Donald Trump just screwed up and helped send himself to prison in a big way
For all of Donald Trump’s public bluster, and for all the pointless nonsense motions that he’s been filing, his slim odds of survival come down to one thing: reasonable doubt. Trump and his attorneys will have to find a way to convince the trial jury that there just might have been something else going on, instead of the criminal activity that prosecutors allege.
To that end, various legal experts believe that Trump’s best longshot at establishing reasonable doubt will be if he claims that he was following the legal advice of his attorneys. After all, it’s their job to know the law, and if he did something because they incorrectly told him it was legal, why should he be held accountable for it?
It’s a crap defense and it very rarely works, but Trump has very little else to try. Now it turns out he may not even have that to try. The media has no excuse whatsoever for giving airtime to a known liar like Trump and doing so little to push back against his lies. But even with the media trying to prop him up, Trump is faltering pretty badly in these interviews.
When he was on Meet The Press on Sunday, Trump stated emphatically that he wasn’t merely following his attorneys’ advice, and that he made the decision to take the actions that he’s been criminally charged for. In other words, Trump just screwed up the best reasonable doubt defense strategy that he had going for him. This isn’t just my take; various legal experts have said overnight that Trump just dealt himself a serious blow.
Here’s what’s interesting to me. This certainly wasn’t a “You’re goddamn right I did” moment like in A Few Good Men. No one was pushing Trump into blurting out this confession. Meet The Press host Kristen Welker was so soft on Trump, she did everything but give him free ice cream. But he was coming off as more confused and senile than ever in this interview. His confusion had to have scared him. And the minute it was suggested that he was merely following his lawyers’ advice, he tried desperately to assert that he was the one in charge. And in so doing, he totally screwed himself.
I spent two and a half years pointing out that Donald Trump was coming off as increasingly senile in his rare public appearances. Once he got indicted four times and he insisted on pushing back by making regular public appearances, I wondered how long it would be before he started having seriously senile moments in public. Sure enough, that’s starting to happen. And not only has it ignited a long overdue national discussion about Trump’s senility, it’s also screwing up his already-slim odds of surviving his criminal trials.
