Wait’ll Donald Sees the Newest Psy Ops Video Aimed At Him

If there is one thing that drives Donald Trump out of what’s left of his mind, it’s the fact that his image is being eroded daily in court. He simply hates that since the middle of April he has been catapulted into another world, a world where he does not call the shots, a world where some guy he doesn’t even like sits at an elevated perch at the front of the room and tells everybody what to do — including him. That is not the way of the world as Donald knows it or likes it and this video piques that particular nerve.

He’s in serious decline. pic.twitter.com/XqcVHmAcgA

— M. A. Hamilton (@HourOfIgnorance) May 1, 2024

The bottom picture has gone viral since it was taken Tuesday. What happens on Thursday? What memorable images will be created? And don’t forget, Thursday morning starts out with a review of four more gag order violations. It’s entirely possible that Donald will be $4.000 lighter by noon. Just have to get Ma and Pa MAGA to cough up a little bit of extra cash.

pic.twitter.com/afSXsOeaDH

— Atle (@Atle3001) May 1, 2024

Donald’s behavior does take the wind out of the Sleepy Joe sails, now doesn’t it? If you missed Tuesday, Joyce Vance recaps the proceedings and the judge’s rationale.

As with progressive discipline for your toddler, the Judge is giving Trump the opportunity to show that he’s learned his lesson. If he continues to violate from this point on, after the Judge has already imposed the maximum fine authorized by law, Trump will have amply demonstrated that there is no available sanction short of incarceration, even for a brief time, that is available to enforce the gag order. The Judge has now issued every conceivable warning.

But it was satisfying to see the Judge’s written order, which addressed the inadequacy of the fine head-on. That section alone made it worth the wait. The order also puts the spotlight on the contempt hearing scheduled for Thursday on allegations raised by the People after the first hearing. Trump seems to have backed off since that took place, and for the Judge, this is probably the best of all possible worlds. Having issued today’s order, and with new charges hanging over Trump’s head, the Judge can avoid the controversy that would be involved in putting the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in jail—while still ensuring his good behavior.

The order leaves little room to doubt what the consequences of future violations after this point will be, and it also clarifies what constitutes a violation. Trump’s lawyers claimed in court that reposting other people’s social media posts, no matter the content, was not a gag order violation. Judge Merchan dismissed that nonsensical notion swiftly, citing to Trump’s own boast that his seven million followers on Truth Social “get whatever I have to say, and quickly” when he posts there. It’s an interesting question of law because no court appears to have previously addressed reposting, but Judge Merchan, in his straightforward way, wrote in the order that “Lacking legal authority to guide its decision, this Court must, as defense counsel stated at the hearing, rely on common sense.”

Trump also argued there was no willful violation of the gag order “because the posts constitute protected political speech made in response to attacks by Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels.” While acknowledging that the gag recognized Trump’s ability to respond to political attacks, Judge Merchan wrote that, “merely characterizing every one of Defendant’s postings as a response to a ‘political attack’ does not make them so.”

Nonetheless, the Judge did not find Trump in contempt on the first allegation raised by the People, which involved a post on Truth Social on April 10, at 10:07 a.m. He found that the People failed to meet their burden of establishing the violation in regard to only this one of the nine charges. Prosecutors described the post in their motion as a repost of a post by Michael Avenatti, disgraced former lawyer and convicted felon, attacking Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels. Trump added his own comment thanking Avenatti for “revealing the truth about two sleaze bags who have, with their lies and misrepresentations, cost our Country dearly!”

The Judge declined to hold Trump in contempt over this post because, on the evidence before him, he believed it wasn’t clear whether Trump was responding to two other posts he’d identified as attacks, which meant the People failed to meet their burden of proof on this one. But as to exhibits 2-9, which involved attacks on witnesses, and which Trump also claimed were political speech, the Judge found that the burden was met: “To allow such attacks upon protected witnesses with blanket assertions that they are all responses to ‘political attacks’ would be an exception that swallowed the rule. The Expanded Order does not contain such an exception.”

Trump could talk his way into a holding cell tomorrow. It could happen. It’s not outside the realm of possibility. Then we’ll find out what happens next. It’s been predicted that MAGAs would go berserk and it would be January 6 all over again, but the lack of demonstrators at the courthouse tends to belie that scenario.

Maybe Trump would actually learn a lesson from some hours/days in a holding cell? I think that for the rest of it that would be a learning experience but whether it is for him or whether he’s totally unteachable remains to be seen.

As Joyce Vance points out, Justice Merchan has treated Trump like a toddler, with progressively worse punishment. Maybe it will come down to incarceration. And don’t lose sight of the fact that Justice Merchan is very much in the same position that Fred Trump was oh so many decades ago. They’re both faced with this incorrigible child and trying to figure out what will finally get through to him and wake him up. Fred Trump tried military school, to no avail, and we’ll see if this judge resorts to a holding cell.