Not a Sham Trial, but It’s Still a Sham Shame

Donald Trump speaks in Detroit, Michigan on June 15, 2024. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Gage Skidmore.

On May 30, something historic happened—a New York jury found former President Donald J. Trump guilty as charged on 34 felony charges. And yet this week, an Iowa Poll showed half of Iowa voters are still firmly loyal to Trump.

I can’t say that I’m shocked. Trump, narrowly elected president in 2016 despite losing the popular vote, has always been a unique political figure. He seemed and still seems, to me, to be wildly unqualified to be President, both by experience and temperament, and his chaotic presidency, in my mind, bore that out. A President whose pandemic response includes recommending ingesting or injecting bleach does not represent the kind of leader a democratic country should aspire to have.

Yet, a majority in my state and close to half of the national electorate are firmly in his camp. Since his nomination and election in 2016, and even after his 2020 defeat, Trump has reshaped the Republican Party until, today, the GOP seems to be a weird cult of personality. Trump famously said in 2016 that he could literally shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn’t cost him votes—the events of 2024 seems to bear out that he was not that far off the mark.

Image from web site Informed Opinion, link below.

Indeed, a local newspaper columnist, who I rarely agree with on anything, wrote that Trump’s conviction wouldn’t hurt him, while Hunter Biden’s legal troubles would be an ongoing drag for President Joe Biden.

As a logical outcome, that’s BS. But I think she has an interesting point—politics is always as much about emotions and feelings as it is about rationality, and the Trump has an amazing ability to play on the emotions of his followers. He’s a fighter who will always punches back and never acts as if a blow has landed, an attribute his supporters love. Also, as commentators Shari Gradon and Sarah Neville noted on the web site “Informed Opinion” back in 2016, Trump was and is a master at the art of selling—keeping his message simple, repeating outrageous and memorable points to draw attention, speaking directly with his audience, avoiding any complex ideas.

Fair enough, but I think he’s not just a master seller, he’s something darker.

But first, an aside. Hunter Biden is not running for any public office. He is a drug addict with a complicated, messed up life. His being a convicted felon based on gun charges related to his drug convictions doesn’t put him in the same category of crime boss as Donald Trump, who has a history of running both his companies and his political campaigns with zero regard for conventions of behavior, regular political practice or the rule of law.

And Hunter Biden’s legal entanglements, to my mind, probably do disqualify him for higher office, as Trump’s criminal convictions and indictment should disqualify him—“disqualify” in this case not being a legal status, but just how sane public opinion should work. But, again, Hunter isn’t Joe. The sins of Hunter Biden and the sins of Donald Trump are not equivalent.

On Jan. 12, 2017, President Barack Obama gave Vice President Joe Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom. An emotional Joe walks back to his family, including his son Hunter, at the ceremony. Image from Wikimedia Commons, official White House picture by Pete Souza.

Back to my main point—which is my worry about Trump’s popularity and what it means. We are on a knife’s edge in 2024. The petulant un-penitent convicted criminal who the GOP is hell bent on renominating for the highest office in the country is running a campaign of grievance and revenge, based on many sham points.

The horse won’t just be loose in the hospital—we already have seen this show before and we shouldn’t have to suffer through a sequel.

Why is Trump so popular? Well, I don’t pretend to fully know, but I think it’s partly because his fans feel the same kinds of pain, in some ways, that fuel the Trump rage. The GOP has become the party of anti-modernity, of anti-science, of an imagined ideal past that “enemies” of “America” have destroyed. Trump skillfully manipulates and amplifies his audience’s fears.

I saw a meme in June on Facebook from a Trump fan that said something like: “Jesus was convicted in a sham trial, too, and I still follow Him.” Well, Trump was convicted in a rather dull, normal trial using regular legal checks and balances. Trump was found guilty by a jury of citizens in the city where he committed his crimes. That he would pay off a porn star and then illegally lie about the payments seems so mundane, so unsurprising, so Trumpy, that calling that conviction a “sham” is itself rather shameful (sham-ful?). The trial of Jesus didn’t have a jury, Christ didn’t hire an expensive team of lawyers. Jesus didn’t commit financial fraud and didn’t run his enterprise for years as a profit-seeking criminal cartel.

It's weird to have to say it, but Trump and Jesus are not comparable figures, nor were their trials comparable events. Saying so is even more of a sham than equating Hunter and Donald.

Yet, Trump persists and is persistently popular. He uses fear the way a rock star uses a sick bass line or catchy guitar riff. His main talent is a twisted yet effective genre of communication.

It is the style of communication that a particular kind of leader has used in the past. See what this YouTube PBS commentator says:

Dr. Erica Brozovsky never mentions Donald Trump and isn’t engaging in political commentary. And the destructive “us” vs. “them” discourse she refers to in the video isn’t the sole property of the political right. The left, too, can play on fear and create an us vs them echo chamber. But still, when I watched her video this week, I was struck at how well this analysis helps me to try to understand an aspect of Trump’s communication.

To me, clearly, he is a cult leader.

And my representative in Congress, my two senators, my governor—they’re thoroughly in the cult. Even the attorney general of Iowa shamed herself and her office by flying to New York to join the sham chorus of Trump supporters decrying Trump’s prosecution.

In an era where we want warning labels on social media for young people (because teens care so much about warnings from adults), we as a culture need a warning about our information sources and our politics.

Wake up, America. It’s not the Trump trial that was a sham. Trump himself is the sham, a wizard behind the curtain performing for the masses. We have met the enemy, and he-she is us when we allow ourselves to join the True Believers. You, half of the body politic, are in some weird fevered dream, listening to the Dear Leader, taking leave of your senses.

The weird orange wizard of wrathful words is a fake, a sham. And to those people who aren’t in it, a cult typically seems like a scary thing. I’m a bit afraid.