Going Down in Flames
It is amazing to watch a bully getting surrounded by a pack of dogs and attacked relentlessly from all sides. The bully knows that the only thing that has kept him from self-destruction has been his bravado. He is getting described as a caged tiger who understands that he has nowhere to run. The tiger can’t help but be what it is and snarl to remind people who is the predator in the room. He is used to being the biggest, baddest animal in the jungle and he does not appreciate being constrained. A caged tiger cannot be a tiger as he needs to be to keep his image in tact. You cannot be scary and engender fear in the hearts of everyone if you are in a cage. And yet, there he sits, scowling at us all with the disdain of the self-dispossessed. The tiger walked into the cage all on his own and is really pissed about it all. And the frustrating part of it all is that every time he acts like a tiger, his cage gets more and more locked around him, And yet, within moments of the viewing hours at the zoo, the tiger is back to growling at us all and reminding his audience that he is still a tiger, all to his own detriment. It is becoming an almost painful process to watch. Of course, I am once again talking about Donald J. Trump, the tiger at the center of the universe.
Trump has become the Rasputin of America and the similarities are striking. Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was a mystic, not so much because he was religious or spiritual, but because he held inexplicable sway over important people while ravaging them at every turn, while the country looked on in amazement. No one could actually explain why Rasputin, who looked almost weird compared to regular people, with his wispy beard, steely-eyed gaze and slicked-down hair, was so mesmerizing to the power elite. He wandered from the hinterlands into the palaces of Saint Petersburg. He ingratiated himself to the center of power, the inner circle of the monied elite, the Tsar (specifically the empress consort, Alexandra Feodorovna). The Tsar was a lot like the Republican Party of today, his sense of privilege was anachronistic and out of touch with the realities of the people of Russia. he was surrounded by sycophants who wanted nothing more than to stay at the center of their perverse and wealthy world. The Tsar was ripe for a mystic since nothing rooted in reality could justify the continuation of their narcissistic existence. For people without a reason to delude themselves, Rasputin was a crass and ugly character who was a charlatan of the worst order, who used everything including sex to convince himself that he was irresistible. And yet, Rasputin was kept in a tight circle of court and increasingly became the caged tiger of the Russian aristocracy.
Today is an interesting day in American politics. It is the day when the top contender to Donald Trump, one Mr. Ron DiSantis, the current governor of FLorida, is expected to announce his candidacy for president in 2024. DiSantis has tread the line between Trump apologist and supporter to Trump opponent and has danced that dance while the tiger has paced in his cage, staring intently at his younger opponent and the governor of the state in which he has chosen to live after being shunned by, sued by, indicted by and virtually banished from New York State. On any given day (like yesterday) Trump is forced to appear or contend with one of his many legal woes in a public forum. Yesterday it was appearing in court via teleconference while the judge in his criminal indictment case brought by Manhattan DIstrict Attorney Alvin Bragg, gave him explicit warning and instructions about his tendency to make public statements about the case, the prosecutor, the prosecutor’s family, the judge and the judge’s family. During that hearing, Trump sat in front of two American flags with his attorney of the moment in an attempt to one-up the judge, who sat in front of one American flag. He had the dour look of Crassus right before he stabs Julius Caesar. That was his best and purest caged tiger look. And naturally, after getting admonished by the judge, he took to the airwaves to denounce the judge and proceedings as though no warning had been issued.
Trump has taken the same approach with regard to the recent adjudication of his civil defamation suit brought by E. Jean Carroll. That was a case that he chose not to appear in court for and did not take the witness stand in his own defense. The jury found him liable for sexual assault and defamation of a pernicious and aggravated manner. They awarded E. Jean Carroll a total of $5 million in compensation and damages. But that wasn’t good enough for the caged tiger. He wasn’t content to pace and stare like he did when he was indicted or when he had to sit and listen to the judge in his criminal case, he needed to spout off and further defame the process, the court and E. Jean Carroll through his public social media posts and at a town hall appearance that was on nationally televised cable news provider CNN. That has now resulted in his being once again sued for defamation by E. Jean Carroll for $10 million. In fact, his appearance at the criminal court via teleconference was a direct result of his comments in the same forums. The warnings do not gag Donald Trump, but rather restrict his access to and use of materials so that he cannot cause their misuse. The rights of the First Amendment are such that courts are hesitant to infringe on those rights and even f it is in the best interests of the person to curb his enthusiasm and speech, there is nothing stopping him from doing damage to himself either by way of being found in contempt of court, obstructing justice or further committing perjury or further defaming people like E. Jean Carroll.
Donald Trump is often mentioned in the news as being a difficult legal client for his litigators. He is difficult because he has a very questionable reputation. He is difficult because he has a pattern and habit of non-payment of his legal bills. He is difficult because he tends to use bluster and public commentary in a manner that if harmful to his own defense in those actions. In other words, he is deemed by most lawyers as being hard or impossible to control as a client. His tendency is to say things and do things that undermine his legal cases and his very credibility.
And this is not yet close to being the peak of Donald Trump’s legal troubles. There is a panoply of cases coming to fruition at this time. The Manhattan criminal case is not scheduled for March, 2024, right in the middle of the Republican Primary season. August seems to be the month that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has determined that she will bring her indictment against Trump and any number of other Trump acolytes who were trying to manipulate the vote count in Georgia and were looking to overturn the results of the 2020 election accordingly. That is said by some to be perhaps the strongest case against Trump given the nature of the evidence. In addition to that, and perhaps most anticipated are the potential indictments from the Department of Justice by the Special Counsel Jack Smith and his investigations into both the Mar-a-Lago confidential document mishandling case and the overall January 6th obstruction of justice and potential insurrection and conspiracy charges. Who knows when or if those cases will proceed, but if they do, that will be a rather fulsome array of litigation for the caged tiger to handle and it is anybody’s guess, especially during an election year, where the tiger himself is on the potential ballot, as to what the tiger is likely to do.
What we can see and what does seem to be the pattern, is that the fires are now all around the tiger and it seems more than possible that the tiger will go down in flames, whether quietly or, more likely, with great fanfare, snarling and not an insignificant amount of noise. Rasputin was assassinated by the very noblemen he had come to be a part of and serve. They eventually realized that he was counterproductive to their cause and doing more to harm himself and the aristocracy day-by-day, so they surrounded the tiger and set him aflame.