Desperado Donald at the Last Chance Saloon
I love old movies. I spend an inordinate amount of time watching crime movies from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Film noir is like mother’s milk to me.
There comes a point in many of those movies when the serial criminals are reaching the inevitable end of the road. Their crimes become more petty. Their desperation starts to show. They unravel. Self-doubt begins to creep in, and they overcompensate to offset that doubt. Their deception becomes more obvious. They take greater risks for much smaller rewards. They do increasingly foolish and blatant things in an attempt to evade the consequences of their lives of crime but, in so doing, they only place themselves in closer proximity to those consequences.
Next comes the ubiquitous ride-or-die vow that they won’t get caught. “No matter what, I’m never going back to the big house!” It’s often followed by a retreat to a hideout in some remote mountain cabin or perhaps a car chase where the criminal crashes his car while being pursued or drives over a cliff because of his recklessness.
Donald Trump is at roughly that stage in his campaign and in his life. He has been emboldened by somehow mostly having evaded consequences for a lifetime of shady, unethical, and criminal behavior. But now that the poll numbers show him consistently behind Kamala Harris, he’s reacting like one of those big-time movie bank robbers who is reduced to rural gas station stickups.
It’s evident that he views another term in the White House is his last chance at escaping consequences for his most heinous crimes. There’s also a high probability that further investigation and prosecution of his pending criminal cases — the Federal election interference case, the Georgia election interference case, and the classified documents case — will reveal even more of his criminality. So he’s putting all his chips (paid for with other people’s money, of course) on his campaign. But his despair and, perhaps, his failing mental capacity have made him more illogical than ever.
He’s telling lies that are increasingly implausible. His campaign events have no real substance, other than non-stop grievance and insults. The shrinking crowds of supporters who show up at the events look bored and befuddled by his meandering blather. He’s saying and doing nothing that might attract new voters.
He’s floundering. He’s flailing. He’s irrational and desperate.
What’s more, he’s already been convicted of 34 felonies, the sentencing for which will take place in September — well before the election, unless his attorneys can pull yet another fast one and get his sentencing delayed further.
His legal team has already worked assiduously to ensure that the remaining criminal charges against him will not be adjudicated prior to the election, thereby depriving the electorate the benefit of knowing the full scope of his criminality. If he somehow prevails in the Presidential election, we can be guaranteed that he’ll use all the levers of governmental power, tried and untried, to make certain those pending cases never see the light of day. But that’s the only move he has left: high risk, high reward, but extremely low likelihood of succeeding.
In many of those old movies, the criminal, out of desperation, makes a fatal mistake and becomes responsible for his own undoing. It’s possible — perhaps even likely — that we’ll witness Trump’s fatal mistake between now and Election Day.
Will it be some new conspiracy theory that alienates even more of his base? Will it be an abysmal performance in the debate(s), already being billed as “the prosecutor vs. the felon”? Or will he surprise us with some new heinous act?
As in those old movies, the clock keeps ticking the closer we get to Election Day. Let’s hope the Trump crime drama ends with a satisfying cathartic denouement before our democracy fades to black.