Could Nobel Peace Prize nominee Trump use "old man defense" in upcoming trial?

By Hal Brown

I'm sure you remember the photo (top, above) which was shared on social media in February of 2019. Raw Story decided to use it in this article today:

Click above to read article

This is what Bradley Moss, a national security lawyer based in Washington, DC, said on Lawrence O'Donnell last night:

"He's going to say he's gotten old. He's been with all these retirees down in Florida. He can't think anything straight. He doesn't know what he has, he forgets things. He gets facts jumbled up," Moss joked. "Look at that clip, he is talking about, 'Oh we were negotiating when Nauta and I got raided.' Well, no, you left something out. There was a subpoena that came after that, after you started giving stuff back. And you lied to the DOJ, you had Nauta moving documents; that's why you got raided. I understand. It happens to a lot of individuals when they move down to Florida. They start to get confused. It will be me one day, I'm sure. But no, this is not a defense. He has clearly walked himself into a bunch of damaging admissions. Jack Smith has gotta be recording all of that, and they are just laughing and popping popcorn because he did nothing to help his case."

I found it interesting that the 2019 photo was used to illustrate this article because Trump was obviously not as old an old man then than he is now. 

In finding the photo on Twitter I came across this from a Chris Hayes show from four years ago:

Click above to enlarge

It's worth watching. The episode includes a description of how Trump bragged about his fake Nobel Peace Prize nomination "for a little thing called the Nobel Peace Prize, perhaps you've heard of it."

You can watch the video here:

Now to the question as to whether it would make sense that Trump could use the "old man defense" in his upcoming documents case trial, now scheduled to begin in mid-August, or any other cases.

Of course there's no such thing as an "old man defense" per se. There are however, the diminished capacity defense and the not reason by reason of insanity plea described here.

These defenses actually might be appropriate for Trump, or more precisely for Trump's lawyers to pursue since he'd never agree to either of them. Being a therapist and not a lawyer I can only suggest that there is evidence that he could avoid prison using either defense. I don't know whether Trump's lawyers would be able to convince a judge to order an involuntary psychiatric assessment to determine whether Trump is capable of making this decision on his own.

My understanding of the law is that a defendant has to be able to understand the charges against him and participate in his own defense in order to stand trial. If this is true then it's possible Trump could be ordered into treatment until he is determined to be "sane enough" to stand trial.

Addendum:

"And by the way, when Bill Barr, who's, you know, a coward, Bill Barr was a coward. Bill Barr didn't do what he was supposed to do. I fired him and he has great hatred. And that's OK, because some people do. And some people love me very much." 

Donald Trump for Village Snipe Hunter

 

By Hal Brown

If you are reading this on the other platforms I post on directly, namely Booksie which doesn't allow active links, Medium, or Substack, go to my primary host, Google Blogger at halbrown.org where I often post additions and updates which I don't bother putting on the other hosts.

There are some people who say Trump is mentally unfit to hold any elected or appointed office. There are those who say he is so dangerously psychologically impaired and ignorant that the only job he is qualified to hold is that of village idiot.

I beg to differ. 

He is perfectly qualified to be a village snipe hunter.

The qualifications are having a loud mouth, supreme self-confidence, never having been wrong in his entire life, and the uncanny ability to find and destroy those dangerous stink'n snipes threatening to wipe out all the fine upstanding villagers.

Snipe hunters must be ready, willing, and able to do whatever is necessary to find and to eliminate these dangerous snipes.

There are already many villages that already have their own official snipe hunters. Some are large, entire states in fact, some are merely congressional districts. With Trump being unemployed at present some village must be looking for a snipe hunter with his qualifications.

Addendum:

The current definition of snipe (not the actual bird which is known for its cryptic/camouflaging plumage and only hunted with binoculars.)

Wikipedia defines a snipe hunt as follows:

A snipe hunt is a type of practical joke or fool's errand, in existence in North America as early as the 1840s, in which an unsuspecting newcomer is duped into trying to catch an elusive, nonexistent animal called a snipe. Although snipe are an actual family of birds, a snipe hunt is a quest for an imaginary creature whose description varies.

The target of the prank is led to an outdoor spot and given instructions for catching the snipe; these often include waiting in the dark and holding an empty bag or making noises to attract the creature. The others involved in the prank then leave the newcomer alone in the woods to discover the joke. As an American rite of passage, snipe hunting is often associated with summer camps and groups such as the Boy Scouts. In France, a similar joke is called "hunting the dahut".

In common parlance and as used in this blog a snipe is a person or thing that does not exist but is dangerous. Some examples of snipes are as follows:

• anyone who believes, let alone dares to publicly say, that Biden was elected in a fair election
• communists and Marxists who, if they could, would send you to some unspecified gulag
• groomers who want to force your children into changing their gender
• male entertainers who dress as women and try to turn your children gay
• people who say that Pizzagate, the theory which claimed there were emails which contained coded messages that connected several high-ranking Democratic officials and U.S. restaurants with an alleged human sex trafficking and child sex ring, was a made-up conspiracy 
• teachers, librarians, politicians, and others who want  to warp your mind and your children's minds by telling them what they say are lies about the country's history of racial injustice (and worse)
• people who advocate for the efficacy of vaccines
• people who say climate change is both real and dangerous
• anyone who questions the American right to arm themselves with assault rifles
• people who say that the plot to kidnap children to extract Adrenochrome (claimed to be an elixir of youth), which is being harvested by liberal elites from the blood of kidnapped children is a delusional lie
• people who deny that there are Jewish space lasers causing wildfires
• people who believe that the vast majority of Muslim-Americans are good people, and the same for people who want to immigrate to the U.S. from Latin America.
• almost last, but not least, anyone who thinks being "woke" is a good thing
• really last and definitely not least, anyone who thinks Donald Trump isn't an infallible god to whom man's laws don't apply

Full disclosure: By these definitions, since I am a retired psychotherapist who believes there is ample evidence to consider Trump to be a dangerous psychopath and a delusional grandiose narcissist incapable of empathy so impulsive that if he became president again he'd turn the country into a fascist dictatorship where his first word of business would be to wreak vengeance on his detractors, there is no doubt I'd be considered a snipe.

Related:

Click above to read

Excerpt:

Hours after pleading not guilty in federal court, Trump told a crowd of his supporters at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, that Biden, “together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits and Marxists, tried to destroy American democracy.” He added, “If the communists get away with this, it won’t stop with me.”

Other Republicans have piled on with similar messaging. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene last week took to Twitter to lambast what she called the “CORRUPT AND WEAPONIZED COMMUNISTS DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED DOJ.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s closest rival for the GOP presidential nomination, has argued the U.S. risks falling victim to “woke” ideology, which he has defined in interviews as a form of “cultural Marxism.” 

Click above to read Salon article

Excerpt:

QAnon is still growing (in 2021, an alarming 16 percent of Americans said they believe its core tenets, according to a 2022 PRRI study), pushing the idea that secret Satanists within the government are both sacrificing children (because the bad guy is always secretly sacrificing children) and trying to undermine your personal safety and take away your (unspecified) rights. Rippling outward from there, an even larger sample of the population seems to be stuck on the idea that children's books and history classrooms hide a secret evil that's coming for our children.

If you don't see the Diquis comment section below click here and scroll down to bottom of page.

Why is anybody surprised that the worse Trump's legal troubles get the more his cult loves him, gives him money, and contemplate violence?

 

By Hal Brown

Anyone who follows experts like neuroscientist Bobby Azarian, whose latest article in Raw Story is  "A neuroscientist explains why Trump extremists will grow violent as Election 2024 approaches", or read articles like  "The ‘Shared Psychosis’ of Donald Trump and His Loyalists" (Scientific American 2021) knows the scientific reasons why Trump has such an iron grip on members of his cult.

Azarian explains:

Terror management theory is particularly relevant to current political events because it provides a scientific explanation for tribalism. The theory suggests that in the face of threat or fear, we bolster our worldviews, and become more ideological. We also become more tribal, which will strengthen our support for like-minded others, while at the same time making us more prone to aggression toward those who are not like us, and who do not share our worldview.

 They also know, as Azarian explains, how dangerous some of them may be:

This suggests that an atmosphere of existential fear would simultaneously promote aggression while strengthening support for Trump, who regularly projects a “strongman” image and suggests violence as a remedy to political matters. 

This is a very scary combination of psychological effects. For this reason we must be aware of this problem, which will become increasingly salient as the 2024 presidential election begins to heat up.

Azarian concludes with a plea for empathy, using our knowledge, and optimism as follows:

So, we must be empathetic during these times, but we must also be vigilant. If we stay on the current trajectory of increasing polarization, we can almost be certain that a whole new level of unrest is headed our way. Now the question is whether we have the ability to use this knowledge to avert the coming train wreck. But I’m an optimist, and I think if we can predict something ahead of time, we can figure out how to prevent it. That is precisely why science has been such a powerful force for human civilization, and it’s time we start applying that knowledge to solving the existential threat that is the culture war in America.

What puzzles me is why so many rational people are surprised, shocked even, that the more is revealed about how Trump defied the law and put national security at risk and now may face the sword of Lady Justice for what he did, the more members of his cult support him. For example:

On June 14th, after his documents case indictment he reportedly raised $6 million.

At a subliminal level have all of these people bought into the illusion of Telfon Don, of Superman Trump, of Rambo Trump, on bulletproof Trump riding a tank into battle?

From members of the general public who zealously support him no matter what he's done or how outlandish his behavior is to members of Congress and Republicans running for president it seems as if they fall into one of two groups. The first is the group who believe he is the superhuman being he portrays himself. The more imperiled he becomes for many the more enthusiastic their support of him becomes.  The second group is composed of the politicians who are scared shitless of him and the voting block he controls. In private they may wish he'd just disappear (see Would Republicans support Trump in 2024 if he's convicted of crimes? They're split, NBC News).

Group two is afraid of group one. They are hitching their political wagons to horses that have been grazing in locoweed.