Memo to the Media: Trump's threats are NOT "antics." They're emotionally violent, sexist, racist attacks crafted to endanger or kill his "enemies".
He may be a toddler mentally, but we're still not taking this crap from an aging thug.
The tack that Andrew McCarthy took in his latest sniggering poo-pooing of the E. Jean Carroll defamation case for The National Review is typical of the media in general. Meaning one of two things: EITHER soft peddling coverage of the president’s trials for rape, assault, election interference, massive fraud, racketeering, illegal possession of classified documents (including nuclear secrets and other SCIF files), and insurrection is just calling it cutesy boys-will-be-boys stuff OR they are scared to death of him. AND possibly, it’s both.
Anybody who goes up against Donald Trump gets attacked and publicly smeared. If it’s a woman, she’s also typically exposed to threats of rape and murder, as E. Jean Carroll was last week. Jack Smith, Fani Willis, Leticia Jackson, Lewis Kaplan, and Tanya Chutkan have been threatened, slandered, and all but dragged through the streets naked to chants of “Shame! Shame!” Judge Arthur Engoron got the worst of it last week when he is listening to Trump whine and rant at the same moment police are at his house because a bomb threat has been called in—and had it been real instead of swatting, Judge Engoron may have been listening to the lies and threats and self-aggrandizing staging of this tawdry campaign speech while his wife was bleeding out on his living room floor.
All these lawyers, and judges, and investigators and clerks know this is for real. Even Congress knows it’s for real. And as Mitt Romney pointed out, the reason the impeachment of Trump for insurrection related to the January 6th violent storming and takeover of the Capitol in an attempted coup failed is that even Senators and Representatives were afraid of him. “Think of your family—think of your children,” they counseled each other. In the end, the safety of those they loved proved stronger than love of country or honor—and so it would have been for all but the bravest of us.
What happens to the women who stand up to this man—and you’ll the 26 who have charged him with sexual abuse or sexual assault or rape here—have been slandered and violently verbally abused. But it doesn’t stop there. He rants and rages and whines that he is unfairly treated. Then comes the call to arms: “Protest!” And then comes the threats of bedlam should he be convicted of fraud, and promises that they’ll be in the streets, or that there will be civil war.
On January 6th, Trump’s calls to arms were answered in the form of thousands of armed Neo-Nazis, misogynists (the Proud Boys), Radical Right militiamen, Christofascists, Southern racists, and Far Right Republicans. One of their aims was to “HANG MIKE PENCE!” Elsewhere, radicals emboldened to violence by Trump’s Hitleresque ranting rhetoric, came within days of kidnapping and kneecapping Christine Widmer, governor of Michigan. And in California, one of them breached the home of U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and beat her husband Paul in the head with a hammer. Pelosi resigned. Wonder why!
And within the last week, a Trump devotee called for E. Jean Carroll to be raped and murdered.
Does anybody really believe that nobody would take this call seriously?
Henry II and Thomas Becket
Here’s a lesson from history that this is serious business. British monarch Henry II and Thomas Becket, who would become Henry’s Archbishop of Canterbury, were best friends in their youth. Once Henry became king, Thomas served him incredibly faithfully—until Henry made him Archbishop, at which point Thomas appears to have been had an epiphany, a galaxy-class born-again experience. Now they’re enemies, and Thomas won’t do a damned Henry tells him. He gets exiled. Once allowed back, he’s even more determined that the church will be run his way, not Henry’s way.
Frustrated to death, at some point Henry exclaims, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest!” Four of Henry’s acolytes go to teach the archbishop a lesson. When they strike Thomas across the shoulder with a broadsword, though, he doesn’t go down. He doesn’t even move. Infuriated both by his courage and his resolve, all four set upon him and kill him. When they were done, Thomas Becket’s brains lay all over the stone floor of Canterbury Cathedral.
This story became, of course, the teaching moment about powerful people shooting their damned mouths off. You don’t do this because when you shoot your mouth off, people take you seriously, and they rape and murder people in your name.
Silence Gives Consent
The damning evidence against Trump is that he spoke out neither against the bomb threat that would have taken out Arthur Engoron’s heart or against the call for the faithful to rape and murder E. Jean Carroll at the time of the very trial in which she is demanding justice for the fact he ruined her life—and her reputation, which, experts say, will cost at least $12 million to repair. And that’s before we even get to punitive damages. The emotional suffering levy should be about $250,000,000 by my count.
And yet, he just keeps slandering her, defaming her, and stoking hatred of her—which potentially may lead to real injury and even loss of life.
Engoron made the comment that Trump couldn’t control himself. Yes, he can. But he doesn’t want to because he is a punisher through and through—and he wants Carroll and every other woman who challenged him punished.
The Media
Which brings us back to our mollycoddling and very chauvinistic media. This week the media called Trump’s behavior in court at the E. Jean Carroll trial ANTICS. They termed his demeanor as DEFIANT.
In the first case, the word antics is associated with the terms merriment, cute, wildly funny, buffoon, attention-seeking, playful, and clownish.
Does anybody find in that list terms like incitement, threat, provocation, soliciting a crime, mob violence, targeting, demeaning, slandering, libeling, inciting to criminal action, conspiracy to commit assault, soliciting the rape of an enemy, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, conspiracy to kneecap a sitting governor, violent assault of the husband of the Speaker of the House of the United States, insurrection, and/or conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America?
Trump is NOT engaging in ANTICS.
He’s trying to destroy E. Jean Carroll, Arthur Engoron, Fani Willis, Jack Smith, Tanya Chutkan, Lewis Kaplan, Leticia James, and every sitting Democrat in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
He is likewise not being “defiant” as if he is some noble champion of goodness and truth. He’s not defiant. He is attacking everybody who is trying to stand up to him.
Either the media has a spine or it doesn’t. And if it does, it’s not showing it this week. And if the media thinks there’s a little dermal bone to go along with the flagellum, do, for heaven sake, find it. Otherwise, do shut up.