Disclaimer
I am waiting for the arrival of a long-since seen old Bankers Trust buddy and his wife, who are coming to stay for a night. August is proving to be a busy visitor month for us out here on the hilltop. That’s wonderful for us. We had my daughter and her family with us for the bulk of July and will end up hosting four different sets of guests in August with the guest suite occupied 19 of the 31 days of the month. Kim and I love spending time together (I consider us best friends, which is a good situation), but that doesn’t mean that we don’t like having company around to keep things even livelier. While sitting here relaxing, I am doing what I tend to do during the day, which is keeping up with the fast-moving national and global news that seems to have more breaking moments these days than most with a three-times criminally indicted ex-president on the run (literally as he ramps up his Iowa and New Hampshire campaign appearances…which almost entirely focuses on his victimization claims rather than anything resembling a policy to make our lives as Americans better), and the autocratic world writ large (Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, etc.) clinging to power like a cat to a curtain as the populists needs of a AI-challenged world teeters between runaway inflation and rampant and debilitating deflation.
With Putin thinking he may try his hand at re-entering the geopolitical world (bad idea while Ukraine is still draining the world’s patience tank), Ji is probably wondering which way to turn with the Chinese economy in a tailspin (not good for any of us) and Biden kicking him on the way down restricting U.S. investment in China in the most vibrant arenas of the tech space (like microchips and AI), Supreme Leader of Iran Khamenei is salivating over $6 billion of “humanitarian” funds and releasing hostages for that access, and even Cuba’s Diaz-Canel (the first non-Castro in 64 years) is making nice with the U.S. by agreeing to drug enforcement cooperation. The Digital Curtain (is that what we should call the wall between autocracy and the free world these days?) seems to be coming apart at the seams with everyone on the other side jockeying for position. That doesn’t make it any less dangerous and, in fact, transitions are the riskiest of times.
I feel the same is true of the Curtain of Truth and Lies that has become the U.S. political landscape. On this side is the Rule of Law and on the other side is the Republican Power Play, defined by doing whatever it takes and saying whatever it takes to get back to being in control. One of the most interesting aspects of the Rule of Law is that the criminal side gets most of the headlines, but the civil side is often where the game is played most effectively. People seem almost more willing to be righteous when it comes to money rather than abstract issues like the saving of democracy. E. Jean Carrol got a full $5MM award and the ability to say Trump was found to have raped her (deemed “substantially true” by the courts). The Trump Foundation was disbanded for fraud. The Trump Organization was found guilty of fraud in court. And beyond Trump directly, Fox News has been made to heel on its claims against Dominion Voting Systems by being forced to accept a $787 million settlement for its civil defamation acts. So what is happening with Trump using his campaign bully pulpit to double-down on his views that everything he had done, whether regarding the documents case (Mar-A-Lago Classified Documents), the election contribution case (Stormy Daniels) or the election overthrow case (obstruction of an official proceeding) was all driven by his “strong belief” that the election was stolen from him fraudulently?
Given that the evidence contrary to Trump’s stated views is so very strong and given the recent tort history, media outlets that are providing Trump and his views a platform to make his highly suspect claims have realized that they are being put into a potentially costly position. The bread and butter for Fox News and Newsmax is the reactionary right that hangs on every word that Trump utters. It is a mainstay of Trumpian political campaigning to play the victim and to spout the lies he does about the falsely fraudulent election. It is well established that that audience believes and acts on what they hear on those outlets and that those outlets have been slammed litigiously for reinforcing the most obvious of the lies being espoused by Trump and his like. Today, we saw direct evidence of this squeeze play going on. After Trump and his lawyer John Lauro went on Newsmax and spouted their recent rationale for why the government cases against Trump was unfounded, Newsmax aired a very specific disclaimer making it clear that the views of Trump and Lauro were not the views of Newsmax. And furthermore, Newsmax wanted to make it clear to its audience that they believed that the 2020 election had been won fairly by Joe Biden and that any claims to the contrary were false.
As one pundit put it, the only thing that would have been more interesting is if Newsmax had played that disclaimer while Trump was still in the studio to hear it and Trump had been put into the situation where he had to react to it one way or the other. What to do? Do you triple down and slam Newsmax, one of your currently most effective media outlets for Trump’s rhetoric, or do you shrug and accept the reality that the U.S. tort system is simply a fact of life that we all live with (and that Trump himself has spent a lifetime perfecting the use of over his thousands of civil actions both outgoing and incoming). Therein lies one of the most interesting conundrums for Trump and his PR team. He is viewed and very much unabashedly portrays both the denier and the pragmatist while he is on stage. So at this crucial moment when his very freedom from incarceration, not to mention his retention of his perch of power is at stake, which side of his double-faced persona prevails for the public to witness firsthand?
Trump is a master of doublespeak, but treading that fine line might be the one that causes his viewership and his sycophantic partisans to stop and think. Aye, there’s the rub for the Donald. He tries hard to avoid allowing his followers to stop and think. He wants them mostly to simply react without thinking. It is what he does best and what has served him so well for all his years. We know he doesn’t like listening to his lawyers and that one of the things his acolytes love about him most is his visceral and very real knee-jerking without regard to consequences. But it is also likely that since he is at the rubber meets the road part of his journey where the forces of criminal and civil law meet political reality in a way and to a degree that are, dare I say it, unprecedented, this may prove to be his comeuppance point in life.
You know how sometimes the best part of the movie is when you sit and watch the credits rolling at the end and the producer/director puts on a bunch or postscripts or outtakes that are sometimes funnier than the body of the work? Well, I posit that the disclaimers that will be put on by every Republican politician and approximately one half of the Unites States citizenry when Trump is ultimately lying in a heap of sun-bleached bones by the side of the trail will be some of the funniest and most creative parts of this traveling carnival. Nonetheless, we all know what happens next. The dogs bark and the caravan will roll on into the night.