The prosecutor, Matthew Colangelo, did not hold back from the salacious details in describing the alleged crimes that led to Trump sitting at the defendant's table: the extramarital sex, the hush money payments, the alleged out-of-wedlock child, the conspiracy with the National Enquirer to pay women off in a practice with the tawdry name "catch-and-kill."
Trump's humiliation deepens: In court, he can't hide from his tabloid roots
If there was a hell, Trump's punishment would be a trial where people tell the truth about him all day
23 April 2024
Salon
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Trump is such a famous narcissist that he literally has a woman who follows him around with a wireless printer to feed him a steady supply of online praise. Hearing what people outside the paid shills have to say was, all reports suggest, very upsetting for the former president. He glowered and eventually tried to leave the courtroom so quickly that he had to be told to sit down by the judge.
(Trump) famously spent decades longing to be included in the ranks of Manhattan's social elite, imagining he had a "classiness" they simply failed to perceive. As Elizabeth Spiers of the New York Times wrote last week, "The rich and powerful sometimes invited him to their parties, but behind his back they laughed at his coarse methods and his tacky aesthetic."
... the process of being a criminal defendant has already stripped Trump of most of the trappings he uses to prop up his delusions of nobility. He has to sit still and do what he's told, which he whines about ad nauseam when outside of court. He keeps reportedly falling asleep and believable rumors suggest that his personal odor is difficult to bear.
Even in this truncated day of court, the picture painted of Trump was not the regal leader of his fantasies, but who he actually is: A sleazy poseur who belongs to the world of trashy tabloids and scheming hucksters. The whole thing is a harsh reminder, to his face, that Trump is more suited to wallowing in the gutter than sitting on a throne.
Now he's spending his days in a dingy courtroom, staying silent while other people talk about his real self: A pathetic figure who pressures reluctant women into sex, and then runs to his seedy friends and barrel-scraping employees to bail him out of trouble. If there was a hell, Trump's punishment would be to look into a mirror for all of eternity. Having to hear people tell the truth about him for hours a day is as close as we're going to get on the mortal plane. |
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