The Witness Chronicles, June 4, 2024
“Ex-President and convicted felon”
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Trump Thinks We’re Going to Reach a Breaking Point if He is Jailed
“What do you mean we, white man?”
Yeah, that’s the punch line from an old joke about the Lone Ranger and Tonto being surrounded by Indians. But it fits when Trump says ‘we’ are going to go nuts if he gets sentenced to jail.
My response echoes Tonto. Who is this we you speak of? Because it ain’t me or anyone I know and I know a fair amount of people. This is what happens when you live in an echo chamber. It magnifies the voices around you until you think they are a chorus.
There’s a constant chorus in Trump’s head and the effect has migrated to his Party members, who have bought into the fantasy that the country is outraged by Trump getting what was coming to him. At least that’s what the fallout is starting to look like.
The problem here is Trump must believe this. He has no other choice. He may think if he says something over and over again eventually it becomes true, except with this one it looks like it isn’t.
After the verdict observers said the Trump crowd outside the courthouse were not angry, they were crying. Crying? Somebody tell them there’s no crying in politics, or something like that. No, they are supposed to be home sharpening their pitchforks and filling up their tiki torches with kerosene.
Someone needs to combine a red MAGA hat with a white hood with a point on it. Then give them those cool spears the guys in The Wizard of Oz carried. Except…when they melted the witch they turned out to be happy about it.
Don, you must have watched that movie, everybody did, over and over. Remember the line? “you’ve melted her”, then they all started dancing and celebrating?
Breaking point indeed. We saw that scenario once in January of 2021 and it ended very badly for those breaking point folks. Bad like federal prison bad. Bad like squeal like a pig bad.
Don, you don’t get a do-over. You went there once and may have gotten away with it with the help of your judges (neverending shame on them in the history books), but your stormtroopers are going to think twice this time around, because they were basically a cowardly mob storming a thinly protected Capitol filled with elderly courageous and young chickenshit politicians, those mostly Republicans.
Those guys learned too, though we wouldn’t know it by watching them debase themselves this week. We might have asked, how low can they go, but now we know. And it’s pretty low.
Don’s not having a lot of luck raising his legions. It may be that they are tired of hearing him cry wolf one too many times. Or realizing slowly that their guy is actually what he has always been, a charlatan and petty grifter. The gold plastic sneakers and flimsy $60 bibles may have been clues.
Or, in fairness, maybe they are realizing we have some real trouble in the world, like 500 hundred tornados in one month. That’s new, and they hit squarely in bright red country. Or the women in those red states realizing that they don’t have to tell anyone how they voted, so why not vote against taking away their rights?
Even if they are diehard Trumpies on the surface. The guys don’t need to know. Btw, that’s real power; girl power. Ladies, if I were you I’d keep that secret to yourselves…
The Trump verdicts left the pundits stumped. I know I was. But as the dust clears, I’m not seeing regular folks up in arms. And early polling is showing surprising support for the rule of law across the board. This is the worst possible news for the Trump Party, but they can’t hear it, or won’t.
It’s more comfortable in the echo chamber with their pals, pretending the country is outraged. But I’m not seeing it. Are you?
Note: I wrote this yesterday, June 3, 2024. Two things have caught my eye since then. Heather Cox Richardson’s always excellent newsletter came out last night with this damning litany of evidence that the convictions are making a difference. And the realization that Trump’s media description is now ‘former President and convicted felon’.
(more below)
Who Convicted Trump 34 Times? 12 of Your Neighbors
Not 12 Republicans, not 12 Democrats, 12 Americans
I have to give them some credit, these GOP Trumpies. They wasted no time working up their outrage after a jury of his peers convicted Donald Trump of 34 felonies for coverups designed to keep the truth from American voters in 2016.
It has been quite a show, watching these lackeys spitting out outrage that the legal system did its job, just not the way they wanted. But before I get all insulting, let’s look at something really important.
Trump was convicted by a jury of his peers. Despite his railing against the unfairness of holding the trial in New York City, where he is very unpopular, the jury truly was of his peers.
Donald Trump grew up in NYC, his money came from his father’s real estate empire in NYC, he built huge buildings trumpeting his name in Manhattan, and he still owns a gigantic apartment in one of them. Donald Trump is a native New Yorker through and through.
This jury was not a bunch of New York elites chosen to convict a hillbilly who made it big and bought an estate in Florida, shades of the Beverly Hillbillies. He was one of those elites and took pride in hobnobbing with them while he denigrated the ‘little people’ who took care of his type.
They were New Yorkers, which probably means they came from somewhere else to live the big city life and serving on the jury was part of that life. It’s called citizenship.
But apparently citizenship is only acceptable to Republicans when it goes their way. Otherwise these people are corrupt NYC scum who serve Joe Biden, the Devil incarnate. Not just fringe Republicans, Republican leadership, which should be ashamed of themselves but are incapable of it.
When Larry Hogan, one of their own, defended the legal system and the rule of law they crucified him on the cross of Trump righteousness, never thinking about how this looks to the rest of us.
Btw, they desperately need Hogan to win the Republican senate seat he seeks. But these political geniuses seem to have forgotten reality in the service of their criminal candidate.
To stand before the world, as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson did, and state that the rule of law only applied when it followed Republican dogma, was possibly the most shameful public act of this election cycle. Mr Johnson needs to be reminded he serves the American people first, not a convicted felon.
A convicted felon who was found guilty, unanimously, by twelve American citizens chosen by both the prosecution and Trump’s own attorneys, not the judge they all accuse of being a Biden stooge.
All of a sudden, if you are a Trump supporter, the jury system is rigged, which means our entire legal system is rigged. It will be interesting to see how this works when it goes the other way for them.
We’re going to see a veritable flood of hypocrisy even greater than the sickening spectacle we witnessed this past weekend. They don’t seem to have thought about that, but they don’t seem to have thought about anything.
Meanwhile those twelve New Yorkers have to fear for their lives and families, a direct result of this Republican fake outrage, when all they did was their jobs as citizens.
When Trump loses and the smoke clears, what will be left of the Party? I suspect there will be nothing. That’s Trump’s real accomplishment. If he can’t win he will try to burn it all down. We know because that’s what happened last time.
And he failed. His supporters in the GOP seem to have forgotten that small fact. Their guy is the biggest serial loser in American political history, quite an accomplishment.
~ I write The Grasshopper, an occasional letter on the creative life and it’s sister, mostly daily publication The Witness Chronicles, a place for my articles on politics and climate. They share a free and paid subscription. I also write The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. I don’t paywall any content in these, however this is how I live and I strongly believe all writers and creatives should get paid, if we provide value. Your support with a paid subscription helps make that happen.
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