Judging Trump’s Greek Chorus After His Verdict
Temple Chorus, Greek Play, Nashville, 1910. Photo by Bain News Service, publisher, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The excellent Matt Labash wrapped his rhetorical powers around something I’ve been stewing on. Illustrating the absurdity of politicos has been Matt’s calling card for a long time now, so it is not surprising something like the Trump verdict this past week functioned as a slow, hanging curve right where Labash could really turn on it. After the excellent synopsis of “that’s mostly what I’ve done since the jury rendered their decision: sat back and watched stupid, reckless people say stupid, reckless things” followed by social media receipts of some of the worst examples, Labash gets to the heart of the matter:
On the other hand, his (Trump’s) character, or lack of, isn’t a side-question. It ought to be the main question, as conservatives once obsessed over it in the era of Bill Clinton. Hypocritical gasbags even wrote entire books on virtue. So that even if you think Alvin Bragg overreached, and a judge submitted jury instructions that all but guaranteed a conviction, every single facet of this case would’ve been a disqualifier to any other candidate who didn’t have the cult following that Trump has. The facts, never really under dispute since Trump refused to testify in his own defense for fear of perjuring himself, is that he bonked a porn actress shortly after his wife gave birth to their son, paid her hush money to cover it up in the middle of an election, and then commenced lying from there. Trump says plenty of untrue things, but often tells the truth about his followers, whose number he had all the way back in 2016 when predicting that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight, and he still wouldn’t lose them. A prediction that’s been proven correct over and over again, even if your only exposure to his manservants’ fealty is say, reading J.D. Vance’s Twitter feed. Not only do his believers defend him to the death, but even his faux believers do the same (Vance, like so many of Trump’s other towel-boys-and-girls, was once a committed detractor).
Do read the whole thing here, and Slack Tide is worth subscribing to.
As we enter year nine since Donald Trump descended the golden escalator and became the dominator of all things news media and the center of the political universe, perhaps a readjustment is in order.
While this verdict and the other pending legal action is important to note and follow, and his campaign for president does have a good chance of returning him to office, Trump himself isn’t really the story anymore. At this point in the proceedings, anyone who doesn’t know everything they need to know to make an informed decision on the man isn’t going to seek any knowledge to make an informed decision.
Frankly, after nearly 40 years of being all over first New York tabloid media, then reality TV, the same was true back in June of 2015 when the soon-to-be 45th president announced his run at Trump Tower. There was plenty of book on Donald Trump. Most folks who fell into support of MAGA 2016/2020/2024 either didn’t read it, didn’t care, or accepted the Trump campaign’s highly suspect CliffsNotes versions.
Everything Trump has done since then has been completely consistent with who and what he was prior to 2015. Donald Trump has never not been Donald Trump. Donald Trump will never cease to be Donald Trump.
But good Lord did Donald Trump utterly break plenty of other political people who didn’t maintain themselves, or at least their publicly crafted images of themselves. The Ted Cruzs of the world who spent decades molding a public persona only to have Donald Trump rip that political soul out of them, wear it as a hat, and then demand the artist formerly known as TrusTed compliment his hat every time they share space.
The congregation of Republicans that were against Trump before they were for him is a long list, full of folks the pre-Trump right leaning media promoted as bastions of this-or-that. Post-Trump conversion of those same folks proved them be malleable extras Trump humiliated, subjugated, and diminished into a Greek chorus singing their dithyrambs to their Donald Dionysus. They don’t sing and dance out of true belief; they praise their conqueror because they were so shallow in their beliefs beforehand, they now just follow the eater of their world for lack of a better idea or way to still matter.
However you judge Donald Trump — and I judge him based on the 50+ years of very public actions we have on the man — judging the followers of Trump who changed everything about themselves to bask in the Trumpian afterglow as he passes through this dispensation of time should be severe. It boggles the mind that educated, wealthy, powerful people otherwise thought to be smart and privileged in our political classes took a look at Donald J. Trump and went “yep, everything I’ve done up to this point needs to just burn in the fires to light his way.” But such is politics, ambition, and the need for meaning and power.
Trump railing against the verdict is to be expected, and doesn’t bother me very much. I know what to expect from Donald Trump. Donald Trump, citizen, will get to air his grievances against the charges, underlying legal theory, the judge, and all the rest in his appeals process that he is legally entitled to.
The Trump sycophants, enablers, and Dionysian dance troupe who declare the end of all humanity because the god of their political garden isn’t bearing the fruit he once did are far more of a concern. Such people who fell so hard for Trump over the last nine years have told us something very important about themselves: they will fall for anything, and thank that anything for the privilege, and then rant to the winds that all nature should do the same.
Pathetic. Reckless people saying reckless things indeed. The Trump enablers are far more dangerous together than Donald Trump is singularly, since Donald Trump could do none of this (gestures broadly at the last 9 years) without them.
And I judge them harshly for it.
Originally published at the authors Heard Tell SubStack and excerpted from the authors News, Notes, and Notions Sunday newsletter.
Andrew – I love you like a third cousin. Your writing is erudite and generally just full enough of southern aphorisms that I get a good daily chuckle. But this:
is way off the mark. The GOP has been building to this since Goldwater. They knew then – as they know now – that their policies are deeply unpopular and frankly anti-American. So they started a no holds barred power grab in the naked light for all to see. That’s why they packed the federal bench for 30 years to have judges ready to gut Roe. That’s why they have gerrymandered red legislative dominance in purple states. Its why the believe they can require the hanging of the Ten Commandments in Public schools with impunity.
So if all you can muster is judging them – judge your West by God Virginia heart out. Just don’t act like the rubes in the legacy media who think Trump is a de novo apparition. He’s not. And as Chip pointed out in the Trump Conviction thread – lopping him off won’t make the threat go away.Report
3rd cousin is legal where I come from, Philip, so a high compliment…
I think I have several years of proven stuff/work/effort beyond just judging such folks, and dealing with deeper issues that spawned this hot mess, that speaks for itself. Landing a 1K word piece on a specific point is hardly comprehensive. These folks, and some media commentators who understand Trump more as a business model than anything else, see Trump as an excuse whereas I am of the number that see Trump as a revealing event to what was, is, and will be for some time to come.Report
I see Trump as just the latest “revealing event” which like all the other events before it will get arm waved away by people for whom false equivalence is the ticket to lush cocktail parties.Report
hey knew then – as they know now – that their policies are deeply unpopular
The great part of this, it allows whomever is competing against them to attempt stuff that is almost, but not quite, as unpopular.
Imagine what would be possible!Report
On the liberal blogs we’ve had a lot of discussions like this, tracing the illiberalism of the Republican party back to its source, variously attributed to Reagan, Goldwater, or the New Deal era or even to pre-Enlightenment times.
All of which is true but in some ways mistakes a path chosen for an inevitability.
There is within almost any political ideology, ideas that can fit within liberal democracy, and American conservatism isn’t any different. Its entirely possible that from Goldwater on, the Republicans could have consistently chosen to tailor their ideas about limited government and piety to liberal ends.
For example, the liberal churches took “eternal” fixed dogma and interpreted it to welcome queer people and those who live together before marriage. Conservative Democrats borrowed heavily from market economics to produce current Clinton- Obama- Biden economic policies.
There is no reason why the evangelical Christian churches or conservative politicians couldn’t have done the same.
Their hostility to social change wasn’t forced on them by some ideology or the dead hand of hoary tradition, it is a conscious choice they made and are still making.
For example, the younger members like the Charlie Kirks and Dan Bonginos are guys who grew up in the liberal era and never experienced any sort of “traditional” world. They are rejecting the very tradition they grew up with.Report
I think the general all creator religiosity and open racism in America made the current Republican path more likely than not. Rightist conservative parties in Europe, especially the United Kingdom, had fewer issues becoming racially diverse because of the small l-liberal consensus and the idea that somethings would not be indulged in after WWI. This is why Enoch Powell was punished for his “rivers of blood” speech despite the fact that the Conservative Party didn’t like the idea of 90,000 Ugandan Indians, who weren’t strictly speaking refugees because they held UK citizenship, going to the United Kingdom after Idi Amin kicked them out either. Powell said things that the political establishment decided were unspeakable after World War II and was punished accordingly.
I can’t really see how this works out in the United States because the political parties were always much weaker and couldn’t get the more heterodox members in the party to behave. The Democratic Party always had conservative members that would balk at turning Roe into federal legislation. Republicans found that racist dog whistles got them a lot of votes and weren’t able to go fully against their more racist members like the Conservatives in the UK had some rhetoric that they couldn’t tolerate even if they agreed with the points being made. It is really hard to see how the belief in limited government could work in a society where reparations are seen as a matter of justice by many.Report
It’s an attitude that has already permeated and destroyed our politics, and might still put a serious dent in our judicial system, now that formerly tough-on-crime Republicans, who used to be just fine with rule of law after otherwise unpopular decisions (the George Zimmerman and Kyle Rittenhouse acquittals), are now posing off as Antifa in red hats and khakis — ready to burn the system down on behalf of the Arsonist-in-chief.
Well, they already did that for David Perry, a low-rent white supremacist who literally gunned someone down on an Austin street for being a leftist. No wonder they’re doing the same for the MAGA Messiah hypothetically doing the same on Fifth Avenue.Report
The congregation of Republicans that were against Trump before they were for him is a long list …they were so shallow in their beliefs beforehand
In our system, the first duty of a politician is bend to the will of the electorate and thus stay in power. Trump broke that long list of people because he has a very large very devoted segment of the GOP base who back him.
This is a bigger problem than just Trump.
HRC was the Team Blue designated candidate but Obama swept in and took the nod from her, pretty much the same way Trump did. Obama being more ethical and saner than Trump kept him out of trouble later. But it looks like that has little to do with taking power.
Most people vote on emotion, modern media gives talented demagogs direct access to the people, and our parties are very weak.
These are features and flaws in our system.Report
IIRC back in 2016 the Republican Anointed One was to be Jeb! Bush. Some other “smart money” went to Rick Perry and Scott Walker. Had any one of them performed half as well as the Smart Guys told us they were supposed to, Trump wouldn’t have had a vacuum to walk into.Report
I see it as mainly a result of two stand out factors. First the GOP had failed to even attempt to reinvent itself after the cascading disasters of the W Bush administration. Trump was willing to pivot on those where no one else was and made the also rans all look like liars and fools.
Second the establishment GOP thought it’s path was at least rhetorical moderation on immigration (whether they’d ever actually agree to a compromise is another story) while doubling down on Zombie Reagonomics of the Paul Ryan variety that had been firmly rejected by the electorate in 2012. Trump zigged where they zagged, moderating (rhetorically) on the budget/entitlements and doubling down as an ultra hard liner on immigration.
The rest is history and the GOP still doesn’t know what the f*ck to do about it besides kissing the ring.Report
If you look back at the Tea Party protests of 2010, we can see that those people were not in any way Jeb! people or Walker/ Ryan/ Perry/ Romney people.
They were Trumpists before Trump.Report
I think the earliest sign that the voters in the coalition were sharply diverging from the establishment was Sarah Palin. The Tea Party certainly had weirdo activism and had become adverse to actual governance but I am not sure it was totally irreconcilable from the traditional Republican parties stated goals.Report
The Tea Party was fiscal conservatives.
The problem with fiscal conservatism is too many people don’t want to reduce their own gov handouts. Even the fiscal conservatives themselves mostly want to reduce everyone else’s but theirs.
It was popular in theory but unpopular in practice. It is to economics what global warming is Team Blue.
When a group of protesters want to [stop global warming now], the politicians are supposed to make them happy without doing too much economic damage. Certainly without shutting down the economy entirely which is what they claim they want.
So they think they’re serious and it was popular enough to do things but it was also poisonous to everyone else.
Trump might have started out with policies but he has transformed his movement into a cult of personality.Report
The Tea Party started out as fiscal conservatives, but thanks to the tireless efforts of liberals they turned into racists.Report
Look what you made me do!Report
de Tocqueville: “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money”Report
And yet we’re still here.Report
I’ve seen this quote attributed variously to Benjamin Franklin, Toqueville, Mark Twain and others.
But aside from that, has this ever happened?
When exactly has Congress bribed the public with the public’s money?
When unfunded tax cuts exploded the deficit? OK I could buy that but otherwise lets see some examples of such bribery.Report
Huh i didn’t realize the provenance was in question. I’d remembered it as de Tocqueville, googled and found it attributed to him, and didn’t look further.Report
I googled it myself. It is widely attributed to de Toqueville, but without chapter or other references. The quote does, however, show up in the Amazon entry for Democracy in America, which suggests that it’s in there somewhere.
That said, I wouldn’t doubt that the quotation has been attributed to others. It does sound like something Twain would say.Report
Oh, they knew what to do about it, but they didn’t want to pay the price. From 2008 on, at the bare minimum, a good 2/3rds of what GOP politicians and thought leaders have done has all been about avoiding, at all costs, a long sojourn in the political wilderness and a rethinking of base policy goals.Report
Bingo!Report
This. Right here, this.Report
I’d also argue that the Republicans never really recovered from Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory. They thought the Presidency was to be theirs’ forever after Regan’s 1980 victory, and this really goes back to Nixon in 1968 in many ways. Clinton winning the Presidency in 1992 and 1996 ruined that for them.Report
I’d say you’re right not only on symbolism but also on policy. Clinton tacked right on economics, ended his term with the federal government in surplus and interrupted the reign of Regans cult. When you contrast that with Bush minor’s eight years and the utter self-beclowning of the fiscal conservatives during that time that runs you right up to the routes in ’06 and especially ’08 that put them in the fix they remain in to this day. The feral partisanship and double speak they had to adopt to try and justify their intransigence and try and paint Obama as a socialist led pretty much straight to Trump.Report
Republicans had a very secure Presidential election coalition from 1968 to 1992. It took Watergate in 1974 to provide one exception to that and even then Ford almost eked out a victory. Clinton disturbed that and Republicans never really got over that.Report
Yup, he upended and then ended it and then W buried it.Report
It wasn’t Clinton, it was Perot, who wanted to restart the Vietnam War to save the POWs that existed nowhere except in his own mind.Report
I’m guessing Perot exists in the same mental space for conservatives who remember that election as Nader does in the heads of liberals who look back on 2000.Report
Perot was a blessing in disguise. After his first two years, Clinton got paired with a Republican House that didn’t send him any big spending bills, and federal spending only increased enough to compensate for inflation and population growth. 1988-2000 was a golden age for fiscal responsibility enthusiasts.Report
See also: Ralph Nader.Report
That’s certainly possible, but after 30-odd years we’d probably have examples rather than guesses.Report
The Clinton surplus was always going to go away. Gore ran on tax rebates. The deficit’s source is the disconnect between taxing and spending.Report
Perhaps it was but W’s incredible deficit financed tax cutting, spending and wars certainly turbocharged the process- all while spouting small government/fiscal conservative catch phrases. No one ever could take the GOP or conservatives seriously again when they squawked about deficits after W.; which is why, post 2008, the fiscal conservative types had to use movements like the Tea Party- even they had too much self-respect to call themselves Republicans even if they mostly voted for them.Report
In the immortal words of Dick Cheney, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.”Report
Why yes it is. Too bad Republicans never propose massive spending cuts to go with their tax cuts.Report
Thinking about this all morning. I submit:
Trump is the wilderness.Report
Man, if only!Report
Maybe not for “the party” but it sure as hell is for the GOP politicians and thought leaders.Report
They still seem to be in their comfy jobs. They still seem to be avoiding developing a new set of core policies for the right. They still are bringing home the tax cuts. I don’t see anything changed except that their ineffectuality outside those areas remains immense, but they weren’t effectual prior to Trump either. I don’t see much changing yet. Perhaps if Trump loses in November.Report
It seems like the status quo is being maintained, with no significant policy development or changes beyond the usual tax cuts. Their ineffectiveness in other areas persists, and this isn’t a new issue. Perhaps we might see some shifts if Trump loses in November, but for now, it appears to be business as usual.Report
The dust is beginning to settle and, for some reason, the so-called “liberal” media is trying to cut progressives off at the knees.
The Atlantic has an article called Wrong Case, Right Verdict which opens with this line: “The wrong case for the wrong offense just reached the right verdict.”
We’ve already mentioned New York Magazine’s “Prosecutors Got Trump — But They Contorted the Law“.
And now even Vox is getting all “both sides make good points” with their article The best — and worst — criticisms of Trump’s conviction. “The criticisms of Bragg’s case are worth taking seriously. And reasonable people can believe that Thursday’s verdict was wrong.”
Looks like all of the “reasonable people” got laid off from Vox already, amirite? Or left during the free speech letter discourse.
What with this and the Atlanta case going Tango Uniform, it is worth wondering whether there is a deep conspiracy protecting Donald Trump.
Hey, I’m just asking questions.Report