I think we’re approaching a moment when a real life judge is going to be pushed into considering a pre-trial detention of the defendant — Donald Trump — due to repeated and flagrant violations of court orders to not prejudice the proceedings with inflammatory public statements that would render a judicial proceeding as unfair.
The fictional Judge Dredd of the movie franchise is, at heart, a Law ‘n Order guy, who ‘puts it all on the line’ to maintain lawful order. In the movies, that means police, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner which, suffice to say, is not relevant to the premise here. For our purposes, let that stand for having the guts to make a call that may have consequences, and to allow the Law to speak directly to the People who are supposed to put their faith in that Law.
So, this past Friday, two of Trump’s four trials saw their respective judge’s deal with gag orders. One to expand a gag order for two weeks (Engeron, in the New York state civil case of business fraud); the other was the formality of an administrative stay (Chutkan, in the DC federal case, brought by special prosecutor, Jack Smith, for the Jan-6 insurrection), for an administrative evaluation of the reinstatement of an existing gag order.
Not only should that judge — whichever one it is that ends up deciding, at some point in the future, that the line has been crossed — embrace the Moment of that decision, but even further, should use language in the order to explicitly call out Trump’s MAGA supporters.
“Why?” you say, won’t that risk retributory violence somewhere on someone?
The honest answer is, perhaps.
But measured against the alternative, that may turn out to be the best course of action. Not unlike making an incision to suck the poison out of a wound that would otherwise kill the victim of a snake bite. It’s sometimes necessary to endure pain in order to preserve life.
Let’s set up the scenario:
A judge decides, Enough is enough, Trump is flagrantly disregarding the authority of the judicial system, as embodied by the discretion of officers of the Court — judges — over repeated warnings and financial penalties, including penalizing Trump’s lawyers for engaging in performative and compromising acts on behalf of their client that go beyond the remit of a retainer agreement, with the intention of making the judiciary appear disreputable in the eyes of the public. That requires the source of such misbehavior and disinformation to be removed in the name of due process. That requires Donald Trump to be remanded into confinement (for whatever duration of time).
We can stipulate that, by itself, such an order would set MAGA world ‘on fire’, not to mention be the talk of everyone else’s world, about the judicial incarceration of an ex-president of the United States pending trial — and a declared presidential candidate, no less, less than a year before an election.
We can also stipulate that that would be the narrative across the media spectrum, were nothing else said about the matter except for the fact of the order’s existence. The likely evolution of that narrative would be of MAGA organizing. Organizing marches, protests, public actions of many varieties, on top of inflammatory rhetoric in rw media, along with agencies and groups that monitor social media commenting on what they’re seeing develop online. That is all a reasonable assumption, and a reasonably predictable response given the heated rhetoric already coming from the typical rw sources.
This is where it might be wise to consider a more forward-leaning, dare I say ‘muscular’ approach — a ‘Judge Dredd-like’ approach — in the sense that such an order would also be an opportunity for the judge issuing such an order, to speak directly to the public with that order, and be forward-leaning about what is at stake, to challenge both Trump supporters and constitution-defenders alike, that the defendant seeks nothing less than to degrade justice in America, by using his technologically-enhanced social reach to lie and confuse the public in a manner that could jeopardize the Republic.
If MAGA wants to come out and defend ‘administrative vandalism’, now is the time. Let’s see it. We’re betting it’s a mirage, when enough Americans understand that what MAGA wants is Lawlessness.
What better way than have a judge call it out like that?
If the general public needs to be galvanized into understanding the threat of MAGA, this order should be seen as a judicial call-to-arms to announce the reality of the challenge, between Earth One and the pro-MAGA Earth Two.
That does two things:
1) It defines the purpose of the order in explicitly pro-constitutional terms, which replaces the narrative of ‘MAGA shock & anger’ at the confinement of their ‘hero’, with a narrative that enlists the Earth One public to defend the American justice system and the ‘due process’ required for the lawful adjudication of cases. (Tens of millions of Americans serve honorably on juries all across the nation, every week, every month, every year. Most will identify with the maintenance of that system, if given the proper cues to defend it in social circles.)
2) It short-circuits the MAGA’s perceived ace-in-the-hole, the ability to leverage Time to build up anger and rage to play on the fears of Americans and create Doubt and intimidation before November 2024.
Instead, because the system will have taken away the initiative from Earth Two with a MAGA callout on a judicial order of ‘confinement due to repeated violations of the Defendant’s bail agreement’, the media narrative will also have to deal with the judge’s explicit inclusion of Trump’s MAGA supporters as potential agents of lawlessness.
And that will administratively-incentivize law enforcement, as officers within the Justice system, from the federal to state level, to distinguish between the lawless MAGA in their communities, and the lawful judiciary of which they are a part. This will begin a process that will become ever more necessary as the 2024 campaign season heats up.
It will also force Americans — voters — long before the campaign season truly begins for most, typically after Memorial Day 2024, to already confront what is at stake in November 2024, and take sides at a moment not of Donald Trump’s choosing, about whether American government — including the judiciary — as we know it is worth preserving, or whether Right can clearly be distinguished from Wrong, in a manner that should demolish the MAGA brand.
To make MAGA less a movement to be feared, and more a cult to be ridiculed and contained, for their outlandish presumption that a majority of Americans are just going to fall in with a kamikaze Nihilism that would destroy institutions of government and replace them with an unstructured, chaotic, lawless, Nepotism.
And for what? Because our institutions were immobilized by a misplaced respect for decorum and appearances when decorum and appearances have already been rendered worthless by a ruthless and demonstrably unscrupulous cohort of donor-manufactured, illegitimate, vandals masquerading as representatives?
Nah, we’re not going out like that. We have to meet ruthlessness with steely determination.
Therefore...calling Judge Dredd...call out the MAGA’s when you put Donald J. Trump in detention. Make Trump’s detention the spectacle it deserves to be, for all the right reasons. Putting Trump in some kind of confinement pending trial should be the opening shot in defense of American democracy. It is vital that it be seen that way from Day One, once the decision has been made.
If something like this is done, I would bet the MAGA response will be loud, but will not show anything like the numbers Steve Bannon currently claims they can put in the streets. They are priming their audience for an uprising, and the judiciary has both an opportunity — and a duty — to use a judicial ruling to call their bluff by naming them, and describing the lawlessness they will be forced to claim they are defending.
And that will become the new narrative in the run-up to the November election. The MAGA vandals will be shown for the distinct electoral minority they are. Yes, with their own media ecosystem, and committed to action. But action to defend what? That Trump is above the law?
MAGA America will be seen for the social mobsters they are who, when push comes to shove, will back down when the legitimate power of the state is mobilized to defend the Constitution from those that would break it by condoning voices of lawlessness and pretending it’s ‘rebellion’.
The underground, stochastic, ‘terrorism’ that can be expected to be a response to 2024 election losses, will be managed, as it was in the 1970’s. Unfortunately, there may be casualties along the way, as there were 50 years ago during that period of civil unrest. Surely, however, the preservation of the republic is worth the sacrifice that prevents an unchallenged capitulation through the mechanism of Fear.
But success is contingent on getting the silent majority of Americans galvanized and on-side by making sure the messaging coming out of the gate make the stakes plain.
The judicial ‘restraint’ of Donald Trump by confinement (actual jail is unlikely, due to his Secret Service detail) should be the vehicle of that message.