EDITOR, The Tribune.

TODAY’S startling headlines in the US about two simultaneous criminal convictions, of Messrs Manafort and Cohen, hit me just as I was finishing a brilliant book about the sufferings and emotional reversals of the Italian populace during Word War II.

Italy was led into the fighting by Il Duce, Benito Mussolini. When he conquered Ethiopia in the late 1930s, he was admired as the heroic leader who had unified the country and “made Italy great once again”.

Only a few years later, by early 1945, except for a group of fascist cronies, he was loathed by all Italians as nothing but Hitler’s lap-dog, and they strung him and his mistress up by their heels at a Milan gas-station.

I do not predict a similar fate for President Trump. But yesterday’s convictions may well mark the beginning of the end of his historically brief political dominance. It is hard to see how he, or any President, can survive the sworn testimony that he directed the payoff of a couple of mistresses to keep them quiet.

Of course he has his implacable supporters, like Musssolini’s cadre of fascistic, who defend him through any impeachable “high crimes or misdemeanors”.

But their numbers are bound to shrink, and their influence wane, among the rational majority of American citizens.

And I do not suggest any parallel for The Bahamas, except that every political leader should never forget the Biblical warning “Lo, how the mighty have fallen”.

RICHARD COULSON

Nassau,

August 22, 2018.