Trump’s nemesis
There persists a rumour that the prison official who pushed the button that sent two thousand volts of Florida juice through the body of serial murderer Ted Bundy was a woman. Before he was captured, Bundy spent the better part of his young adult life stalking and murdering women with icy, psychopathic detachment — at least 30 in all, possibly more. True or not, that his own life might have been terminated by a woman through the technological indifference of the press of a button has a certain satisfying congruence to it.
In his final hours before his execution, Bundy was brought to the brink of a species of remorse by fear. He confessed as much as he had time for in his final hours. He wept. He displayed a kind of contrition.
No matter how dire or extreme Donald Trump’s punishment turns out to be, I doubt very much he will ever display anything remotely like contrition. Ted Bundy could teach him a thing or two about the appearance of guilt. Donald Trump could teach Ted Bundy a thing or two about abuse and humiliation of women.
There can be little doubt that Donald Trump hates women. His contempt for them is always on parade. If you’re a man who openly criticises Trump he might favour you with insults or stochastic threats. If you’re a woman, on the other hand, it’s more personal. He will mingle his usual antipathy with disparagements about your looks and weight. In typical tone-deafness Trump actually dismissed his rape victim as “not my type.”
While Melania was giving birth to their only child Barron, Trump was cheating on her with Stormy Daniels, a woman he later bequeathed the moniker “Horseface.” To his court-pronounced rape victim E Jean Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan he said, “see you next Tuesday,” code for the most deeply anti-woman word in the dictionary.
Just as it may have been a woman who threw the switch on Ted Bundy, it seems fitting that when it came time for Donald Trump to cash in his chips, women should serve as his banker. His entire fortune is at risk of being swallowed up by E Jean Carroll and her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, and New York Attorney General Letitia James,
While the team of Carroll, Kaplan and James are depriving Trump of his wealth, Atlanta-based District Attorney Fani Willis and U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan are busy engineering the loss of Trump’s freedom. Everywhere Trump looks it’s a woman sitting in the seat of judgement. What’s more, Willis, Chutkan and James are women of colour, a particular source of pain for the racist Trump.
Completing the trifecta, Nikki Haley has destroyed Trump in the primaries in both Washington DC and Vermont, and then refused to endorse him when she dropped out of the race. Donald Trump is on the ropes, and the pugilistic victors are female. Donald Trump’s Nemeses have brought Trump to heel with ultimate retribution for his hubris, and the unique justice of it all is wonderful to behold. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.