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Commentators have been going for months debating the merits of the New York/“hush money” prosecution of Donald Trump. Is it “serious”? Is it serious enough? How does it match up against the three other criminal prosecutions still looming over him? Does it lower the average level of seriousness when the independent seriousness of each is added together and divided by four? In the most general sense the entire conversation is an example of what we might call the Trump Reality Distortion Vortex. One of Trump’s great powers is that he is like a heavy magnet of distorted thinking. When he comes into proximity people start thinking stupid things, asking stupid questions. What opinion should we, who are not prosecutors, have toward a chronic lawbreaker who is charged with breaking the laws he broke? Will it make him stronger? Were the laws broken enough?
On the simplest level the first question has always seemed easy to me. People don’t just go to jail for crimes like this. One of Trump’s accomplices literally already went to jail for this specific crime. Indeed, he did so on charges brought by the Trump Justice Department. That speaks for itself.
But there is an additional point we should recognize about even this trial — which in its substance is less grave than the other three prosecutions. Let’s stop there. How could it not be? Two of the others are tied to an attempted overthrow of the federal government. Perhaps the gravest crime possible. The other is absconding with boxes and boxes of highly classified documents.
Even with all that, the actual process of this trial has seemed deeply diminishing.
That applies to everyone. But it is uniquely so for Donald Trump. What is clear to anyone who has ever tried to understand the man is that he lives in a binary world of the dominating and the dominated. The visuals around the man endlessly illustrate this. Most of us live in a much more fluid and textured world. We interact with most people on a ground of relative equality. Where real differentials of power exist most of us try to paper over those realities with softening trappings. Trump’s whole world view, the way he interacts with friends and foes, won’t accept any middle ground. And this is more than just performance. It’s clear that this is deeply rooted in his experience of the world. Being dominated is a kind of social and ego death. That’s why he’s so good at his whole racket. Because it’s coded so deeply into him.
Nothing puts you more squarely in the bucket of the dominated than being a defendant in a criminal trial and at risk of losing your freedom. The state makes its case against you and you have to sit there and take it. In case there was any question, the judge told Trump you have to be here in my court and sit here. A dozen randomly picked people hold your fate in their hands. You have to make your case, an actual case. Bullshit and attitude, Trump’s coins of the realm, could work. Unless those twelve people decide it doesn’t.
Seeing Trump sitting there, even on this least weighty prosecution, you get a sense of why he’s fought so tooth and nail to avoid this. The biggest and most obvious reason is that he doesn’t want to go to jail. That is certainly a sufficient reason. But it’s not the whole story. At the most basic level, sitting in the dock is horribly and perhaps even fatally off brand. Trump’s brand is swagger and impunity. Always be dominating. Until you’re not.