Intimidation
Donald Trump is an expert at intimidation. Just look at the array of recent portraits of the man. He is making a habit of lowering his face and scowling at the audience from underneath his bushy eyebrows and fluffy yet wispy coif. He has perfected the snarl. He is under a rather strict gag order because his comments can energize a legion of faceless followers to reign down violence and distress on anyone that does him wrong in his view. The anonymity of that brutality is extremely intimidating to people who may not like what he does, says or stands for, but who mostly do not want to run afoul of him in any way that puts them in his sights, or monster specifically into the sights of his followers run amuck. In many ways this is the most pernicious form of intimidation because it self-perpetuates and does exactly what is intended in making Trump almost omnipotent and above the fray, which is exactly where he always wants to reside.
The other day in court at the Trump trial in lower Manhattan, Senator Tim Scott of Florida (the third biggest state in population, making it the state with the third most electoral college votes at 30…counted on an all or nothing basis for the popular vote winner there), was there to support Trump. There have been very few supporters of Trump who have trekked to the courtroom to join him and almost as few who have bothered to stand outside to greet and show support for him in his trial. Trump’s intimidation is so powerful that he is now able to have sway over a wealthy man like Scott, who has also been Governor of Florida in the past, and force him to come and pay homage to a man accused of paying hush money to an adult film star and then cooking the books to conceal that payoff contrary to election law. But furthermore, Trump was able to somehow (impossible to prove but easy to imagine) enlist Scott to act as his surrogate and stand before the podium outside the court and give a roasting to the judicial process by denigrating the daughter of the judge as a Democratic activist and the wife of the prosecutor as a Democratic donor. Those are things that the gag order from the judge specifically disallow Trump from doing or coercing others to do, but which would be a tremendous waste of time for the court to pursue in any meaningful way to stop it. This indirect intimidation tactic by Trump even further enhances his sense of power in that he is able to have the intended effect while thumbing his nose at the judge with impunity and indeed proving to his anti-establishment followers that he damn well is above the law and can practically pull out a gun and shoot anyone he wants on Fifth Avenue.
I studied modern revolutions in college and came very close to making it my career (thank God I avoided that path since I’m sure I would have become a wildly discontented academic of very limited means). But that line of thinking did leave me with a very strong sense of the conditions that bring about change in the most violent form. I am often reminded and equally often quote Pearl Buck from The Good Earth when the wise old Chinese peasant tells Wang Lung that “when the rich get too rich and the poor get too poor, things will change.” To me, this is the very essence of revolution. This is when power is taken to an extreme which is intolerable and something in society snaps and puts people in a place where they have little or nothing to lose and thereby makes them dangerous to the status quo. At some point, wealth and power are one and the same thing. You either have it or you don’t. You either exert it or fall victim to it. For reasons which will be studied by social scientists for years to come, Trump has achieved such a position of power that he is the ultimate intimidator. There are certainly those who see him as a fully clothed emperor and they are his loyal followers. To them, he is almost a demigod and can do no wrong and speak no evil. He must be defended at all costs and that means assuming the mantle of his intimidation. He makes no bones in outwardly stating his belief in violence as a means to quiet and quell those who oppose him, so it takes little imagination on the part of his followers to adopt his intimidation as their own and on his behalf.
In the coming week when Michael Cohen, his ex-lawyer and ex-fixer, takes the stand for the prosecution, we are going to see worlds colliding in the realm of intimidation. This is already teeing itself up for us as the judge, having chosen to ignore the intimidation tactics of Tim Scott and whatever reflection they are of the wishes of defendant Trump, has admonished the prosecution to try to keep their star witness, Cohen, in check with his intimidation tactics towards Trump. It seems Cohen has done a TikTok video wearing a t-shirt with an image clearly intended to show an orange jumpsuit clad Donald Trump handcuffed and in a prison cell. Think about that for a moment. Using a controversial social media platform that is working through a potential ban due to its control by agents of China (agents who very much want to dissemble American democracy in favor of Trumpian chaos) to make an intimidating statement towards the defendant for who you were the intimidator-in-chief before he had you imprisoned during his term of office for doing his bidding in manipulating an election by intimidating an adult film star to not publish her story of his infidelity with her by paying her hush money. This is intimidation cubed or something. An intimidator intimidating another intimidator in the service of his intimidation on your behalf to intimidate not just one adult film star, but rather en entire electorate of the most powerful nation of the world.
This is more than standing above the rule of law. This is using a three-cushion intimidation shot to quiet your ex-intimidator who cannot change his spots and do anything less than use intimidation to try to prepare for his day in court, so to speak, to once and for all prove that the intimidator-in-chief cannot out-intimidate the head intimidator who has trained in intimidation under you for ten years and who has done time for that intimidation and is now seeking to bring you to justice for your intimidating ways…especially as it related to how well you intimidated and incarcerated him. You really cannot make this stuff up.
There is only one way this sort of extremism ends and that is with the intimidator hanging upside down in Piazzale Loretta next to his mistress. The likeness to Mussolini is unmistakable. The rise and fall and rise and fall of a great intimidator is noteworthy and in the case of Benito, took place over two decades. In other words, intimidation works very well for long periods of time right up until it doesn’t. It took two full years to bring down Mussolini because the forces of evil (in this case the Nazis) propped him up for their own purposes, doing things like acting as his surrogate at the podium (think Tim Scott) until the people spoke loudly enough, first through the Northern Italian anti-fascist movement and then eventually the engulfing Allied invasions from the south and west. In his final mad dash for Switzerland, Mussolini was caught near Lake Como, the Italian equivalent of Palm Beach, and his disguise as a Nazi officer was seen through because he had spent so much time plastering his face all across Italy for so long. Who’s face is more familiar than Trump’s all across America and who has adopted a scowl as his signature look, much as Mussolini liked to do? That scowl of intimidation is the very fingerprint that will convict the man in the final moment of his trial, which may or may not be the one ongoing this next week.