I wonder, quite often, what it’s like to be another person, to be inside another mind and experience another life, moment by moment, thought by thought. What is that person’s reality? What do they think and feel? What are their dreams, their desires, their disappointments? Are they happy with their lives? Do they believe in themselves? Do they like themselves? It absolutely fascinates me.
Sometimes, far less often, I even wonder what it’s like to be Donald Trump, a person for whom greed, gluttony, envy, resentment, hate, hostility, rage, prejudice, duplicity, and vanity are integral parts of everyday existence, the dark emotions and impulses that literally are embedded in his DNA.
I wonder what it’s like to have an inner life so empty and devoid of meaning that you attempt to fill that void by shamelessly courting flattery from sycophants and cultivating an aura of success through grossly ostentatious displays of wealth and popularity — even as you know these displays are facades.
Truly, it must be a hellish existence. I think we can all agree that Trump doesn’t exactly exude joy, other than when he’s being cruel, and that’s not really the same thing.
I also wonder if Donald Trump knows that he is an awful human being — a monster, if we’re being honest — or if he’s in denial about that. I don’t know.
What I do know is that the day Donald Trump long has dreaded comes Monday. That’s when Trump begins standing trial in New York on criminal charges related to his hush money payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels in the weeks before the 2016 election.
The former president faces 34 felony counts for violating New York tax and campaign finance laws when he paid Daniels $130,000 through his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, to hide an alleged 2006 extramarital affair with Daniels from voters in the November election versus Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Cohen is expected to testify. This prospect terrifies Trump because Cohen was at Ground Zero of the plot and could provide damning testimony to support the physical and digital evidence. And, of course, Cohen was convicted on charges related to this very case and sent to prison.
That’s a fate Trump cannot bear. Prison is fine for useful tools like Cohen, Allen Weisselberg, Peter Navarro, Paul Manafort, and the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, all of whom took actions in support of Trump’s efforts to deceive voters and subvert democracy.
And do you think Trump gives a second thought to 76-year-old Weisselberg, his longtime accountant, serving five months on Rikers Island for committing perjury on Trump’s behalf in the recent New York civil trial for business and tax fraud? Or that Trump is worried about 74-year-old Navarro, who last month began serving a four-month sentence at a federal prison in Miami for contempt of Congress? Navarro refused to comply with a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the events leading up to it. No, Trump’s only care and concern is that these expendable people keep their mouths shut and remain loyal.
Trump’s frantic efforts to further delay the trial — the first criminal trial of a former president in U.S. history, let’s not forget — underscore his growing panic. I lost track of how many appeals his attorneys filed to derail the scheduled April 15 start date. I’m surprised his lawyers didn’t accidentally appeal one of their own appeals. (They subpoenaed the wrong man, after all.)
Trump will try to distract himself today by pulling the wings off House Speaker Mike Johnson when he buzzes into Mar-a-Lago for marching orders, but that will only be a brief, though gratifying, diversion. Trump’s appointment with accountability draws ever closer.
Unless someone who sounds suspiciously like John Barron phones in a bomb scare to the courtroom on Monday morning, jury selection will begin in a criminal trial that could result in a prison sentence for Donald Trump, a man who has escaped significant consequences for his shady and frequently criminal behavior his entire life. Let’s hope this is the beginning of justice served.
So this probably isn’t the best weekend ever to be Donald Trump. As for myself, I intend to have fun. I hope you do too.
(From Project Orange: Saving Democracy From the Trump-MAGA Cult)