Whether Trump did or didn’t let loose, there’s a whiff of defeat about him

Donald Trump has been letting loose on his Truth Social network of late, disparaging prosecutors, the judge and potential witnesses in the porn-star hush-money trial in New York City.

If some reports are to be believed, online isn’t the only place he’s been letting loose. A left-wing commentary site reported the other day that sources in the courtroom were saying the former president has been having some intestinal problems in court, and that auditory and olfactory evidence of this have been obvious to spectators.

Others have said they’ve heard similar stories, including George Conway, who as Trump henchperson Kellyanne Conway’s ex-husband might be said to have passed a smell test of credibility on the issue. And there is also a video of Trump speaking on camera during his presidency, with former California senator Dianne Feinstein behind him, on which one can plainly hear a minor trumpet blast, and in response to which Feinstein responds the way you’d expect.

It must be said that these stories are otherwise unconfirmed. But they are a potent metaphor for the stinky position Trump is now in.

Testimony in the case began Tuesday, Australia time. The first witness: a sleazy magazine proprietor, delightfully named David Pecker. He ran the company that publishes the National Enquirer, the most famous and notorious US supermarket tabloid. He explained how his particular brand of chequebook journalism played out. He met Trump and his then fixer, Michael Cohen, before the 2016 election and agreed to run damaging stories about Hillary Clinton and positive pieces on Trump. He also arranged to seek out unwelcome stories about him – a Playboy model, say, who claimed to have had a year-long affair with the married presidential aspirant – and buy the rights.

The idea was not to publish the stories, but to suppress them, and Trump in turn would then reimburse the magazine for the financial outlay. This was called, in the parlance of this tawdry corner of the profession, “catch and kill”. (The notorious payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels was too much even for the National Enquirer; on released audio tapes we can hear Cohen and Trump discussing how to route the money themselves from the Trump organisation to her.)

The prosecution’s contention is that the Trump company falsified business records about where the money went … and that this was in service of what they call “election interference” – paying out unreported money to keep negative information about the candidate out of the public sphere. This combination of malfeasance can be prosecuted as a felony in the state of New York; Trump is facing 34 such charges, and a prison sentence of some duration is not out of the question if he is convicted.

Trump and his increasingly nasty supporting goon squads have been screaming about election interference by Democrats for almost four years now without any supportive evidence. It’s another example of the potent gaslighting the right uses as a political tactic, and it now seems like potent gaslighting is a ploy Trump himself is accomplishing in court as well, if those reports are to be believed.

Things aren’t going well for Trump. Yes, many published polls show the race with Joe Biden uncomfortably close. Yes, the Biden administration has not come up with an effective response to the right’s pummelling on the issue of immigration. But the allegations we will see over the next six weeks – involving multiple allegations of adultery, porn stars, hush money, election shenanigans, and appalling violations of journalistic ethics involving the most disreputable corners of the American media this side of Fox News – is not good news for the Republicans with the election looming.

Speaking of the Republicans, Trump’s most MAGA supporters in Congress just had their biggest pratfall, as Speaker Mike Johnson actually pushed through much-needed aid to Ukraine. The blood of many Ukrainians lies on the hands of these people, as they have delayed this action for months in the face of Russia’s merciless attacks.

Just when you thought those most buffoonish members of the right could not get any sillier, they managed to pull it off. Worried about Johnson’s negotiations with Democrats, they established a rapid-response squad to keep an eye on the House chamber. They even gave themselves a little name, which, given Donald Trump’s recent expostulations, was somewhat unfortunate: The Floor Action Response Team.

Bill Wyman is a former arts editor and assistant managing editor of National Public Radio in Washington. He teaches at the University of Sydney.

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