The loathsomeness of
Trump world
The
backstory of the trial
MAY 16, 2024
Friends,
There is something
important about Trump’s criminal trial in New York that’s not being openly
talked about. I don’t mean we’re not getting the facts about what’s happening
in Manhattan Superior Court. But something very big is being left out.
The trial has introduced
us to a world of moral and ethical loathsomeness in which people use and abuse
one another routinely. It’s Trump world.
Consider Stormy Daniels.
Porn stars are entitled to do as they wish to make money. But when they extort
their clients or boyfriends who are running for public office — demanding large
payments in order to stay quiet about their affair — they’re violating public
morality. They’re contributing to a society in which every interaction has a
potential price.
Last week we heard
Daniels’s story, even more detailed and lascivious than expected. But a
troubling aspect of her behavior is that when Trump ran for office, she saw a
chance to extort money from him. She then “shopped” her account of their sexual
liaison, before finally accepting $130,000 to be silenced in the 2016
election’s final critical days.
Or consider Michael
Cohen. Powerful people often need “fixers” — assistants that carry out their
wishes and protect them from legal or political trouble. But when those fixers
arrange payments to keep stories out of the media, they’re treading on morally
thin ice.
Cohen didn’t just fix.
He boasted of burying Trump’s secrets and spreading Trump’s lies. In his work
for Trump, he repeatedly acted illegally and found ways to cover up his
actions. After he paid Daniels to keep silent and Trump was elected president,
Cohen concocted with Trump a means of being reimbursed that involved falsifying
records that disguised the repayment as ordinary legal expenses.
And then there’s David
Pecker, publisher of the National Enquirer. Tabloids are part
of a long tradition of American journalism. But when tabloid publishers buy
stories to bury them on behalf of powerful people, thereby establishing a kind
of bankable account of chits that can be cashed in with the powerful, it violates
public morality because it corrupts our democracy.
Two weeks ago, Pecker
testified about “catching and killing” stories — buying the exclusive rights to
stories, or “catching them,” for the specific goal of ensuring the information
never becomes public. That’s the “killing” part. According to people who have
worked for him, Pecker mastered this technique — ethics be damned.
Which brings us to Trump
himself. I don’t care that he had extramarital affairs. But when a presidential
candidate tells his fixer to buy off someone — “Just take care of it” — so the
public doesn’t get information before an election about a candidate that they
might find relevant to evaluating him, it undermines democracy.
This cast of characters
— and there are many, many others like them in Trump world — are loathsome not
just because they have violated the law, but because they have contributed to
creating a harsh society in which everyone is potentially bought or sold.
It’s a sell-or-tell
society, a catch-and-kill society, a just-take-care-of-it society. A society
where money and power are the only considerations. Where honor and integrity
count for nothing.
I am not naive about how
the world works. I’ve spent years in Washington, many of them around powerful
people. I have seen the seamy side of American politics and business.
But the people who
inhabit Trump world live in a more extreme place — where there are no norms, no
standards of decency, no common good. There are only opportunities to make
money off others and potential dangers of being ripped off by others.
It’s a place where there
are no relationships, only transactions.
I sometimes worry that
the daily dismal drone of Trump world — the continuous lies and vindictiveness
that issue from Trump and his campaign, the dismissive and derogatory ways he
deals with and talks about others, the people who testify at his criminal trial
about what they have done for or to him and what he has done for or to them —
have a subtly corrosive effect on our own world.
It’s important to remind
ourselves that most of the people we know are not like this. That honor and
integrity do count. That standards of decency guide most behavior. That
relationships matter.
