Two-timer Trump: the faker

"Trump remains the same guy, with the same goals and grievances."

Donald Trump has big plans for America, should he win. There was a reason Trump had a certain energy in 2016. His chants of “lock her up!” were half showmanship, and half trolling his one-time friend Hillary Clinton. On November 8th of that year, Trump didn’t expect to win, and Hillary didn’t expect to lose. They were both flabbergasted, but Trump’s journey into Wonderland lasted four years, while Hillary just went away. Trump has not gone away, and in fact now has a bookend to his Time cover from eight years ago; this one headlined “If He Wins.”

Maureen Dowd recently noted in a New York Times op-ed, that in 2017, David Farenthold published in the Washington Post how a Time cover of Trump from 2009 hanging in at least five of Trump’s golf clubs was not even a reproduction: it was a fake.

Everything about Trump is a duality: the real thing happening, and the fake thing Trump is projecting. He may be the world’s most prolific two-timer.

Stormy Daniels was on the witness stand, proclaiming her hate (“Do you hate him?” “Yes”) for Trump, after leading a jury through what might have been the least steamy sexual encounter ever related to a crime about faked-up business records. Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg should have instructed his prosecutors to bring the faked-up Time cover instead of a former porn star who lost a defamation suit to Trump and owes him money. She said she’d rather “go to jail” than pay him “a penny.”

So many of Trump’s interactions end this way; with the other having been screwed, then sued, with not even a scintilla of satisfaction from either.

I think even Trump’s most boisterous supporters would concede that Trump knows how to lay down a con. I also feel like Trump’s ability to connect with his audiences, in person and on social media, is his ability to project winning while everyone sees him losing. Trump is the perennial loser who manages to end on his feet. He’s the Ralph Cramden of New York socialites.

The real thing happening in the New York courtroom is Trump flirting with enough contempt citations to land himself in jail. He will push Judge Juan Merchan to the point where marshals will escort the former president to Riker’s Island. New York Mayor Eric Adams told a friendly MSNBC that “Rikers will be ready” for him.

Oh what a circus that will be! If you think Trump’s day trip to the Fulton County Jail, where he was ogled and practically worshiped by the staff and deputies, was fun, imagine the reception he will get at Rikers, where the officers (jail workers are the dishwashers and busboys of the law enforcement caste system) will give the former president such celebrity treatment that he will barely miss his digs at Trump Tower. And the media show will give Trump—who feeds on their energy—so much of a boost that he might not even fall asleep at his trial.

Trump connects with the low-brow, low caste workers. He bathes in their affection and returns it with winks, nods, and inside jokes. They know he’s going to land on his feet. The lost election of 2020? Stolen. The federal documents case in Miami? Dead. The “insurrection” Jan 20th fraud case in Washington, D.C.? He’s immune! That’s the fake-up version.

The real version is that the chickens will one day come home to roost for the former president. Even if he wins in November, all the nightmare scenarios painted by Eric Cortellessa in Time, that would indicate that Trump would actually succeed in his plan to have an “imperial presidency.” The draw of Trump to his fans isn’t that he would succeed, it’s that he would accomplish some of the things they want, entertain them in doing it, and fail on the nightmare stuff, then land on his feet. Because that’s what he always does.

Trump promised to build the wall. He failed. He promised to get rid of Obamacare. He failed. He promised to drain the swamp. He failed. He promised to expose the Bidens as criminals. He failed. But those things are less important than him landing on his feet after failing. And in that, he may just accomplish what his people want from him.

Trump may not win in November (if he wins, God thinks we deserve him), but he will not go away. He will fake up a presidency and continue to rule as if he were in charge. In charge of nothing much.

If he wins, how far will he go? As far as the long knives will take him. But in Trump’s case, the knives will probably be fake.

Even when Trump got thousands of his supporters to storm the Capitol, he failed to encourage them to complete what he set them to do. He failed to lead them down Pennsylvania Avenue. He failed to stop them, too. He failed to stand up and take responsibility, and let over a thousand of them go to prison.

If he wins, he’ll continue to fake it. The difference between 2016 and 2024, should Trump win, is that in 2016, people in government didn’t believe he was just faking his way through (they learned!). In 2024, everyone will know going in on Day One.

If he wins, the first thing hung on the Oval Office wall should be the March 1, 2009 issue of Time, with Trump on the cover. The one that never existed.