Trump's house of cards is starting to crumble

When you believe in things
You don't understand
Then you suffer
Superstition ain't the way, yeah

— Stevie Wonder

Donald Trump, fresh from his “overwhelming victory in Iowa” (his campaign’s words) had to suffer Wednesday from the reality of a New York courtroom where E. Jean Carroll is taking him to task for defamation. This, of course, after a jury previously found Trump sexually assaulted Carroll and defamed her. So the current trial isn’t about guilt or innocence – that’s already been determined. Trump’s sojourn back into civil court is all about the money – and that doesn’t make him happy. 

So, he lashed out Wednesday in court.

That’s a harsh reality for Don the Con. Almost as harsh as the Iowa Winter which gave Trump a landslide victory in the caucuses at the beginning of the week and lead to headlines like “The party has decided – on Donald Trump,” as was reported by ABC News.

Depending on what you’ve read, seen or heard, Trump’s victory was either a landslide that is a foreshadowing of his ultimate victory over President Joe Biden in the November general election, or a “hollow and meaningless victory from a minority of white voters in a state lacking diversity,” as one pundit put it. 

The facts show the victory in Iowa is a bit of both. True, the foul weather kept many voters away. True, it was the MAGA ferrets who showed up in large numbers to give Trump the appearance of a landslide. It made him giddy as a coke whore with a free eight-ball.  And the Iowa victory could help push more people in the GOP, mostly those of questionable character and limited intelligence, into Trump’s circle if they’re not already there. But as Trump’sniece Mary pointed out on various social media platforms in the last few days, the facts show that a small number of voters are giving the impression of a landslide. Classic appearance vs. reality. 

"Despite the fact that high turnout was predicted for the 2024 Iowa caucus, turnout was very low, with only 110,000 voters participating – one of the lowest turnouts in 24 years," Mary Trump wrote Tuesday. "In comparison, nearly 187,000 GOP voters participated in 2016."

Mary further claimed that it was "significant" that "49 percent of caucusing Republicans did NOT choose Donald."

Meanwhile some members of the GOP, when interviewed by television reporters, say they will vote for Biden in the fall if Trump is on the ticket.  A look at the numbers shows a softness in support of Trump – even/and especially with the endorsement of Ted Cruz – a man who is so spineless as to defy effective description, though many descriptions include the phrase, “steaming pile” in them. 

So, yes, Trump is technically correct – those who actually voted in Iowa overwhelmingly supported him. But the numbers were small. Imagine if you had a classroom full of kids and three of them voted for class president and that carried the day. The facts also show that Trump, as always, is guilty of building a house of cards. NO. Not a television show for those who want to see a dictator give the country a “paddling,” rather, it is a con job built to make the case that Don and only Don, a messianic figure to many of his supporters, will be the answer to all of their prayers.

To make it easy for you, let’s go to “My Cousin Vinny,” and the immortal words as spoken by Vincent Gambini (Joe Pesci for those who understand that the movie was a work of fiction brought to life by an actor playing a role). Here Pesci is talking about a court case, but he could just as easily be talking about Trump trying to make his case before the American voter; “The D.A.'s got to build a case. Building a case is like building a house. Each piece of evidence is just another building block. He wants to make a brick bunker of a building. He wants to use serious, solid-looking bricks. . .He's going to show you the bricks. He'll show you they got straight sides. He'll show you how they got the right shape. He'll show them to you in a very special way, so that they appear to have everything a brick should have. But there's one thing he's not gonna show you. . . .When you look at the bricks from the right angle, they're as thin as this playing card. His whole case is an illusion, a magic trick.”

Trump supporters? Here’s the thing. They call Trump a messiah. They ignore his sins because “God can use the common clay of any many to shape our destiny,” I’ve been told by some supporters. Others who love Trump scream,  “This country needs a dictator.” 

At this point, his supporters are definitely in on the con. It doesn’t matter if they believe him or don’t. They like him for one important reason – he makes them feel like they have control in a world that increasingly appears to be out of control. Whether or not Trump has any influence on the chaos is irrelevant to those who embrace his brand of chaos. At this point, they will help him burn the country to the ground to defend him. They want to convince you they are the majority and that they are inevitable. They are not. They are suffering from the intoxication of having even a whiff of control and, more importantly power. That’s all that matters when your life has been controlled by others. Power and control are aphrodisiacs, stimulants and a hallucinogen all rolled into one.

Trump knows well how to pull the strings on his supporters to get more money and how to instill fear into those who find him the boorish wannabe dictator that he admits he truly is.

Wednesday in court Trump was admonished on more than one occasion for disruptive behavior. Judge Lewis Kaplan said, “Mr. Trump has the right to be present here. That right can be forfeited and it can be forfeited if he is disruptive. And if he disregards court orders, Mr. Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial.”

Trump threw his hands up in response.

“I understand you’re probably eager for me to do that,” Kaplan said.

Reporters in the courtroom heard Trump say, “I would love it.”

“I know you would,” Kaplan said. “You just can’t control yourself in this circumstance apparently.”

For those who love Trump, it’s just another example of his “brash and bold” behavior – admonishing those in power, defying rules and laws. Trump would love to be thrown in that briar patch. But his former confidant Michael Cohen had a better idea: fine him until he shuts up. “That’s what Donald is all about,” Cohen has told me on several occasions. “Money."

That is Trump’s reality. It’s all about the money, control, revenge and keeping his fat, flaccid hindquarters out of prison. And to achieve those ends, he’s going to try and bully his way out. 

The rest of us have to arrive at that point where we understand what we’re actually seeing when it comes to Trump and call it out for what it is. Many of my colleagues in the press corps have been slow to recognize and even slower to react to this folly. We have become so engrossed in the culture of political propaganda that we have, in many cases, become blind to it. 

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Or as H.L. Mencken pointed out years ago about many reporters, “He prints balderdash because he doesn’t know how to get anything better – perhaps in many cases, because he doesn’t know that anything better exists. Drenched with propaganda at home, he is quite content to take more propaganda from Washington. It is not that he is dishonest, but that he is stupid – and, being stupid a coward.”

American journalists are a weak and cowardly bunch, for the most part, and thus miss the central point of what occurred this week in Iowa.  As Mary Trump pointed out In a post on “X”; “Donald is weak.”

She is, in the immortal words of Vincent Gambini and Mona Lisa Vito, “dead on balls accurate.”

The struggle to defeat Trump this fall therefore revolves around the ability to hold his feet to the fire every single day – whether it is on the campaign trail, in a courtroom or in the court of public opinion. Reporters have to step up to the plate and call out his vile villainy for what it is. 

The major players remaining in the GOP primaries, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis should do the same. But, they are ill-equipped for such a battle because they have tried to walk a tightrope between embracing the lunatic wing of the Republican Party while trying to set themselves up as viable alternatives to Trump. The only GOP candidate who had that ability to speak to the facts about Trump was former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and he’s gone from the race – though his exit was a drama worthy of a screenplay.

Who is left is President Biden – and he has his own problems with communication; he’s not good at it. 

So, again, it boils down to us in the press to communicate what is possible and what is at stake.  As the numbers show and as  Salon’s Heather Digby Parton reminds us: “[T]here are some very big cracks in his coalition and they are becoming more and more pronounced. Remember, if the election is close, as it may very well be, it would only take a small number of GOP and Independent defections in the right states to put the country out of this misery at long last.”

If that doesn’t trip your trigger consider Hunter S. Thompson in his “eulogy” for Richard Nixon. “As long as Nixon was politically alive — and he was, all the way to the end — we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws.”

Facts are facts. The fact is, Donald Trump is weak and I still am unsure he’ll be on the ballot this fall. But we cannot ignore him, he’s a New York sewer rat fighting for survival and we can’t feed into his frenzy. We too have to walk a tightrope. We have to report facts without feeding Trump. So, Trump’s story cannot be told by feckless reporters who have no idea of context or factual information.

Very superstitious
Nothing more to say
Very superstitious
The devil's on his way