And that’s all that matters to the cult
Dahlia Litwick with a fascinating observation about the Trump trials and the effect they are having in the political culture:
Tacopina’s mistake in representing Trump’s interests in that first defamation suit lay in trying to win the case in the eyes of the law, which meant keeping Trump far away from the jurors. Trump has corrected for that by retaining Habba, who understands that whether Trump wins or loses matters less than ensuring that he feels like a winner, whatever the verdict. And what is winning if not getting to do the thing you were instructed, under penalty of sanctions, not to do? Habba knows that the outcome of these trials (how much money he has to pay) doesn’t matter nearly as much as establishing that Trump is as immune to law, judges, gag orders, and threats of sanctions as he is immune to reality, fact, science, and election results. She is the stage mother who comes to all his ballet recitals and T-ball games and tells him he’s a star and that everyone else is doping. And if a little lawyering happens on the side, well, that’s a solid day’s work.
What’s frightening about these sequential Trumpian performances of above-the-law-ness is that, as they accrue, he is trained to both believe even more obstinately that the law is what he says it is, and attempt to push the boundaries ever further the next time. For the folks who didn’t believe that Trump would testify this week because he had nothing to gain and everything to lose, we missed the foundational point. Losing the jury or the case is less important than showing, yet again, that they are irrelevant constructs in a world in which he declaims his innocence and millions still believe him.
Perhaps the scariest takeaway from the three minutes or so Donald Trump spent on the stand Thursday was that he was really just testifying that he can do and say whatever he wants, and his followers will come away thinking that the law is fake and Trump is real. The chilling irony of the only truly substantive thing Trump said—that he didn’t order his followers to harm E. Jean Carroll—is that his trials are seemingly becoming exercises in ordering his followers to disregard the law, as he does, or to choose their own legal endings, as he does. Because if he is above the law, they must be as well.
I just watched some interviews with people at the Trump rally in Las Vegas and she is absolutely right. These people all believe that this is a conspiracy to take down Trump and destroy America. Their belief in him is impermeable and his insistence that the rule of law in America is entirely corrupt has become an article of faith. They now believe that the law is what Trump says it is.
Take a look at what this man, the Governor of Oklahoma is saying:
Apparently, he’s going to decide for us what the Constitution says. Or Trump. Or maybe Lauren Boebert.
How about this?
Also, they are stupid: