The Sweet Smell of Failure — Citizen Trump's Losing Streak That He Calls Winning
Heidi Siegmund Cuda rounds up Trump's recent legal blows and examines how the former US President attempts to turn his losses into mythical wins for the MAGA cult.
Donald J. Trump has been on an impressive losing streak.
A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that he is not immune from prosecution for alleged crimes he committed during his presidency to overturn the 2020 election results.
The ruling struck a deafening blow to his defense in the election subversion case brought against him by Special Counsel Jack Smith. He is charged with four counts — among them, conspiring to defraud the US and to obstruct an official proceeding.
The appeals court judges noted that if proven, Trump’s efforts were an “unprecedented assault on the structure of our government”.
Trump, a master propagandist, took to social media to claim the ruling would have a chilling effect, which the judges also denied.
In stunning language, the judges rebuked “his apparent contention that the Executive has carte blanche to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and to have their votes count” and suggested that Trump “would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three branches.”
Throughout the 57-page ruling, Judges J. Michelle Childs, Florence Pan, and Karen LeCraft Henderson wrote that criminal laws were violated if it is proven that Trump overstayed “his term as President”.
No Immunity
“No immunity” has the ring of Trump’s 2018 catchphrase “No collusion” with Russia — which was never proven to be true — truth being somewhat irrelevant in Trumplandia.
But back in the land of facts, retired Internal Revenue Service criminal investigator Martin Sheil told Byline Supplement that the following sentence best sums up Wednesday’s immunity ruling: “For the purpose of this criminal case former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.”
Trump has until Monday to ask the Supreme Court to block the immunity ruling, but Sheil predicts that the unanimous opinion “is so strong that SCOTUS will not even bother to accept the case”.
It is, of course, only one of Trump’s legal predicaments.
New York Fraud Ruling
A ruling is expected shortly by Manhattan Judge Arthur Engoron with regard to total damages to inflict on Trump and the Trump Organization in a New York state fraud case.
“Attorney General Leticia James has requested $370 million,” Sheil explained. “Judge Engoron could go higher than that, and I have predicted he will breach one half billion dollars while banning Trump and his sons Don Jr. and Eric from ever conducting real estate business in New York state again, and Judge Engoron will likely order the disassembling of the Trump Organization.”
14th Amendment
In addition to the New York case, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this week as to whether Trump should be disqualified from the ballot in Colorado relative to the coming Presidential election pursuant to the 14th Amendment Section. Colorado is not the only state that has ruled Trump should be stricken from the ballot — Maine also disqualified Trump from the ballot due to insurrection incitement — a no no according to our 14th Amendment. Section 3 very clearly states “no person shall hold any office” if “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the US.
“That makes next week a potentially dramatic week for legal developments in Trump world,” Sheil told Byline Supplement.
No Clearance
And in more legal losses for Citizen Trump, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith eviscerated the Trump claim that he possessed a special security clearance from the government that allowed him to possess sensitive government security documents after his presidency while residing in Mar A Lago.
“If Trump has no Presidential immunity and no security clearance, he basically has no defense to the indictment charging him with theft of government property and violations of the Espionage Act,” said Sheil. “And polls out this week show a clear downward drift in suburban female voting support since the $83 million E. Jean Carroll jury verdict against Trump. The coming hush money to Stormy Daniels trial will further damage this critical voting demographic.”
There are many more legal challenges for Trump ahead — not least among them the RICO case in Georgia, which saw many of his former sycophants take plea deals.
The Sweet Smell of Failure
And yet with each legal blow, Trump will attempt to make the stench of failure smell like roses.
His expertise in victimhood has worked to winning effect, with each reality blow he creates unreality, training his MAGA members to believe that by him being under attack, they are under attack.
Rich Logis, a two-time Trump supporter who said he got out of what he describes as the MAGA Cult, told Byline Supplement that to understand Trump’s bond to his base, we have to understand mythology.
“When Trump is vilified, his supporters are made to believe they’re villified,” said Logis. “When impeached, they’re impeached. When indicted, they’re indicted.”
“I was publicly saying many moons ago that the multi-state and federal indictments of Trump would strengthen the unbreakable bond that remains between the former president and most MAGA adherents,” explained Logis, who is forming an organization called Leaving MAGA. “I was confident in this, because, as a former devout MAGA grassroots activist, the impugning of Trump was really a collective impugning of we ‘real Americans,’ who were soldiers—led by Trump, our political General—in a good versus evil war against the existential threats of Democrats, centrists, moderates, globalists and RINOs (Republicans In Name Only).
“The indictments affirm a pervasive mythology within MAGA: that federal and state law enforcement, and prosecutors, are a weaponized, Lavrentiy Beria-type Stasi that persecutes Republicans and conservatives, and especially, Trump voters. This is, of course, inaccurate; before I left MAGA, I allowed myself to succumb to this mythology. What is factually accurate, however, is often secondary to what is perceived to be true.”
In a Hybrid War and Disinformation 101 PowerPoint on RADICALIZED Truth Survives podcast, war correspondent and Byline Times contributor Zarina Zabrisky explained how combat propaganda subverts facts by playing to the target group’s emotions.
”Combat propaganda works with the myths embedded in people’s minds,” said Zabrisky. “It aggressively opposes those who try to challenge these myths by using logical arguments.”
‘How Fascism Works’
These tactics and others that Trump employs have a well-documented history: othering, victimization, conspiracy theories, unreality, anti-intellectualism, division, sexual anxiety, the mythic past. All of these themes are explained in How Fascism Works - The Politics of Us and Them by Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley.
“Those who employ fascist political tactics deliberately take advantage of this emotion, manufacturing a sense of aggrieved victimization among the majority population,” wrote Stanley.
A propagandist such as Trump uses words to misshape reality. He is both savior and victim, a cult leader whose constant presence is required. His recent campaign ad Trump Made God was called heretical by Shadow Network author Anne Nelson. She told Byline Supplement that the network behind him “needs him to be presented as God's chosen candidate as a way of countering the various lawsuits that highlight his ungodly behaviors on every front.”
It is worth noting that Trump’s go-to defense — the phrase ‘witch hunt’ — was also popular among such disgraced leaders as Richard Nixon, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Rudy Giuliani.
Trump learned many of his techniques from his mentor, a mob lawyer named Roy Cohn, who also mentored Trump associate Roger Stone.
Cohn’s philosophy was to accuse, deflect, deny, and to never admit defeat.
The strategy has been wildly effective to date, but by peeling away the bravado and cutting through the rotting stench of tens of thousands of lies, we revealed in our Biggest Loser report a cold reality — the metrics on Trump’s popularity have been trending downward since 2018.
“Each legal defeat handed to citizen Trump can only further erode the patina of grievance-driven victimhood so celebrated by the credulous cult of Trumpdom,” said Sheil. “Not even Tucker Carlson's pandering of the head of the MAGA Wing of the Putin Party can completely distract from the weary screed of the master grifter's ‘poor me’ credo.
“Electorally mercy-killing the GOP won’t miraculously disappear Trump, but it would be an accelerant of the needed, long-term, nonviolent offensive against MAGA and the right-wing,” said Logis, who predicts a massive repudiation of Trumpism in November.
Ultimately, we will know when reality has the final word, if Trump should join fellow Americans Tara Reade, Scott Ritter, and Tucker Carlson in Moscow, which surely is lovely this time of year.
Investigative reporter Heidi Siegmund Cuda writes about US politics and culture for Byline Times and Byline Supplement, and at bettedangerous.com.