Donald Trump Colorado Supreme Court ruling fires up his base and ...

But this is one state court’s decision in a Democrat stronghold, which has made a ruling that courts in other states have rejected, and which will be challenged and possibly – maybe probably – overturned by the US Supreme Court. With that court’s 6-3 majority of conservative justices, the scene is set for another divisive chapter in the politicisation of the highest court in the land.

Yet, that will just be the outcome of the Democrats’ political weaponisation of the legal system to try to judicially bar any comeback by Mr Trump.

No American citizens – including former presidents – should be above the law. Mr Biden says it is “self-evident” Mr Trump led an insurrection. Yet it was always a political stretch to label the rag-tag Trump diehards who somehow managed to evade the Capitol’s security on January 6 as an “insurrection”.

US democracy proved easily robust enough to repel Mr Trump’s ego-driven assault on the crucial democratic norm of accepting the people’s decision. The sanction for the appalling behaviour that underlined his unfitness for the highest office in the free world should always have been political – just as Mr Trump’s bad management of the global pandemic helped turn off and turn out enough voters to get Mr Biden narrowly across the line in 2020.

When China is vigorously contesting the US’ superpower hegemony, and democracy is under threat from autocracy globally, it is not in America’s, Australia’s or the Western alliance’s interests for a chaotic and unpredictable huckster to re-occupy the Oval Office.

It is an understatement to say that America needs to renew and refresh its leadership. But at some point, Democrats need to realise that the legal pursuit of Mr Trump is politically self-defeating and only serves to fire up the never-say-never Trump base.

The perception of legal show trials just defaults US politics back to the system – or “swamp” – being rigged against disaffected Americans, which originally fuelled Mr Trump’s rise in 2016.

The latest legal blow is now filling out the political sail of the front-runner for the Republican nomination and helping raise money for the Trump campaign. “We don’t need judges making these decisions, we need voters to make these decisions,” says Mr Trump’s Republican candidacy rival, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley.

That’s the right message as far as it goes. But that Mr Trump will still need to be defeated “fair and square” at the ballot box, as Ms Haley says, appears to be the hard political reality confronting both sides of the aisle, despite Mr Trump’s latest and ongoing legal trials.

If his name is on the primary ballot, Mr Trump is almost certain to head the Republican presidential ticket. And if his name is on the presidential ballot, will a visibly aged 81-year-old Mr Biden have enough left in the tank to defeat Mr Trump for a second time when America votes on the first Tuesday in November next year?