Trump’s answer to his legal woes and shrinking support? QAnonsense, of course
WITH his popularity waning and legal woes expanding by the day, Donald Trump, like any washed-up showman, is growing desperate. He’s embracing the more extreme and conspiratorial elements of his base, possibly the only ones left to love him, and blathering wildly into any megaphone he can find.
In an interview with one of his favourite toadies, Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump discussed the civil lawsuit New York Attorney General Letitia James dropped in his lap earlier in the day accusing him of widespread fraud and falsely inflating his wealth by “billions of dollars”.
Trump suggested he can’t be blamed for anything because the valuations of his assets on loan applications came with “a very powerful disclaimer”, something I’d argue his presidency should have come with as well.
He also told Hannity that the FBI agents who searched his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, uncovering a slew of highly-classified government documents, may have been there looking for “the Hillary Clinton emails that were deleted”. Does that make sense to anyone who still has an oar even partially dipped in the waters of reality? Of course not. Trump is just gargling nonsense and hoping the noise distracts people from the walls closing in around him.
These are the truths America’s narcissist-in-chief is running from: his rallies have shrunk. His status as a frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024 is in question, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis now polling higher than him in the home state they share. The bonkers candidates he has endorsed – Herschel Walker in Georgia, Dr Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Blake Masters in Arizona – could well cost Republicans a chance to control the US Senate.
And the investigations. The New York attorney general’s lawsuit could drive a stake through the heart of his business. The Justice Department’s investigation into classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago got a boost late on Wednesday when a federal appeals court overruled a US district judge’s order halting the department’s criminal investigation. So that work will continue.
The appeals court’s ruling even said of Trump, the plaintiff: “We cannot discern why Plaintiff would have an individual interest in or need for any of the 100 documents with classification markings.”
A district attorney in Georgia is building an election fraud case involving several people in Trump’s orbit, and the House committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol is set to resume public hearings next Wednesday.
There’s more, but you get the idea. Trump paints this all as some co-ordinated persecution, but most Americans, even some who once supported the former president, are leaning towards the “where there’s smoke there’s fire” side of the fence.
That’s when a person like Trump, incapable of admitting even the smallest mistake and ever-desirous of flattery, starts to get panicky. What if the adoration dries up? What if the consequences he’s dodged his entire life finally hit him where it hurts?
At a weekend rally, Trump recited a dark description of an America falling apart to music that sounded just like the theme song adopted by followers of the deeply unhinged and cult-like QAnon conspiracy theory. Many in the crowd raised their arms with their pointer fingers extended, a one-figure salute associated with QAnon.
On his failing social media site, Truth Social, Trump posted a picture of himself wearing a QAnon pin. It included the words “The Storm is Coming”, a nod to the belief that Trump will be returned to the White House to round up all who wronged him. The gig is slowly growing old. The audience is slowly shrinking. And the hateful showman may, in the not-toodistant future, find himself left with only the deluded, babbling delusions of his own.