I’ve said it to fellow Trump haters until I’ve annoyed them and bored myself: To put yourself in the shoes of Trump lovers, you might think of the way you regard a lawyer you’ve hired to represent you in a high-stakes lawsuit.
You care amazingly little about that person’s manners and communication style. Your attitude is generally, “Whatever it takes.”
When you’re looking for an attorney, “civility” doesn’t top the list of traits you’re seeking. You might sheepishly describe your attorney even to another nice liberal friend as “a little ruthless.” And that nice liberal friend might wink back.
Intellectual consistency or honesty doesn’t matter to you either. If this argument isn’t working, try that one!
And your attorney’s religious beliefs sure as shit don’t matter to you. This is war.
But all that only holds as long as the attorney is winning. Unlike your pastor, who might be daft and even a little drunk, your attorney is not a lovable loser. With your attorney there is no, “Bless her heart.”
And a bad attorney looks very bad indeed. Writing a magazine story about a policeman suspected of murdering his wife years ago, I dealt with the cop’s lawyer, who offered to sell me a picture of said missing wife, posing nude, with an automatic rifle.
Questionable tactically: Would the publication of this picture have made people assume the cop was innocent? Unforgivable practically: Did this guy really think a respectable magazine would pay for a picture like this? Far from helping the cop’s cause, the move only made for more damning copy.
As the mists seem to gather around Trump—perhaps mists of age, but certainly mists of narcissistic loss of perspective and focus—he and his American “clients” cannot expect a soft landing like President Carter got, after his own ineffectual administration. A hard rain’s gonna fall.
Maybe that’s why Trump is going on TV tonight, to read from the Bible.
Beyond too little.
Beyond too late.
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