Tranquillus in Exile
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https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/opinion/trump-indictment-fraud.html
An interesting take by someone who has written three books about Trump and saw him close up. If the stable genius can’t or won’t distinguish between fantasy and reality, can he be held to account?
<< Does Mr. Trump mean what he says? And what exactly does he mean when he says it? His numerous upcoming trials may hinge on these questions.
Tony Schwartz, his ghostwriter on “The Art of the Deal”, came up with a formulation that put Mr. Trump’s rhetorical flights in context. If you took him at his word, you were the fool. And yet he succeeds because he comes to believe it himself, making him the ultimate fool.
He might have seemed to call for insurrection on Jan. 6, but as the events that day unfolded, according to those in contact with him, he seemed uncomprehending and passive. Months later he waved a classified document in front of people he was trying to impress, bragging about the secrets he illegally possessed; but his defense is that he had no such document, that he was essentially making it all up. Then there was the plan to mobilize fake state electors. Here was certainly an effort to subvert the election, but it was also a fantasy with no hope of succeeding.
His prosecutors will try to use his words against him: among them, his exhortations that arguably prompted the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol; his admission - on tape! - that he still had secret documents; his various half-baked plots about how to game the electoral college; and his relentless insistence that he won his lost election.
And yet the larger pattern, clear to anyone who has had first-hand experience with the former president, is that he will say almost anything that pops into his head at any given moment, often making a statement so confusing that to maintain one’s own mental balance it’s necessary to dismiss its seriousness on the spot or pretend you never heard it.
Jack Smith, Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg will try to prove that the former president’s words are nefarious rather than spontaneous, that there has been a calculated effort to deceive rather than just idle talk; and that his efforts to obstruct the investigations against him were part of a well-thought-out plan.
As ever, Mr. Trump seems unable to walk a straight line even in his own defense. But his unwillingness or, as likely, inability to play by the rules or even understand them creates a chaos often in his favor. Indeed, the prosecutors’ story of his grand scheming will most likely require them to present a figure of the former president - calculated and methodical - that none of his supporters or anyone who has ever met him would recognize. >>
An interesting take by someone who has written three books about Trump and saw him close up. If the stable genius can’t or won’t distinguish between fantasy and reality, can he be held to account?
<< Does Mr. Trump mean what he says? And what exactly does he mean when he says it? His numerous upcoming trials may hinge on these questions.
Tony Schwartz, his ghostwriter on “The Art of the Deal”, came up with a formulation that put Mr. Trump’s rhetorical flights in context. If you took him at his word, you were the fool. And yet he succeeds because he comes to believe it himself, making him the ultimate fool.
He might have seemed to call for insurrection on Jan. 6, but as the events that day unfolded, according to those in contact with him, he seemed uncomprehending and passive. Months later he waved a classified document in front of people he was trying to impress, bragging about the secrets he illegally possessed; but his defense is that he had no such document, that he was essentially making it all up. Then there was the plan to mobilize fake state electors. Here was certainly an effort to subvert the election, but it was also a fantasy with no hope of succeeding.
His prosecutors will try to use his words against him: among them, his exhortations that arguably prompted the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol; his admission - on tape! - that he still had secret documents; his various half-baked plots about how to game the electoral college; and his relentless insistence that he won his lost election.
And yet the larger pattern, clear to anyone who has had first-hand experience with the former president, is that he will say almost anything that pops into his head at any given moment, often making a statement so confusing that to maintain one’s own mental balance it’s necessary to dismiss its seriousness on the spot or pretend you never heard it.
Jack Smith, Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg will try to prove that the former president’s words are nefarious rather than spontaneous, that there has been a calculated effort to deceive rather than just idle talk; and that his efforts to obstruct the investigations against him were part of a well-thought-out plan.
As ever, Mr. Trump seems unable to walk a straight line even in his own defense. But his unwillingness or, as likely, inability to play by the rules or even understand them creates a chaos often in his favor. Indeed, the prosecutors’ story of his grand scheming will most likely require them to present a figure of the former president - calculated and methodical - that none of his supporters or anyone who has ever met him would recognize. >>