Now playing
off-Broadway: Trump’s synchronized sycophants
Outside the courthouse, a
Greek chorus of mini-Trumps dutifully dances to the former president’s
choreography.
By Dana Milbank
Columnist|
May 17, 2024 at 6:30 a.m.
EDT
Sen. Tommy Tuberville knows a great
deal about the judiciary. The Alabama Republican is on record asserting
that the three branches of government are “the House, the Senate and the
executive.”
And so this week, the former college
football coach took his expertise in jurisprudence to Donald Trump’s hush money trial in
New York, watched for a few minutes and came out to offer reporters his legal
analysis.
“How can you be convinced by somebody
that is a serial liar?” Tuberville wanted to know. “I mean, there should be no
reason that anybody should listen to this guy.”
One hundred percent, Coach! Tuberville
was talking about the witness, Michael Cohen, but he didn’t have the
self-awareness to realize he was also describing the defendant, perhaps the
most famous liar in American history.
The Manhattan Criminal Courthouse was
overflowing with lying liars this week. Inside the courtroom, Cohen testified
about all the lies he told for Trump: lying to Congress, lying to the public,
lying about Trump’s involvement with Russia, lying about Trump’s alleged trysts
and how Trump bought the silence of his accusers. Trump’s lawyers, in their
cross-examination, sought to convince the jury that the former Trump fixer is
so prolific a liar that he is still lying, as are Stormy Daniels, Karen
McDougal and anybody who accuses Trump of anything, ever. Trump himself, in
statements to the cameras in the hallway outside the courtroom, lies about the
terms of the gag order, the “corrupt” judge, the view of “everybody” with legal
experience that he committed “no crime” — and whatever else comes to his lips.
In the park across the street from
the courthouse on Tuesday stood the speaker of the House, the
man second in line to the presidency, lying like a rug. Without a shred of
evidence, Mike Johnson alleged that “the judge’s own daughter is making
millions of dollars” off of the trial. He claimed a prosecutor in the case had
“recently received over $10,000 in payments from the Democratic National
Committee.” He alleged that, in Trump’s classified documents case, prosecutors
“manipulated documents” and “might have tampered with the evidence” — conduct
“so egregious” that it caused that trial to be “indefinitely postponed.” All
false or, at best, deeply distorted.
It was demeaning to the office of the
speaker, and to Congress, for Johnson to be trashing the criminal justice
system as “corrupt,” and nakedly campaigning for Trump at the former
president’s trial. He was one of a parade of MAGA legislators making a pilgrimage
to the courthouse this week. On Monday came Sens. Tuberville and J.D. Vance
(Ohio) and Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (N.Y.). On Tuesday came Johnson and a
quartet of Republicans all dressed as Trump mini-mes in blue-gray suits, white
shirts and red ties: Reps. Cory Mills (Fla.) and Byron Donalds (Fla.), North
Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and
former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. On
Thursday came so many House MAGA Republicans — including Matt Gaetz (Fla.) and
Anna Paulina Luna (Fla.), Bob Good (Va.), Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and Eli Crane
(Ariz.), and Lauren Boebert (Colo.), and at least five others — that the House
Oversight Committee had to postpone its planned vote to hold Attorney General
Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress.
The speaker owes his job to Trump, who
earlier this month opposed Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s attempt to
oust him. In a sense, all of the lawmakers flocking to New York owe their jobs
to Trump: One cross word from him, and they’re out faster than you can say
“primary challenge.” And so they performed for Trump outside the courthouse as
a troupe of synchronized sycophants.
“This is a sham trial!” said Trump,
inside the courthouse.
“Sham of a trial,” parroted Johnson,
outside the courthouse.
“Sham trial,” repeated Vance,
Malliotakis and Biggs.
“A crooked sham trial,” said Good.
“This is a sham,” echoed Mills.
“A politicized sham,” offered
Ramaswamy.
“There’s no crime!” said Trump, inside
the courthouse.
“There’s no crime here,” repeated
Johnson, outside the courthouse.
“There is no crime,” said Donalds.
“What is the crime?” asked Ramaswamy
and Boebert.
“It’s election interference!”
proclaimed Trump.
“It is election interference,”
chorused Johnson.
“It’s election interference,” said
Burgum.
“Election interference,” said Gaetz
and Good.
“Election interference at its finest!”
said Mills.
President Biden is
“weaponizing the Department of Justice,” announced Trump.
“Weaponized DOJ,” chorused Boebert.
“Weaponized against President Trump,”
Johnson echoed.
“Weaponization against our president,”
repeated Mills.
The Greek chorus dutifully echoed
Trump’s claim that the case is a “scam” and a “witch hunt.” They repeated his
bogus assertion that the “Federal Election Commission said there’s not a
problem, there’s no case.” (In reality, a deadlocked FEC dropped the case after
Republican commissioners said it was redundant because
Cohen had already been convicted of an election law violation.) They endorsed
his nonsense accusation that “Biden’s office is running this trial” in New York
state courts. And they seconded his constant complaint about the
“unconstitutional” gag order. (An appeals court this week upheld the order, saying
Trump’s statements “posed a significant threat to the integrity of the
testimony.”)
That gag order primarily prohibits
Trump from “making or directing others to make public
statements” about witnesses and family members of participants in the
proceedings. Yet that’s exactly what seemed to be happening outside the
courthouse this week, with the closely choreographed statements attacking
prosecutors, jurors and, particularly, the judge’s daughter.
“The judge inside, his daughter is
making millions of dollars running against Donald Trump,” said Vance, using the
same phrase — “making millions” — that Johnson did on Tuesday and that Rep.
Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) did on Thursday. Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) claimed “we
have a judge whose family is enriching themselves on what’s happening today.”
Ramaswamy claimed “you have a judge whose kids are collecting money from
Democratic operatives by fundraising off the very trial that that judge is
presiding over.”
They offered not a shred of evidence
that the judge’s daughter, who works at a political consultancy, has made a
dime off the trial. Even if she had, the judge had solicited an advisory
opinion from New York’s Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics, which concluded
that “the judge’s impartiality cannot reasonably be questioned based
on the judge’s relative’s business and/or political activities.”
Was Trump “directing” this attack on
the judge’s daughter? The chorus had a rehearsed rebuttal to this, too.
“President Trump is a friend, and I wanted to be here to support him,” said
Johnson.
“I wanted to be here to show some
support for my friend,” said Vance.
“I’m here, and all of us who are here,
as friends of Donald Trump, supporting him” was Ramaswamy’s version.
“We’re here voluntarily supporting our
friend, President Trump,” said Gaetz.
On social media, Gaetz posted a photo of him standing behind
Trump in court with the message “Standing back and standing by, Mr. President”
— referring to Trump’s 2020 debate instructions to the Proud Boys,
whose leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy related to the Jan. 6, 2021,
insurrection.
That’s what friends are for. “I do
have a lot of surrogates and they are speaking very beautifully,” said Trump.
Trump, in agreeing Wednesday to participate in two debates with
Biden, in June and September, said his opponent “can’t put two
sentences together.”
It’s a risky line of attack from a guy
who, at his most recent rally in New Jersey on Saturday, confused Jimmy Carter with
tennis legend Jimmy Connors, mistook Beijing for Taiwan, and
announced, in reference to a fictional psycho-killer and cannibal: “The late,
great Hannibal Lecter is a wonderful man.” His attempt to say “carried out by
radical Democrat” first came out as “carried owby rgbgb tdai.” His first
attempt at saying “Biden’s border invasion” came out as “Biden’s bordeneep.” He
movingly told his followers that “this nation does not belong to this,” and he
imagined his recently deceased mother-in-law “looking down right now. She’s saying,
‘That’s a large crowd of people.’”
At least as disturbing were the things
Trump said clearly. Manhattan District
Attorney Alvin Bragg is “Fat
Albert.” Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie is a
“fat pig.” The end of Roe v. Wade, giving states the power to
ban abortion, “is something
that we should cherish.” Democrats believe in “executing the baby after birth.”
Biden has a “sinister plan to abolish the suburbs. … He will destroy your
property value. He will destroy your wealth.” Windmills “destroy everything”
and “ruin the environment.” Trump’s political opponents (“these lunatics within
our government that are going to destroy our country and probably want to”) are
“more dangerous” than Russia and China.
Trump, as usual, made up facts as he
went along. Gas in California “just hit $7.21 today.” (Actual price: $5.32.)
The federal government’s employment numbers “are totally fake,” yet “we get
credit” for the recovery in jobs under Biden. After the rally, Trump announced
that there were “over 100,000 people. ... A lot of the mainstream media didn’t
want to say how many people.”
Never mind that even Trump loyalist
Jesse Watters on Fox News said that the reporter he sent to the event thought
the crowd was “closer to 30,000.” The
speaker of the House, who wasn’t at the rally, backed up Trump, saying outside
the courthouse that there were “over 100,000 people in New Jersey — by some
estimates, far more than that.”
Four years ago, Trump held daily covid
briefings from the White House, spouting nonsense as his public health experts
stood behind him. Now he’s giving daily briefings from the courthouse, with his
lawyer, Todd Blanche, standing silently behind him. The routine is getting
stale. Trump is still citing his go-to legal analyst, Jonathan Turley. He’s
still complaining about the cold in the courtroom. He’s still saying (falsely)
that “you can’t get one person within three blocks of this courthouse” because
of security. Then he goes into the courtroom and falls asleep. “Trump’s
lawyers seem on edge through this part of Cohen’s testimony,” went a delightful dispatch from the New York
Times’s Jonathan Swan this week. “Trump, however, is very much not on edge. His
eyes are closed and he appears to be dozing peacefully.”
He can rest comfortably because his
lawyers are doing exactly what the client wants: attacking and complaining.
Opening his cross-examination of
Cohen, Blanche asked: “You went on TikTok and called me a ‘crying little sh--,’
didn’t you?”
“Sounds like something I would say,”
Cohen replied.
“Objection.”
“Sustained,” said the judge,
admonishing Blanche: “Please, don’t make it about yourself.”
Blanche continued. “You referred to
President Trump as a ‘Dictator Douchebag,’ didn’t you?”
“Sounds like something I said,”
replied Cohen.
Under questioning by both prosecution
and defense, Cohen freely admitted to the innumerable lies he told to protect
Trump, and himself. He spoke of being “knee-deep into the cult of Donald
Trump,” and of the mob-style pressure Trump and his envoys put on him not to
flip: “You are loved. Don’t worry. He’s got your back. … Sleep well tonight.
You have friends in high places.”
And he explained that, in 2018, he
“made a decision, based on the conversation that I had with my family, I would
not lie for President Trump any longer.” Now, he testified, “I regret doing
things for him that I should not have: lying, bullying people in order to
effectuate a goal. … To keep the loyalty and to do the things that he had asked
me to do, I violated my moral compass, and I suffered the penalty.”
If only Trump’s sycophants amplifying
his lies outside the courthouse would come to a similar epiphany.
Yet there they were again Thursday
afternoon, attacking the judge, his daughter, the prosecution and witnesses.
Some invented new slanders that even Trump hadn’t attempted. Rep. Andrew Ogles
(R-Tenn.) referred to witness Stormy Daniels as a “hooker” and a “woman who was
paid for sex.” Luna called Cohen someone who “screams explicitives (sic)
against President Trump.” But, mostly, they dutifully parroted Trump’s own
words — particularly about the “judge who is totally corrupt.”
“Corrupt judge,” said Good.
“Corrupt judge,” said Boebert.
“Corrupt judge,” said Rep. Michael
Cloud (R-Tex.).
“Corrupt judge,” said Gaetz.
If the goal was to make a scene at the
court, they had some success. A heckler shouted “Beetlejuice” at Boebert. A guy
walked behind the lawmakers with a poster saying, “TRUMP WON.” And, as Gaetz
spoke, somebody else held a hand-lettered sign above his head with a pithy summary of the moment.
“BOOTLICKERS,” it said.