The Jury Deliberates, and Trump Posts
Outside the courtroom, the former president is showing voters who he really is.
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As we wait for the jury’s verdict in Donald Trump’s hush-money case, let’s slow down a bit and ponder what the former president has told us over the past few days.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
- The real “deep state”
- RFK Jr.’s philosophy of contradictions
- “La Niña really can’t come soon enough.”
A Week of Angry Posts
On Memorial Day, while the nation mourned its honored dead, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to denounce “the Human Scum” who are “working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country.”
In the post, Trump did not mention the fallen soldiers whom, in the past, he has referred to as “suckers” and “losers.” But he did take the occasion to lash out at “the Radical Left, Trump Hating Federal Judge in New York” who had described what he did to E. Jean Carroll as “rape,” and the “N.Y. State Wacko Judge [Arthur Engoron] who fined me almost 500 Million Dollars (UNDER APPEAL) for DOING NOTHING WRONG.”
In a separate post the night before, Trump went after the “Radical, highly Conflicted Judge Juan Merchan,” who is presiding over the hush-money criminal trial in which the jury has begun deliberations. Trump also denounced “the Corrupt, Soros backed D.A., Alvin Bragg,” whom he accused of being “controlled by Crooked Joe Biden’s White House.” As I wrote last month, Trump’s broader strategy is to delegitimize the justice system as a whole—and to spread fear within the institutions tasked with holding him accountable.
Trump also took the time in his Memorial Day Truth Social post to resume his attacks on Carroll herself—the woman he has been found liable for sexually abusing, and then defaming, and then defaming again. He already owes her $91 million, but he felt the need, apparently, to once again accuse her of lying about his assault of her.
Amid all of the angry and unhinged rants, Trump’s attack on Carroll was particularly notable because it could prove even more expensive for the former president. Caroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, has previously suggested that Carroll could file a third defamation suit against Trump for his continued comments about her. “We have said several times since the last jury verdict in January that all options were on the table,” Kaplan said in response to Monday’s post. “And that remains true today—all options are on the table.”
Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports that Trump is promising donors that he would deport pro-Palestinian protesters. As The Atlantic’s David Graham notes, protest is “an essential element of American freedom and is not itself against the law.” The threat, David writes, “is classic Trump: vindictive, nonsensical, disproportionate, and based on the assumption that deportation is the answer to America’s problems.” I could list other dangerous and nonsensical recent statements, but I’ll end with this one: Trump’s Memorial Day rant came just a little over 24 hours after he shared a video of a man furiously raving at MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough—and liberals in general. The man declares that Trump will “get rid of all you fucking liberals. You liberals are gone when he fucking wins. You fucking blow-job liberals are done. Uncle Donnie’s gonna take this election—landslide.”
The New Republic’s Greg Sargent noted that this apparent endorsement of the idea that “liberals” will be “done” if Trump wins “should be placed alongside Trump’s other recent threats, such as his vow that news organizations will be ‘thoroughly scrutinized’ if he wins, his promise to persecute his ‘vermin’-like political foes, and his threat to prosecute a range of enemies without cause.” Taken together, as Sargent points out, these threats paint a clear picture of how Trump intends to treat ideological adversaries once in office.
The gravity and volume of Trump’s concerning statements, and the ways that they interconnect, are not always reflected back by major media coverage. A November study by Media Matters for America found that major news outlets gave “dramatically less coverage” to Trump’s description of his enemies as “vermin” earlier that month than they devoted to Hillary Clinton’s remark about a “basket of deplorables” in 2016. Among other findings, the Media Matters review notes that the Big Three broadcast-TV networks “provided 18 times more coverage” of Clinton’s comment than of Trump’s.
I offer the above list as a reminder of what the man the Republican Party is set to coronate for the presidency this summer is telling us outside the courtroom. For the moment, Trump’s fate is in the hands of a New York jury. But ultimately, his fate will be up to the voters, won’t it? Millions of voters seem disengaged from this year’s campaign. A New York Times analysis of recent polling found that Trump’s current lead rests with voters “who aren’t paying close attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news and who don’t regularly vote.” Young voters seem especially dismayed about the election and cynical about the stakes.
But Trump continues to tell us who he is and what he intends to do. We’ve been warned, and nobody—including that jury—is coming to save us before November.
Related:
Today’s News
- Jurors in Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial began deliberations. They asked to rehear parts of the testimony from Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, and David Pecker, the ex-publisher of the National Enquirer.
- Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said in a letter to lawmakers that he would not recuse himself from two upcoming cases about the 2020 presidential election and the U.S. Capitol riot after recent news stories reported that two controversial flags flew at his homes.
- Israel’s national security adviser said that the war in Gaza would last at least until the end of the year.
Dispatches
- The Weekly Planet: Clouds are one of the greatest climate mysteries left, Zoë Schlanger writes.
Explore all of our newsletters here.
Evening Read
The Child-Nutrition Myth That Just Won’t Die
By Lauren Silverman
The fact that stealth cooking has remained so popular is amazing when you consider how much work it is. You might spend an extra hour cooking, say, chicken nuggets from scratch with pureed beets tucked inside—versus buying a bag of regular chicken nuggets from the supermarket. But if it helps your toddler get their recommended cup or cup and a half of vegetables each day, it’s worth it, right?
The nutrition experts I spoke with say it’s not.
More From The Atlantic
- What if Iran already has the bomb?
- Nuclear energy’s bottom line
- Washington State has been sitting on a secret weapon against climate change.
Culture Break
Watch. Glen Powell proves he’s so much more than a strapping hunk in Richard Linklater’s Hit Man (out now in theaters).
Read. Headshot, Rita Bullwinkel’s debut novel, follows eight teenagers who fight one another to win the title of the best under-18 female boxer in America.
Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.
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