This science story in The New York Times, “The Megalodon Was Bigger, Faster and Even Hungrier” prompted me to think of it as a metaphor for how Merrick Garland and DOJ has been underestimated by both Donald Trump and many in the media. The fact that pundits were lamenting how slowly Garland and the DOJ seemed to be moving is of minor import compared to how it appears that Trump was minimizing the threat to him they posed.
Excerpt from the NYT science story:
If the team’s model is accurate, however, it has implications about the enormous predators’ cruising speed — how fast an animal gets from Point A to Point B — and appetite. The team found that megalodons could hit a cruising speed of over three miles an hour, Dr. Pimiento said, much faster than the 33 other sharks they surveyed. Among existing sharks, the fastest cruising speed belongs to the salmon shark, which can manage about two miles an hour.
Now substitute Garland and the DOJ for the megalodon and Trump for the other sharks.
Imagine in the illustration from The NY Times that Merrick Garland and his DOJ is the megalodon and Donald Trump is the shark who thought he was the giant of the ocean who is about to be a deep sea snack by a top of the food chain predator.
The soon to be released in redacted form Mar-a-Lago affidavit is in the news today and it would appear that if Trump had any sense he’d be having a serious case of I should’uv been careful what I wished for-itis.
I can see how in Trump’s now seemingly clinically delusional grandiose disorder and malignant narcissism he would have underestimated mild mannered Merrick Garland the DOJ. However his lawyers, bad as they are, must have known that the DOJ would have anticipated the chance that they’d be forced to release the affidavit. Perhaps they warned Trump of this, they would have been negligent not to, and he blew them off. It’s possible they just went along with him to avoid incurring his explosive wrath.
I have no doubt that DOJ prepared for such an eventuality by writing it in such a way that read with all the redactions, also prepared in advance, it would justify in spades the search of Mar-a-Lago and the seizure of documents. (In fact on MSNBC Chuck Rosenberg, a lawyer, just said that all affidavits are written with the knowledge that they will eventually be made public.)
In addition, I expect that they knew that the redacted document would be historic and that it would read like a final district attorney’s argument being presented at the trial of Donald Trump being made by Jack McCoy.
If Merrick Garland’s first name was Jim this song would be appropriate for Donald:
You don't tug on Superman's cape
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger
And you don't mess around with Merrick.
We can also consider Garland as the shark in this classic:
Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear
And he shows them pearly white
Just a jackknife has old Macheath, babe
And he keeps it out of sight
You know when that shark bites with his teeth, babe
Scarlet billows start to spread
Fancy gloves, though, wears old Macheath, babe
So there's never, never a trace of red