Donald Trump is scared to death
Over the weekend Donald Trump made an absolutely disgusting social media post attacking “liberal Jews” and accusing them of wanting to destroy America. Trump received a fair amount of negative attention for this, and the whole thing probably should have gotten even more attention than it ended up getting. That kind of antisemitism cannot go unchallenged.
But at the time I pointed out that we should also pay attention to what Trump seemed to be trying to distract us from when he decided to begin attacking Jewish people. Days earlier, Jack Smith had filed for a gag order against Trump – and it caused Trump to back down from making inappropriate social media posts about his trial.
Trump appears to understand that Judge Tanya Chutkan can drop the hammer on him (her ruling is still pending). And so Trump has been doing what bullies always do when they come up against someone more powerful than they are: he’s backing down like a coward.
But Trump doesn’t want us to notice that he’s now too afraid to keep attacking the judge in the case, so instead he’s attacking “liberal Jews.” What’s interesting is that five days later, he’s still biting his tongue about the judge. He’s clearly afraid of her. And why wouldn’t he be? She can shut him up, under penalty of locking him up.
All that said, Trump’s bait and switch seems to have worked for him. No one’s talking about the fact that he’s stopped talking about the judge. But we should be talking about it. If Trump thought he were in control of any of this, if he thought he had a way out of this, if he thought he could somehow outmaneuver the legal system, he’d be thumbing his nose at the judge while awaiting her gag order decision. He’s petrified of what’s happening to him. Don’t allow his disgusting moments of bravado to distract from the fact that he’s hiding under his desk, scared to death of what comes next.
