Saint Donald

Donald Trump has been held in contempt of court multiple times during the current The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump trial. Mainly because Mr. Trump clearly understands that he has a significant portion of the population, who are convinced that "the system" is out to get them, behind him. As long as they are convinced that everything Mr. Trump does is for the benefit of the United States (read: in the interests of the United States as they understand them), every sanction that a court attempts to hand down will be seen as further evidence of the malice of "the Establishment." Judge Merchan has a problem because he's up against one of the unwritten rules of any society: the written rules are only binding when enough people decide to go along with them.

Mr. Trump rails against the court, calls out the Biden Administration as the Gestapo and otherwise does as he pleases because his base of voters regards him as someone who is beyond Someone Else's Rules. So like any other martyr, his crime is never a violation of the rules or norms that The Powers That Be are tasked with enforcing; it's being the person who stands up to the wrongdoers who have made themselves The Powers That Be. And those wrongdoers have almost no other reason to exist other than to show how heroic those who oppose them are. It's like King George the Third. Despite the fact that he was King of the United Kingdom from 1760 to 1820, as far as American history is concerned, he was nothing more than a petty tyrant who unjustly opposed Independence who ceased to be relevant to anything the moment the ink on the Treaties of Paris was dry.

Donald Trump's anointing as the savior of (Conservative) America has served to render any opposition to him as illegitimate and any criticism of him a desperate tactic of puppets of foreign powers and/or ideas. And the hope that many people on the American Left seem to have that something will undo this has become tiresome. Part of the difficulty, I think, lies in language. There is a tendency to speak of Mr Trump as "Teflon" or "defying the laws of political gravity," as if he himself were the motivating force behind his success. But what's really at work here is that after decades of feeling either ignored or patronized by the American political class, Trump voters have found someone who appears to genuinely care about the things that are important to them. Former rivals to Mr. Trump now speak in his defense and go after his perceived opponents not because Mr. Trump will punish them himself, but because he can end their political careers by denouncing them to his supporters, whom everyone understands will be unforgiving.