The New York Post’s headline the day after Trump announced his decision to stand in the 2024 presidential election was ‘Florida Man makes Announcement’, which was published on page 26. This signals a change in attitude towards Trump from one of the small number of media outlets that treated him favourably or neutrally while he was president. Either that or the New York Post has succumbed to ‘entryism’, the phenomenon of activists taking over organisations and changing their ideology from the inside.

The passive-aggressive headline, though, is indicative of something that is heavily implied across both the legacy media and social media in recent days: that Trump’s moment is over. The classicist, Victor Davis Hanson, said in an interview with former Nationals’ leader John Anderson, that one option for Trump (like all true archetypal heroes, who act rather than talk), is riding into the sunset after irrevocably changing the Republican party and American politics. Davis Hanson said that Trump will wait in vain for people to admit the positive effects he’s had on American politics, which are considerable: the growth in the American economy, the hope embedded in the Abraham Accords, the fact that, for the first time in decades, an American president did not start a war, the destruction of Isis, and the optimistic news that America could be energy independent. And, perhaps most importantly, his influence debating taboo subjects, in particular, about who holds the levers of power in Western democracies and should we trust these people with our lives.

Another argument against a second Trump presidency is that conservatives and classical liberals, or some combination of both, who make up the majority of the population in democracies around the world, now have a candidate in Ron DeSantis who has the best aspects of Trump without the mean tweets and the loose talk at press conferences and campaign rallies; or even the ‘small hands’ and ‘orange’ complexion that drives Trump’s self-described sophisticated political opponents to such a frenzy of hatred.

There is more than an element of plausibility to these arguments. All political lives end in failure (you could say this about life), and a bedrock principle of moderate political ideology is that change is essential for the maintenance of democratic institutions.

So, for Trump, according to this view, it’s either goodbye, and thanks for all the fish, or good riddance. Both these arguments are wrong, though, in one simple, fundamental way, which is that for democracy to maintain credibility and survive, justice should not only be done, but should be seen to be done. Both the lowliest self-effacing beggar and the crudest, most boastful, braggart billionaire have the right to justice and fair treatment. Billionaires don’t lose their humanity because they’re rich and famous; they bleed, they’re liable to the vagaries of life, and the people they love will die.

This goes to the heart of the argument about whether Trump should run for president again. If you’re against his candidacy, you’re against justice because, whether you love or hate Trump, the list of crimes, both legal, and in multiple shades of grey, that the establishment committed against Trump, culturally, philosophically, societally, and most importantly, politically, demand retribution.

The establishment created the Russia collusion hoax, which was funded and knowingly disseminated as misinformation by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party. The establishment cynically used Covid-19 as a weapon against Trump when they knew that he would, according to the opinion polls, romp home for re-election in 2020. (Frank Dikotter, one of the foremost historians of modern China, said that Trump was the only US president who understood the defects of the Chinese economic system and that Trump was destroying China from within. A part of me believes that the Chinese Communist party would have done anything to remove Trump from power. Make of this what you will). The establishment weaponised the Black Lives Matter movement to create chaos across America, and, as cities were burning and people were dying, gaslit people by saying that the violence was ‘mostly peaceful protests’. Then, with a cynicism almost beyond belief, the establishment advocated for the police to be ‘defunded’, which launched an unprecedented crimewave, the effects of which impacted the poor more than any other demographic in America. The establishment impeached Trump twice for non-existent crimes using non-existent evidence. (And then claimed that he was unfit for office because he’d twice been impeached). The establishment used Big Tech to silence and censor any favourable news about Trump and amplify even the most trivial of misdemeanours or slips of the tongue by Trump into sins worthy of Beelzebub. The establishment redefined a riot at the Capitol Building on 6 January, 2020, as an ‘insurrection’ or ‘coup’. Never mind that what they claimed about Trump’s actions that day could not, in any plausible scenario, have come to fruition. It was the most inept, fanciful, amateur, unfocused, laughably stupid ‘coup’ in the history of the world. In other words, it wasn’t an ‘insurrection’ or a ‘coup’ and using these words to describe what happened that day is a sign of narcissism or blind, stupid partisanship. One could go on almost indefinitely about the crimes committed against Trump, but we’ll leave the most egregious one till last: the establishment propagandised the world against a centrist figure with average political views, simply because he wouldn’t play by their rules, which they had created in such a way that usually the results are gamed from the start. People fell for the con because they were saturated in one-sided propaganda. If anything was systematic, it was the establishment’s war against Trump.

A second Trump presidency cannot offer anything new politically that a DeSantis presidency could not do as well or better. But sometimes the balance of justice overrides the imperatives of political expediency.

Trump’s candidature for a second presidential term is the correct option because, even if he loses, at the very least, egregious figures in the establishment will have moments of dread wondering if Nemesis is finally on their trail.