Because Donald Trump must always be seen as wielding absolute mastery over his hapless, flailing opponents, he and his propagandists want you to believe his hush-money trial in Manhattan has proven nothing but a smashing political success for him.
On Monday night, Trump posted a video on social media featuring Fox personality Jesse Watters gushing that his trial may win him the White House. Trump also promoted a video of Fox’s Jeanine Pirro insisting that it showcases his ability to “withstand pressure.” Other Fox figures have spun Trump’s buffoonish outbreaks of narcolepsy in court as proof he’s Owning the Libs: Certain of acquittal, he can do some power-napping while showing the trial the contempt it deserves.
Greg points out that Trump doesn’t seem quite as sanguine. According to the NY Times he’s been talking trash about Todd Blanche, his previously favorite attorney, because he isn’t being aggressive enough. (He’s also not happy with attorney’s fees…) Apparently, he’s venting that he doesn’t have “a Roy Cohn” again.
He knows that this trial is making him look small and vulnerable even though stooges like Watters try to say that the trial is great for Trump because it’s denying the media “an opportunity to twist Trump’s words.”
The reality is that Trump looks tired (very tired!) weak and vulnerable and the trial exposes him for the despicable creep he has always been. But not on Fox:
That’s far from the fearsome, dominant figure depicted in MAGA propaganda about the trial. Note that both Watters and Pirro insist Trump is shining in the role of defendant. They are trying to depict Trump as simultaneously a victim and a formidable warrior, one who is fighting back against corrupt, powerful forces that are persecuting him. Similarly, as Media Matters’ Matt Gertz details, Fox figures praising Trump’s courtroom naps are practically painting them as acts of heroic defiance against an illegitimate prosecution.
I guess that goes without saying. According to Fox, Trump can do no wrong. But as Gregg points out:
Trump is not wielding absolute mastery over events. Trump’s own lawyers are not treating his trial as fundamentally illegitimate. Voters outside the MAGA information universe regard the charges against him as serious, and they see the other prosecutions against him in a similarly grave light. A whole lot of people will likely see Trump’s sneering dismissal of these proceedings—the dozing off, the attacks on jurors, the rage fits against the supposed unfairness of it all—as whiny entitlement, as contempt for the very notion that he should ever be held accountable for anything.
You’d think he’d just act confident and self-assured about the outcome and treat the whole thing as a minor inconvenience instead of turning his whining up to 1. But then I guess he knows his cult better than anyone and understands that they love his whining and complaining more than anything. I can’t imagine why that is, but he seems to be right.