Donald Trump’s worst delusion, that no rules bind him, is finally under threat

The Donald Trump who read angry words off a teleprompter after his court appearance was a man diminished in one important way.

COMMENT

The Donald Trump who read angry words off a teleprompter at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night was a man diminished and disempowered. He’s actually been that way for some time.

His speeches were once irresistible, unpredictable television, each infused with its own delicious little mixture of improvised humour and malice. Now they’re monotonous. Wherever Mr Trump goes, whatever the occasion, whoever the audience, he repeats the same tedious list of grievances. Before, you had no idea what crazy, subversive thing he was going to say next. Today it’s like watching a film for the hundredth time with the script on your lap.

It’s as though the stresses of politics slowly ground him down, sapping his charisma, eroding his talent as a natural entertainer. Now we see what always lurked underneath the showman’s facade: a sad, bitter human being. A child of monstrous privilege determined to convince the world he is a victim. Mr Trump has turned into the “old man yells at cloud” meme. He’s a chore to listen to.

The catalyst for Tuesday’s chore was his arraignment. Mr Trump has been charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records, all of them related to an alleged scheme to suppress ugly stories about his personal life before the 2016 election.

This is a source of considerable schadenfreude for Mr Trump’s foes, frenzied outrage for his fans, and a queasy uncertainty for those in the middle, who perhaps expected the first ever criminal prosecution of a former US president to focus on something more significant than hush money payments to a porn star.

Mr Trump himself spent the week radiating a sort of shellshocked disbelief that, after a lifetime spent lying, cheating, shafting, screwing and indulging in various other appalling behaviours, it was this, this of all things, that now threatened to undo him.

Old man yells at Florida diners. Picture: Chandan Khanna/AFP

We can dismiss the bleating about law enforcement being politicised, which is, so very predictably, loudest among those who chanted “lock her up” with relish seven years ago. One can only imagine how ravenously these hypocrites would hunger for justice were Hillary Clinton the defendant here.

Yes, the chief prosecutor is tainted by politics. Of course he is. This is a country that often subjects district attorneys, sheriffs, and even judges to elections; that openly classifies them as Republicans or Democrats. It treats them like politicians. While the Trump circus was touring a Manhattan courthouse on Tuesday, voters in Wisconsin were picking a new justice for their state’s supreme court, the same way they’d choose a new senator.

It is an objectively ill legal system, incurably infected by a political cancer. Stage 4, possibly terminal. But the juries, at least, are not elected.

So if Mr Trump’s defenders are right, and District Attorney Alvin Bragg has concocted a baseless, politically motivated case against him, it will disintegrate in court, along with Mr Bragg’s reputation.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat. Picture: Angela Weiss/AFP

For now, we can assume there is sufficient evidence to at least justify a prosecution, because that is what a grand jury of regular citizens, untouched by political ambition, decided. Unless we are to believe that twentyish randos off the street were in on the grand conspiracy. Is George Soros buying every soul in New York City now?

The standard of proof required for a conviction will be far stricter, and Mr Trump will marshall the calibre of legal defence exclusively available to someone of his wealth. If the prosecution is a sham, he will be fine. Better than fine, probably. Enhanced, positively rejuvenated, with a more believable claim to martyrdom than ever.

It is telling that Mr Trump’s apologists so rarely defend what he’s actually done, or in this case is accused of doing. All week we have heard critiques of the legal theory underpinning the looming trial, and accusations of political bias, and an insistence that the crimes alleged are somehow not quite crimey enough. There is little focus on the basic underlying facts.

Does anyone truly think this man too moral to cheat on his wife shortly after the birth of their child? Too upstanding to have the mistress paid off, and the reimbursements disguised as false legal fees? Too scrupulous and honourable to deliberately deceive voters? No. The allegations against him are entirely consistent with his character.

(Mr Trump denies all wrongdoing and, while he acknowledges payments were made to Stormy Daniels, he also insists there was no sexual relationship with her.)

Stormy Daniels, who says she did in fact have an affair with Mr Trump. He denies it. Picture: Jesse Grant/Getty Images

There is a pattern of behaviour in Donald Trump’s life that the determined mind can ignore, given enough incentive or ideological fanaticism. It was staring us in the eye, again, for the millionth time, on Tuesday night. A kind observer would name it chutzpah, though it’s more like grotesque, elitist arrogance. Hubris. An assumption, bolstered by years of unpunished misdeeds, that no rules bind him.

Mere hours before Mr Trump spoke at Mar-a-Lago, the judge overseeing his case explicitly instructed him to “refrain from making statements that are likely to incite violence or civil unrest”, or to “jeopardise the safety or wellbeing of any individuals”.

Mr Trump proceeded to rant about his “Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family”. His son, Donald Jr, posted a photo of the judge’s daughter online, claiming her work for Kamala Harris's presidential campaign was proof of a “handpicked Democrat show trial”.

(Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter is president of a digital communications firm that works for Democratic political candidates.)

In the days since, Judge Merchan and his family have endured a predictable deluge of threats, which necessitated a bolstering of their security.

Warned against inflammatory rhetoric, Mr Trump went on merrily inflaming, like a smoker thinking himself immune to lung cancer. Because he thinks himself immune to the law.

Mr Trump on his way to the courtroom on Tuesday. Picture: Ed Jones/AFP

It should feel bizarre to hear a politician who campaigned for re-election on a platform of “law and order” attacking law enforcement. Having mocked calls to “defund the police” when a cop murdered a black man, Mr Trump now calls for the FBI and Department of Justice to be defunded, because he feels the merest hint of a knee on his own neck.

This after he happily let Michael Cohen, his lawyer, go to jail for Cohen’s part in the hush money plot. After he watched the Trump Organisation’s longtime chief financial officer go to jail for his company’s decades-long tax fraud. After he watched hundreds of people go to jail for their crimes on January 6, 2021, each of them driven to action by his lies.

Consequences for thee but not for me. And now he seeks sympathy.

More serious charges loom. They may spring from Mr Trump’s handling of classified government documents after leaving office, or his weird, ham-fisted attempts to overturn the 2020 election result. Or maybe all those other investigations will sputter into nothing.

Through it all we should maintain some perspective. Mr Trump’s suitability for national leadership does not hinge on whether or not he violated a specific criminal statute, be it 34 times or just once.

It hinges on his character. And with each dull, delusional, self-interested tirade, that character comes into clearer focus.

Twitter: @SamClench

Originally published as Donald Trump’s worst delusion, that no rules bind him, is finally under threat