There are several fears that pundits tell us gnaw at Donald Trump in his private moments: The fear of being labeled a loser. The fear of ending up behind bars. And the fear of being exposed as a man who constantly overstates his wealth and might lose his business empire.
Barring any last-minute delays, that last fear and its consequences -being hit in the pocketbook- will be in the spotlight in the week beginning October 2 as the Trump Organization goes on civil trial, a case in which the judge has already declared that massive fraud was committed within the more than 500 labyrinthine entities directly or indirectly controlled by Trump.
Wouldn’t you like to make a deal by borrowing against your home with an assertion that it is valued at a million dollars and then reduce your real-estate taxes by declaring its value to be only half that amount?
It has been a long time coming, but it looks like MLK’s historic observation that ”the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” is about to be realized in at least this one case.
Meanwhile, the RICO case in Georgia has reached a significant milestone with the news that one of the 19 defendants in the case, one of whom is Trump, has flipped, taking a plea deal and agreeing to be a cooperating witness.
Watch for more such deals, though there will be less incentive for Fani Willis’s team to offer deals this generous, turning felony counts into misdemeanors, as they work their way up the ladder.
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about who deserves the most blame for the phenomenon known as Donald J. Trump.
The Donald himself, of course.
To a historically huge degree, what used to be known as the Republican Party, but is now, with few exceptions, just a shadow of its historic self, cowed by the fealty to Trump demanded by the MAGA movement.
As Jelani Cobb wrote in The New Yorker: …the G.O.P.’s steady drift toward the right, from conservative to reactionary politics; its dependence on older, white voters; its reliance on right-wing media; its support for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans; and its increasing disdain for democratic institutions and norms all portend increasing division and a diminishing pool of voters.
Yes, all you Republicans out there who think we still have a viable two-party system, based largely on gerrymandering and a “Southern strategy” of soulless, polarizing politics, the arc of the moral universe is, slowly but surely, going against you.
This brings me to the so-called news media, because, more than anything else, the primacy of Donald Trump is due to the decades-long practice of much of the media, including what we think of as “mainstream” media, to report on what Trump does with an uncritical eye. You can go all the way back to his earliest days in New York City’s cultural scene, when he would obtain positive publicity for himself by phoning the Big Apple’s gossip columnists and pretending to be his PR agent.
Today, of course, the proliferation of right-wing media allows for unabashed Trump-oriented cheerleading and the marketing of false equivalencies. This is why, in media-magnified Trump World, the transgressions of Hunter Biden rise to the same level as those of Mr. Trump, he of the 91 criminal counts, the multiple indictments, the alleged incitement to riot, the multiple findings of sexual abuse and defamation, etc.
First and foremost among these media outlets, of course, is Fox News, the purveyor of lies and an all-but-certified propaganda arm of the GOP.
If there were ever any doubt about the role Fox News plays in the Trump orbit, it was demolished when the following 2016 video clip of the shrewish hypocrite Jeanine Pirro recently resurfaced. Even if you’ve already seen the clip, it bears another viewing in light of Trump’s legal entanglements, as Pirro explains why Trump was the better candidate because legal concerns swirling around Hillary Clinton would detract from her ability to function as president.
Really, JUDGE Pirro?
Let’s put the right-wing media outlets aside for now. They will continue to do what they do, and that’s just the way it is.
But as the 2024 campaign season heats up, it is up to the so-called mainstream media, which some consider to be the source of legitimate news and information, to tell it like it is.
And so far, with only occasional exceptions, they are failing.
Reflecting on her 40 years at CNN, Christiane Amanpour said that her trademark is to “be truthful, but not neutral. Whether you’re covering Donald Trump, whether you’re covering the climate crisis, whatever you’re covering, you absolutely have to be truthful, which does not mean unobjective. Objective means cover all sides. It does not mean come to the same judgment about all sides.”
There seems to be a tendency in much of the journalistic community to avoid making judgments about Donald Trump’s increasingly unhinged and desperate actions and pronouncements, which literally put the lives of his targets and their families in danger and are interpreted by his rabid supporters as a command to take action.
I was struck by the comments of Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece and a clinical psychologist, as she reacted to the free publicity Kristin Welker gave Trump during her debut interview as host of Meet the Press:
This was journalistic malpractice. The consensus in the legal community seems to be that the indictments of Hunter Biden almost certainly never would have been brought if he had a different surname. By bringing up Hunter Biden, Welker played right into Donald’s hands and she creates a false equivalence between Biden’s charges and the four indictments and 91 counts Donald is facing. Hunter Biden is a private citizen who fucked up due to a combination of addiction and nepotism. Donald, while leader of the free world, stole classified documents, incited an insurrection against his own government, and tried to steal the 2020 presidential election.
If you don’t know this man, you eventually will:
He is Mehdi Hasan, a host and commentator for the Peacock Network and MSNBC. He recently took apart fast-talking presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in a wide-ranging interview, refusing to allow Ramaswamy to steamroller him with evasive responses to the pointed questions Hasan asked him about the many inconsistencies in Ramaswamy’s past.
Republican candidates and leaders operate in a bubble of friendly TV hosts and interviewers, rarely having to answer the tough questions that never come about their beliefs and accomplishments. It is also why many of them are incensed that one of the three moderators at the latest GOP candidates debate, the moderator who is not part of the Fox News family, actually had the nerve to ask the candidates tough questions about their views on important subjects of the day.
Democracy is at stake, and I’ll leave the last words about Donald Trump to the aforementioned Mary Trump:
“It’s not his strength that makes him dangerous. It’s his weakness along with his unconscious sense that he is a loser who can only “win” if he lies, cheats and steals. He believes that being a “winner” is an absolutely necessary condition of his existence, which partially explains why he threatens to burn it all down if he doesn’t get his way. The problem is, a significant minority of Americans, in conjunction with almost 100% of elected Republicans, seem determined to put him in a position to do just that.
That was my understanding, but MSNBC threw viewers a curve last weekend when, indeed, there was a new episode of The Mehdi Hasan Show. I don't know if that was just a one-off or they plan to give him more air time for the show. I sure hope the latter is true.
Except now Mehdi Hasan has lost his show…