or when police and prosecutors use qualified immunity as a means to get away with unsavory activities.
What He Will Never Experience
He is NOT going to be treated the way someone who actually served time has, or deal with the real impacts of a stigmatizing label such as “felon.” He will never have trouble finding a job. He will never struggle to secure safe and affordable housing. He is free from the nastiest of consequences. And he is never going to serve time.
A holding cell with the lights kept on — and, depending on the charge, no blanket or pillow
Understanding how backward the system is from the inside — no “fire hose experience” for a sitting President
An in-person probation meeting where transportation problems and schedule conflicts are irrelevant to the officer
Reporting to a probation office for random testing regardless of circumstances
A sneak-attack arrest in front of friends, neighbors, or coworkers
A strip search and the instruction to “cough”
He had one probation meeting and it was virtual. Most probation officers do not care how busy you are and whether or not you have gas money or even reliable transportation, for that matter. It won’t matter if you’re missing a limb and on the edge of death. They are going to make you come in.
Why Wealth Insulates from Collateral Consequences
The collateral consequences of a felony conviction — employment barriers, housing restrictions, licensing exclusions, social stigma — fall heaviest on people without resources to navigate around them. Wealth buys lawyers who minimize charges, connections that bypass background check scrutiny, and platforms that reframe the narrative. The structural barriers that grind down ordinary people with records do not disappear for wealthy defendants; they just become navigable in ways that have nothing to do with rehabilitation or justice. The label stays but the consequences don’t land.
Rita’s Verdict
Consider Trump the Crystal Lite of felons.
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Related Coverage — Collateral Consequences, Stigma, and Reentry
