When you’re a star
New York lawyer Lloyd Green on Trump’s bust:
The question now looms whether the nation will face Trump-incited violence as a result. The former president threatened “death and destruction” if charged. In a now infamous social media post targeting the Black district attorney Alvin Bragg, Trump depicted himself brandishing a baseball bat at the District Attorney, and called him as an “animal” and “degenerate psychopath”.
That’s where I had to pause reading in order to find the post and share it.
The drumbeat continues. Next month, Trump stands trial for defamation and sexual assault. He faces a civil suit brought in New York by E Jean Carroll. Unlike his purported relationship with Daniels, this case centers on rape and degradation.
Carroll contends that a quarter of a century ago Trump attacked her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store. He parried that she was not his “type”. But at a recent deposition, he mistook her for Marla Maples, his second wife, raising questions about his credibility and mental acuity.
The Trump-Carroll square-off will also provide the country with another opportunity to revisit history. Her lawyers will probably play the infamous Access Hollywood tape. “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump said on a hot mic. “You can do anything.”
If they don’t play it they’re crazy.
Separately, a New York judge has refused to delay a $250m civil fraud action commenced by the state against Trump, his three older children and the Trump Organization, the family business. The October 2023 trial date is “written in stone”, Judge Arthur Engoron said last week.
Maybe, just maybe, the Republicans should try to get a non-criminal to run for president next time. Just a thought.
Senator Rand Paul, the self-styled libertarian, calls for Bragg’s arrest. Marjorie Taylor Greene demands that George Soros, foreign-born and a Bragg-backer, be stripped of his US citizenship.
Law and order! No, wait. Special rules for our crook! Yeah, that’s it.
Rand Paul is no libertarian, he just wants lower taxes and fewer regulations. He’s also one of those religious authoritarians. Libertarian is the right-wing version of the word “woke,” overused and now devoid of , or divorced from, its original meaning. Libertarians don’t call for the arrest of someone for political reasons when there’s been no crime committed.