I had intended to publish Murder Incorporated - Part III, but wading through the arguments promoted by the gun advocates is like trying to scrape mud off the wall. Reducing a response to a manageable level will take a bit more time. Expect that there will be a Part IV, or heaven help a Part V! This week’s federal district court’s overturning the federal regulation prohibiting 18-20 year olds from being able to legally purchase handguns federally licensed firearm dealers hasn’t helped.
Instead, I saw a TV program and wanted to comment on it. I was going to say “show” but it was so much more than that. It combined the Manichaean struggle between good, the light in our material world, with evil, the world of darkness in our material world. It combined the elegance of a chess match with brutishness of tipping over the chess board because chess is “hard.” It was simultaneously high brow and low brow. It pitted the state college protagonist against the Ivy League antagonist.
Of course I’m referring to the CNN Town Hall featuring the twice impeached, once (so far) indicted, and recently found civilly liable for sexual battery and defamation 45th president, Donald J. Trump.
A lot was said and written before the event and much more after it. For the most part, it was negative. The tenor of most commentary questioned why a reputable news organization would host the living embodiment of Lord Voldemort.
My purpose is to neither praise nor bury CNN, but it would be disingenuous not to comment on how this program was structured. That said, if there’s anyone to blame for turning this show into what not so polite company would term a “shitshow” it is Trump. So let me start with CNN.
As Finnish composer Jan Sibelius once said, “Nobody ever built a statue to a critic.” And all these years I thought it was Arturo Toscanini who said it. I guess that was “fake news.”
With that said let me first say that I don’t criticize CNN for having Trump on its airwaves. CNN is a news organization and Trump is a leading contender to win the presidency in 2024. And let’s face it - Trump is always news. No matter what happened in the town hall, news was going to be made.
And CNN, like most if not all broadcasters, chases ratings. And ratings translate into ad revenues. And as loath I am to say it, Trump is good for ratings.
However, CNN could have and should have done better. As these formats generally go, this was more town hallish than town hall. Yes it had “voters” asking “questions” of the “candidate.” But these were not random voters. Rather they were either republicans whose histories showed they had voted for Trump in the past or they were “independents” who had previously voted for Trump.
In other words, it was more Trump rally than town hall. The online news outlet Puck reported that the audience was told that they could clap and cheer but could not boo. To the television viewer this made the crowd look more supportive of Trump than it may have been.
The selection of the CNN moderator could have been more thoughtful. Kaitlin Collins did a great job - she was well prepared, tried her best to hold Trump accountable, and kept the program moving. In short she did her job.
However, Collins had one problem she couldn’t negate - she was a woman. Perhaps the world’s best known misogynist, Trump was never going to show her any respect. Even the day after a federal jury unanimously found him liable for sexual battery and the defamation of E. Jean Carroll, he was back at it, treating Ms. Collins like she was a clerk at Bergdof Goodman. Before the town hall was over, Trump would call Collins a “nasty” woman.
Trump once again attacked the court and jury that had rendered a verdict against him, and hitting him up for $5 million in damages. He resumed calling Ms. Carroll a “wack job,” much to the delight of the rally goers, and perhaps to the glee of Carroll’s legal team. The audience laughed at a legally proven victim of sexual assault and there was little Collins could do restore some semblance of decorum.
One thing to know about Trump is that in spite of his bully boy tactics and tough talk, at heart he’s a coward. Throughout all his known history, he has never confronted a male possessing his own power. For example, he could never confront his first Attorney General when he recused himself from any oversight of the Muller probe. He never directly fired any employee, he always had someone else do it. “The Apprentice” was a non-reality show designed to make him appear omnipotent and omniscient.
In short, regarding Trump’s courage, as Winston Churchill once said about his successor Clement Attlee, “there’s a lot less there than meets the eye.” The same could be said about virtually all of Trump’s attributes.
Trump finds comfort in dominating women. It wasn’t Ms. Collins’ fault that she couldn’t control Trump’s behavior. Trump instinctively gets a sense of faux power when confronting a woman, any woman. A male moderator would likely have altered Trump’s approach and behavior. But then if there had been a male moderator, perhaps Trump wouldn’t have agreed to do the town hall.
I found it fascinating, not entirely unexpected but still fascinating, that a guy who had just the day before been found liable for sexual battery and defamation would exhibit no shame or embarrassment due to the prior day’s verdict. It stunned me just a little that he was not more circumspect in his answers to the questions posed, especially his continued railing on about the 2020 election given the number of prosecutorial eyes on his performance. But Trump has no shame. He has no conscience. He has zero compassion or empathy for others. He is demanding, manipulative and selfish.
Donald Trump is a poster boy for narcissistic personality disorder. And as of this writing, he’s the odds on favorite to win the republican nomination for president, whereafter anything can happen. If you think it’s not likely that he’d be elected, I’m old enough to remember when Trump had no chance of beating Hillary Clinton in 2016. And how did that turn out?
This brings me to the point of this essay. CNN most certainly had mixed motives for airing a program that Trump turned into a cheap, tawdry, widely broadcast rally. I’m sure at some points during the broadcast NewsMax and OAN were green with envy.
There’s no shortage of suggestions as to how Trump must be - for want of a better word - handled going forward. No matter the forum, the majority of the attending audience must not be rigged with Trump MAGA supporters. Especially if it’s a serious Town Hall format, the audience should represent a cross-section of constituencies. Whomever the moderators are, they must never allow Trump, or any candidate for that matter, to evade, equivocate, or filibuster his or her answers. If that means shutting down his mike, then shut it down.
And if any simple, uniformly applied rules mean that Trump, in the fullness of his indignation, walks off the stage, then tell him not to let the door hit him on the way out. Maybe the moderator(s) could say “see ya, hate to be ya” for good measure. Too much? Maybe, but then maybe not.
Lost in all the hand wringing over the CNN Town Hall is the performance of the “star” Donald Trump. Those of us who watch cable news, read five newspapers a day, and engage on social media knew what was going to happen. Expecting Donald Trump to change is like expecting the sun to rise in the west.
At risk of getting drummed out of Effete East Coast Liberal Club and losing all the privileges appertaining thereto, we do a great disservice to our country when we tongue lash CNN instead of placing our focus where it belongs.
Donald Trump is a master of performative art, pretending to be strong when he is weak, smart when he lacks any basic knowledge to perform in the job he seeks, a “stable genius” when he is temperamentally unfit to lead in a democracy, and compassionate when in reality he couldn’t give a toss for the people who support him.
Liberals have historically made the same mistake over and over again: because we understand something, we think so too will everyone else. And when they don’t, in part because they are living their lives working and feeding their families, we ridicule them for being dolts or rubes.
Meanwhile the right-wing has invested in an infrastructure that makes a Trump, or a DeSantis, or any of hundreds of others possible. These people don’t care about democracy, democratic principles, or the rule of law. They care only for the advancement and implementation of their agenda, no matter who is harmed or disenfranchised as a result.
Don’t listen to me, listen to over half our population who had the right to control their own medical decisions ripped away from them with nary a by your leave.
In 2008, while writing a bi-weekly column for a local newspaper, I endorsed Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama (liberal heresy!). I made that endorsement because I thought she was more experienced, her proposed health policies more inclusive, and her need for on the job training would be minimal. But the main reason was that even then, it was obvious that a political, cultural, economic war was coming and that she would be best equipped to fight that war.
Sixteen years later we are in that war. The sides are picked, the battle lines drawn, and the rules of engagement - to the extent such rules exist - are in place. What’s at stake is not whether we’ll advance into the twenty first century, but whether we can prevent a regression to the worst parts of the twentieth century.
We live at a time in history when our basic assumptions are under attack. The basic principle of “one man, one vote” is under attack by those who would gerrymander voting districts to gain and protect their power. Basic verifiable facts are challenged when deemed inconvenient. Xenophobia has reached levels not seen in over one hundred years. Our politics is poisoned by the use of “dark money” by our modern age robber barons. Books are being censored and libraries are being emptied because a small but well organized and financed group feels threatened by the knowledge and insights books contain.
Individual sexual orientation is under attack by religious bigots and spineless politicians. Too often people are judged not by who they are, but by their sexual orientation. Schools are prohibited from teaching aspects of American history that touch on the the mistreatment of those whose lands we took and of those who were brought to our shores against their will. We are asked to ignore the challenges and suffering they continue to endure to this day.
The rule of law is being weaponized to advanced the purposes of those who would subvert our democratic order. The law has been employed to strip the rights of people to advance political and cultural goals. More and more, laws are being enacted and implemented to punish some for who they are rather than any act they committed, while at the same time protecting the interests of weapons manufacturers.
Income and wealth inequality are perpetuated to advance the economic benefit of a few at the expense of the many. These economic divisions are exploited to pit classes against one another in a cynical strategy to perpetuate a system for the benefit of the few.
This war of ideas and values is upon us. Donald Trump is an important player in this war, but he isn’t the only player. Those of us who value a more inclusive and gentle society, where justice and equality are shared values, must engage in this battle of ideas. We must do this not only because it is the right thing to do, but because the fates of our children and grandchildren hang in the balance.
But if we waste time pulling CNN’s nose and kicking it in the butt, we play right into our opponents’s hands.
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