UPDATE: Wednesday, Mar 20, 2024 · 7:46:42 AM +00:00
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monster
This is a hail mary on Trump’s part. As some commenters pointed out, the MAGA base that eats up his continued defamation of Carroll isn’t close to a majority. Even with those who are willing to forgive Trump’s behavior, it’s still not a majority of the country. We need to make sure it doesn’t come close to a majority of voters. So it’s all hands on deck for GOTV this fall.
Many on the left—and really, Trump opponents across the political spectrum—have reacted with glee as the legal judgments against Trump continue to pile up. And given what we know about Trump's character, there hasn't been too much surprise as he's continued to defame E. Jean Carroll, exposing himself to even greater legal liability as he's done so. This has prompted commentary about Trump's questionable mental state and lack of intelligence, such as Robert Reich's substack article, Seriously, again, how dumb is Trump?
My definition of stupidity is continuing to do something that has so far cost you a minimum of $91 million because you won’t stop doing it.
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Trump has just renewed his attacks on Carroll in much the same terms as before — claiming that she “made up” the story and that he had “never heard” of her.
Unsurprisingly, Carroll’s attorney now suggests there could be a third lawsuit, because the previous verdict was obviously not enough to dissuade him from more defamation.
Reich goes on to recount many other instances of Trump's stupidity over the years.
But, Reich points out, this is only the intellectual aspect of intelligence. Where Trump excels is in the aspect of emotional intelligence involved in influencing the emotions of others.
This is where Trump’s brain outperforms the brains of ordinary mortals. He knows how to manipulate people. He has an uncanny ability to discover their emotional vulnerabilities — their fears, anxieties, prejudices, and darkest desires — and use them for his own purposes.
Trump has been using this aspect of intelligence (and daddy's money) to get his way his whole life. Now he's counting on it to save him not only further liability, but the existing $91 million judgment, and possibly a lot more. Here are the steps of the strategy:
- Continue to demean and defame E. Jean Carroll (and all his other legal adversaries) to excite his MAGA base.
- Ride that excitement to victory in the 2024 election.
- Once in office, appoint cronies to high-level positions in federal law enforcement, including DOJ and FBI.
- Those cronies remove career officials across a wide swath of civil service posts at those agencies and replace them with MAGA faithful.
- These new MAGA officials arrest E. Jean Carroll for perjury and/or other (literally) trumped-up charges and hold her in custody.
- Judicial orders to dismiss the charges or release Carroll are ignored.
- Carroll is then given the option to be released and have the charges dropped, but only if she settles all the cases for $0 and publicly recants all her accusations against Trump.
- Then, repeat this process with public officials such as Letitia James and Alvin Bragg.
Now, Trump himself might not be aware of the details of this process—that would require a modicum of intellectual intelligence. But he's well aware of the dynamic of "I tell people what to do and they do what I want." And in a second Trump term, he'd have people in place who are willing to follow through, the constitutional order be damned. As Reich concludes about Trumps conman abilities,
This genius — combined with utter stupidity in every other dimension — poses the clearest and most terrifying danger to America and the world.