Wily Donald Trump always finds a way around restrictions, and so Trump’s Truth Social is speaking on his behalf Monday as he sits in the courtroom, and it tells us that people miss “Daddy Trump.”
Trump’s trial will take place in a Manhattan courtroom but will not be televised. A few reporters are present in the courtroom and report for the general public. One of them is Olivia Nuzzi, whose report for New York Magazine I knew was accurate when she noted, “Donald Trump is glowering in Judge Merchan’s direction as the trial officially begins. Trump tilts his head dramatically and makes trout-like movements with his mouth as he listens to Judge Merchan.”
That’s a very specific Trump expression that we’ve seen thousands of times.
Nuzzi also noted that while Trump sits in the courtroom (effectively muzzled for the first time in his adult life, I note), his Truth Social speaks on his behalf and tells us how he wants to be viewed, i.e.…
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As ‘Daddy Trump’.
“While Trump sits in the courtroom listening to Judge Merchan explain how his criminal trial will proceed, Truth Social is sending push notifications for the flood of messages sent from his account this morning, including one that refers to him as “Daddy Trump.” ”
As Trump sits in the courtroom listening to Judge Merchan explain how his criminal trial will proceed, Truth Social sends push notifications for the flood of messages sent from his account this morning, including one that refers to him as “Daddy Trump.” pic.twitter.com/UtYNeFS0ay
— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) April 22, 2024
“Daddy Trump” is a very interesting choice, because it goes to the heart of Trump’s appeal to his base. He presents himself as a strong man who bullies the weak, and they like it. So seeing him treated like anyone else in court is bound to cause some cognitive dissonance among his more intelligent followers. If left alone, this could cause people to rethink how they view Trump, and he can’t afford that.
This is Trump’s way of reinforcing the image of himself as a beloved, adored dictator, even as he sits in court as a defendant in a criminal trial that is essentially about how he allegedly cheated to win the only election he ever won. won, in 2016.
You can see how the wheels are coming off Trump’s carefully constructed image in many ways, and how these criminal trials are harming him in ways that aren’t even related to the actual charges.
Trump and his surrogates chatter about how these trials are so good for Trump electorally, but if they really believed that, they wouldn’t wrongly blame President Joe Biden for Trump’s fate. After all, if these trials were good for Trump, he would thank the President of the United States if he truly believed that Biden was behind these trials.
But of course Biden does not support these processes. There is zero evidence to support that accusation and Biden certainly did not force Trump to work with the owner of the Enquirer to “capture and kill” negative stories about himself or to pay an adult film actress to cover an alleged to silence the affair.
Biden did not even run against Trump in the 2016 presidential elections, and therefore had nothing to do with Trump’s decision to make his personal ‘fixer’ Stormy Daniels pay for her silence. At issue is the fact that Trump is charged with 34 felonies for falsifying company records for payments to Daniels.
According to experts, there is nothing more miserable and, frankly, psychologically disturbing for former President Donald Trump than being forced to sit quietly in a courtroom while other people talk about him in unflattering ways. Trump is a man whose entire empire and presidency consisted of moments where he created a narrative that was as fake as his Trump steaks.
Trump wasn’t anyone’s “daddy” as president; In fact, he let the pandemic get way out of control, leading to countless deaths, because he was more concerned about his own election in the fall than the people of this country. A “daddy” does not allegedly steal top secrets and share them in a way that could help enemies of his family, and a “daddy” of the country does not incite a terrorist attack on his own family.
But those facts have been glossed over by the conservative media, which brings us back to the question of why this process is a problem for Donald Trump: he is being silenced in part by distorting the entire story, leaving bits of truth that permeate the epistemic closure of its base. . Trump knows that the greatest danger he faces is being seen as someone who is out of control. And so we are fed “Daddy Trump,” while the reality is a weakened defendant Trump falling asleep during his own trial.
Image is a screenshot of Trump trout-like moves via Gif shared by Olivia Nuzzi
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