Former US President Donald Trump fronts his “hush money” trial in Manhattan. Photo: GETTY IMAGES
At times you think life’s too short, I can’t possibly spend any more time writing about Donald Trump. Go for a walk McFadyen. Marvel at the clouds and the flight of birds in the sky. Have a laugh with friends. And then there he is, looming like a giant orange nuclear explosion.
Each week something arises on the cultural and political landscape that has been a detonation from Donald Trump. It would be more than a little sad, frightening and laughable, were it were not so serious.
Recently, Trump’s criminal trial over hush money began. It is expected to last several weeks. Trump has clocked up almost a century of charges against him, and of course, according to him, he is innocent of every single one. An innocent man. He doesn’t use the presumption of innocence as his basis of defence. Rather, he is, in his own words, a “modern-day Nelson Mandela”.
He is an innocent man suffering under the yoke of a corrupt and barbaric system intent on squeezing the life out of him. The system is against him. He is the outsider, just like Jesus Christ, with whom he has also drawn a link. Persecuted beyond belief.
And let’s throw in Abraham Lincoln, the great emancipator and one of the largest figures in American history. And a Republican. Lincoln after the Civil War beseeched the nation: “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Trump on the campaign trail recently thought Lincoln did a poor job. He should have negotiated a settlement so that the civil war never happened, he opined. And all people being equal? Tell that to the poor refugees of the “shithouse countries” trying to enter the US.
To which Republican Liz Cheney perfectly reasoned: “Which part of the Civil War ‘could have been negotiated’? The slavery part? The secession part? Whether Lincoln should have preserved the Union? Question for members of the GOP – the party of Lincoln – who have endorsed Donald Trump: How can you possibly defend this?”
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Perhaps someone who sees nothing even slightly incongruous or out of kilter with namechecking themselves with Jesus Christ and Mandela.
In the hush money trial, Trump posted on his Truth Social site that a person had sent him a message comparing him to Jesus, and quoted the Psalm: 109:3.8. “Received this morning — Beautiful, thank you! ‘It’s ironic that Christ walked through His greatest persecution the very week they are trying to steal your property from you. But have you seen this verse…?”
It gets worse. To seek a comparison with Nelson Mandela is to traduce a great man, and warp history into a sideshow. Mandela spent 27 years in jail for attempting to overthrow the apartheid regime in South Africa. Memo Trump, apartheid is the rule of whites over coloured people. On release Mandela became president, and took to the dismantling of the odious regime.
Maybe Trump is just a one-line comedian. After all, he refers to those convicted and now in jail from the January 6 insurrection as “hostages”.
People believe what they want to believe. There are now underground networks of disinformation that reach far into the populace. Say something often enough and make it appear big as to be believable and people will take it in. The big lie was part of the Nazi arsenal.
Part of Trump’s power, of course, is that his strength derives also from the weakness of his opponent Joe Biden.
Perhaps the last words should come from an unlikely place, that of respected American sports commentator Bob Costas. On Trump, he says: “He is by far the most disgraceful figure in modern presidential history. You have to be in the throes of some sort of toxic delusion in a toxic cult, to believe that Donald Trump has ever been in any sense, emotionally, psychologically, intellectually, or ethically fit to be president of the United States.”
On Biden, Costas says: “He had a chance to be seen as a statesman and a patriot. Now his legacy is likely to be that of a man whose hubris prevented him from seizing the moment in appropriate way.
“At best, he can squeak by Trump — that’s at best. Or he could lose to Trump and subject the nation to four more years of this kind of ongoing insanity.”
Insanity.
