Let’s cut to the chase: Is Donald Trump going to be indicted? Is there a realistic chance the media’s dream could come true, and President Trump could be frog-marched out of the Oval Office in handcuffs as MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch cries out in the background (as he did on TV Friday night), “Our democracy is under siege! Trump is a dictator!” Could this actually happen?

Because people who pay attention to MSNBC, CNN and the Boston Globe-Democrat’s editorial page really believe it can. About 40 percent of Americans believe President Trump has broken the law in his dealings with Russia, and in a recent Quinnipiac poll, 76 percent (!) of Democrats said President Trump should be impeached if their party takes control of the House in November.

And given the feverish media coverage of the #RussiaGate story, and elected Massachusetts Democrats like Mike Capuano, Jim McGovern, Katherine Clark and Seth Moulton voting to move forward on an impeachment resolution, no wonder the typical liberal thinks Trump’s next TV gig will be a cameo in “Orange Is The New Black.”

So is an arrest or indictment of The Donald a real deal?

“It’s ridiculous. I can’t imagine anyone taking it seriously.”

That’s constitutional scholar and former Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush official Donald Rivkin, who’s written extensively on the subject. And while he’s a Republican, his legal arguments are all but unassailable. Starting with “How can it be illegal for a president to fire someone who works for him?”

“My concern is a case of obstruction for firing Comey, for talking to Comey earlier, etc.,” Rivkin told me. “The president by definition cannot obstruct justice while carrying out his constitutional duties.”

Of course a president can obstruct justice, but it takes an action outside the duties of his office — bribing someone, or telling someone to lie (which is what President Clinton did with Monica Lewinsky).

“But the notion that the president can’t fire someone who works for him because of concerns about obstruction essentially emasculates the chief executive,” Rivkin said. If you make that a criminal matter, a president can’t do his job.

As for the idea that Trump obstructed justice by putting out a bogus press release about a meeting with a Russian attorney, Rivkin just laughs.

“Of course politicians lie. Issuing a press release to the media can never be a basis for obstruction of justice,” Rivkin says. Obstruction isn’t a ban on “doing anything that discomfits the prosecutors. Under this logic if you wanted to say, ‘I’m being prosecuted by the DOJ, and they’re all a bunch of bums,’ they might be upset with you — but is that obstruction of justice?”

Some liberal jurists insist otherwise. “If Trump exercises his power — even his lawful power — with a corrupt motive of interfering with an investigation, that’s obstruction,” Lisa Kern Griffin of Duke University told the far-left website Vox.com. But the giveaway, as Rivkin points out, is in the phrase “with a corrupt motive.”

Donald Trump fired James Comey. Did he do it for the same reason that Hillary Clinton supporters were planning to fire the former FBI chief if she had won the election? Did Trump fire him because he just didn’t like his looks, or because Comey didn’t suck up enough, etc. etc? Or was it part of a nefarious plot to end the RussiaGate investigation and cover up the truckloads of cash and vodka Vladimir Putin used to bribe Trump into (insert insane conspiracy here).

Well, if the Comey firing was part of a plan to kill the investigation, it was the stupidest plan since “Let’s have Tom Brady catch a pass in the Super Bowl.”

Unless there’s a tape of Trump saying, “Yes, I fired Comey because I broke the law and he was onto me,” there’s no way to ever prove that Trump’s motive was “corrupt,” short of plugging him into the “Motive-O-Meter” they keep at the Pentagon next to the Halliburton Weather Machine.

So, no. If President Trump is removed from office, it will be the old-fashioned way: At the ballot box, or by impeachment. Our democracy may be a mess, but it’s not quite a crime.

Yet.

Michael Graham is a regular contributor to the Boston Herald. His daily podcast is available at www.michaelgraham.com.