What’s the old saying about a person representing himself having a fool for a client? Now that the “trial of the century” is over, former President Donald J. Trump has been convicted on 34 counts related to election interference and the postmortem is in full swing, about the only thing that hasn’t been discussed is how Trump’s narcissistic approach to life — deny, deny deny; attack, attack, attack — cost him any chance of a hung jury or even victory.
That approach may work on the campaign trail where Trump reflects and refracts the narcissistic impulses of his base — although it didn’t much help him with the libertarians recently — but it’s lethal in a courtroom where the opposition is sitting across the aisle, returning serve.
It’s the argument that Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor who’s a partner in Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner in Chicago, makes in his New York Times essay, “How Trump’s Team Blew It.” Many thought it to be sour grapes, but I thought it was an absolutely brilliant analysis of missed opportunities, not the least of which was the use of concession. Generally in a trial, you concede what you know you can’t possibly win to concentrate on the points you can score.
Mariotti argues, and I agree, that team Trump should’ve conceded that Trump slept with Stormy Daniels, because, let’s face it, everyone knows he did and no one, except wife Melania, cares (and I’d wager she cared more about her hurt ego than she did about what he was actually doing). But a narcissist is always right, right? Trump can never admit he did anything wrong. And so instead of limiting Daniels’ time on the witness stand, the defense let the prosecution give it free rein and what emerged was a more disturbing picture of exploitive rather than strictly transactional sex in the #MeToo era than we had seen before. Certainly, the image of Trump in his underwear blocking the hotel room door when Daniels emerged from the bathroom — not an image any of us wants, I’m sure — must’ve stayed with the jury. However defiant Daniels was — telling the defense that if she’s made money off of what happened, so has Trump — she remained a largely sympathetic figure.
Cohen, of course, was no one’s idea of a sympathetic figure, but Mariotti writes that instead of attacking him on what couldn’t be corroborated, the defense hammered him on everything, underscoring for the jury that if Cohen were a convicted liar, whom did he lie and go to prison for? Basically, Trump was on trial for what Cohen already did. Thus, why shouldn’t he be convicted, unless he were too busy “presidenting” to follow what Cohen was doing with the hush money payment to Daniels on his behalf. That, Mariotti said, is what the defense could’ve argued.
Except no one believes Trump wasn’t involved anymore than anyone believes he didn’t direct the legal team’s strategy. Narcissists are all about control, and they never spend their own money, because they’re cheap, insecure people.
Given Trump’s temperament, which hamstrung his legal team, it’s not surprising that a narrow path to winning was bulldozed. Now we await the July 11 sentencing.
I doubt he’ll see jail time, but with the hatred and vindictiveness he and his followers have spewed toward Judge Juan Merchan, he won’t be getting probation either. And he has no one to thank but himself.
He should’ve never slept with Daniels. Having slept with her, he should’ve admitted it. But then, he’s never wrong, and the first casualty of such “perfectionism” is the truth.
Now he stands to pay a big price, underscoring that narcissism is always a self-defeating, self-fulfilling prophecy.