By Colleen O’Connor
The false choices for bringing Trump to account for violating “gag orders” are looming large.
Special Prosecutor Jack Smith (January 6th investigation), the judge in Trump’s civil fraud case, the Attorneys General in Georgia, and New York have all railed against the not-so-subtle threats against themselves, their families, and/or clerks and Georgia election workers.
Fines have failed to deter Trump’s outbursts on social media, in front of the press, and at rallies that would have landed any other defendant in jail. $5,000 or $10,000 are meaningless. Even a million dollars would not stop his threatening bombasts and incitement to chaos.
Trump just raises funds off every imagined slight, selling hats, T-shirts and make-believe.
Hence, the push to jail him. To stop the non-stop “terrorizations” and violations of the gag orders. Fear and cruelty are the point. The visual and investigative evidence from the January 6th assault on the capital underscores that reality.
Yet, the chaos and denials continue. The country is torn apart. The combatants become more aggrieved and dangerous. Jailing Trump will only exacerbate the problem.
Indeed, it is probable that this is his greatest “end game.” Not just deny, delay, and disparage, but as with the Supreme Court appointees, find the last best hope to save himself.
So, too, with defying the Courts’ multiple gag orders. Not just to keep the spotlight on himself and his grievances, but by design, to be sent to jail. Any jail. Any confinement. Any place where he can assemble a mob.
The “Free Trump” signs are already ordered. The MAGA crowd already notified to, “Stand back and Stand by.” Should he be sent to any prison, anywhere, even an ankle bracelet under House arrest, Trump’s January 6th debacle will repeat itself.
That’s the plan. That’s what he wants. To be jailed.
Then what? Chaos. Violence and fear are the powder kegs. Imagine it. Visualize the updated mayhem.
To avoid that, “Outsmart them.”
This requires discipline, planning, and a realization that to do otherwise spells catastrophe.
Do not jail Trump. Outsmart him and the MAGA crowd now in charge of the House of Representatives with their states’ rights’ agenda to declare all federal laws/elections “null and void” as in a new (or relic of the old) Confederacy.
How then, to require responsibility and deliver order back to the body politic, whilst running short of time. The 2024 election is already here.
Try humor. Deadly to the self-important.
Political cartoonists help here. The opening sketches of SNL are often spot on. Politico’s Friday “cartoons of the week” another.
Introducing Trump as the “Former president and current courtroom sketch model” is another.
Failing humor try taking on Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, which Judge Arthur Engoron just did, ordering her to testify in her father’s ongoing $250 million fraud trial.
Trump’s responses:
Engoron is a “Trump hating” and “unhinged” judge, per a post Saturday on Truth Social. “I truly believe he is CRAZY, but certainly, at a minimum, CRAZED in his hatred of me,” Trump added.
In another message posted Saturday, Trump called Engoron a “grossly incompetent ‘judge'” and a “partisan political hack,” adding that “This Radical Trump Hater Must Be Taken Off This Case!”
Read what you want into the last line. Coded or not.
Fines, gag orders, investigations, threats, loss of the Presidency, properties tied up in legal and financial disputes. Nothing seems to “gag” him.
One last possibility, order the former President to pay for 24/7 protection for all those he has maligned, threatened, caused serious harm (and their families). Do not wait for a magical moment of remorse. And impound the money (via disgorgement) asap.
Serious money flowing out of his control may do what the gag orders intended and failed to do. Stop the threats, the cruelty and the chaos and perhaps pay a fraction of the cost to the taxpayers for all the unpaid back taxes, frivolous appeals, lengthy investigations and trauma.
Don’t jail him. Outsmart him.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Check out who the cartoonist is.
GAG ORDER BACK ON.
“A federal judge has reinstated a gag order against Donald Trump, lifting a temporary hold she placed on it earlier this month and rejecting his claim that it unconstitutionally limits his free speech.
“U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan paused the gag order on Oct. 20 amid Trump’s complaint that it was confusingly worded and request that she keep it on hold while he asked a federal appeals court to throw it out altogether.” Politico
If you recall Trump’s debate with Biden leading to the 2020 election, there was an incident in which Biden said something that Trump took as a slight against his intelligence. Trump immediately became inflamed and came after Biden with a slanderous claim that Biden had cheated in college, if I recall this incident correctly. It appears to me that the sacred center of Trump’s sense of self is that he is a genius, that no one can outsmart him, and that he will vanquish his attackers by sheer intelligence. That is why he loves “the uneducated,” because he thinks of them as controllable by his superior mind. The fact that he has so far controlled both educated and uneducated is no testimony to the intelligence of him or his followers. It is rather a phenomenon of social psychology, a song of salvation or maybe redemption, in which a pretender fills the empty spaces in our hearts and minds with the fiction that he cares, that he will deliver us from evil, and that we will emerge triumphant over those he has identified as our enemies. What a warped, twisted, and destructive adaptation of a true savior’s life. It will take more than humor to defeat this man. We will have to ask ourselves whether the glitter and gold, the power and acclaim, this man promises can be obtained by dividing the United States of America into armed camps, ready to obliterate intelligent thought that must underlie decency toward one another, and ultimately even engaging ourselves in physical combat with our countrymen. A little soul-searching on the part of all Americans would help.
Fines are the strike system. Like the parent who has to say stop numerous times in increasing volume to break the action. Like the misbehaving school bully, once enough violations, put him in jail. I don’t know of another person who has had this amount of deference afforded to him. Anyone else would have been in jail already. Better to endure this potential MAGA reaction now then wait for the possibility of real chaos with the congressional election deniers challenging ’24.
This essay truly terrifies me. The author has an obvious dislike towards Mr. Trump, as do many on the extreme far-left. For the life of me I still cannot fathom the hysteria against Mr. Trump because he uses ‘inappropriate names” and inappropriate phrases”. When he was elected President the extremist far left went apoplectic. “He will get us into a nucular war.” he will become a dictator” “He’s not my President” etc.etc. Well, President Biden is not exactly doing well.
The actions and energy promoted by today s far-left extremists, reminds me of an excellent quotation that truly summarizes the difficult divisions in our country today, and hopefully bring to the table cooler heads.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
C. S. Lewis
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