Donald Trump’s stupid, stupid mouth
As if his current tranche of problems aren’t bad enough, history’s most criminally investigated former president has a deadly dangerous witness against him. It’s Trump himself. Every time his lawyers craft a defense woven into plausible deniability, Donald Trump opens his stupid, stupid mouth and ruins it.
As a recent case in point, he might have gotten away with pretending not to understand the classified nature of the documents he stole and squirrelled away in Mar-a-Lago. But he has since opened his stupid, stupid mouth and truculently proclaimed that they’re his documents and the DOJ should give them back.
Another example occurred with the defamation case brought against him by the woman Trump raped in a department store in the 1990s, writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump is set to be deposed this week, but he may have already destroyed his defense by shooting off his stupid, stupid mouth in social media.
As you may recall, back in 2019, Ms. Carroll publicly accused the then-president of raping her in Manhattan’s Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid 1990s. Not only did Trump deny the accusation, he defamed her. Trump claimed she was “totally lying,” that he knew “nothing about her,” and then he added, with astonishing tone deafness, that she was “not my type.”
That led Carroll to sue him for defamation for claiming she was lying. She was not, of course. Trump’s lawyers constructed a plausible defense, that he can’t be sued because he was president, and was therefore protected from being sued by dint of his unassailable position.
Not any more. Turns out the ex-president stupidly did what he always stupidly does, he doubled down on the insult. Last week, after it became clear that the deposition could no longer be delayed, Trump took to his failing Twitter surrogate “Truth” Social and, in a series of absurdly stupid posts, essentially spouted the same libellous lies that got him sued by Ms. Carroll in the first place. Only this time he isn’t president. Oops.
After referring to the suit as a “complete con job,” he didn’t stop there. He added further, “It is a Hoax and a lie, just like all the other Hoaxes that have been played on me for the past seven years.” So in a few short posts Donald Trump has effectively demolished his entire carefully crafted defense.
He didn’t stop there, either. Of course he didn’t. He then included the one line that may have brought him the greatest criticism: “And, while I am not supposed to say it, I will. This woman is not my type!” So not only did Donald Trump ruin his best defense, he demonstrated yet again what a thoroughly loathsome, disgusting, vile and little man he truly is.
Former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade put it this way, “ [Carroll] should amend her complaint to include an additional count based on the new statement, because Trump is no longer president, this statement was most certainly not made in the scope of his federal employment.” Even if she doesn’t amend the case, she can still plausibly demonstrate that this is Trump’s opinion whether he’s president or not.
Either way, Donald Trump has done it again, and proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, let alone reasonable doubt, that he’s his own worst enemy. It is little wonder that he has so much trouble finding lawyers willing to defend him. No only do they have to defend him, they also have to take on as a client Trump’s stupid, stupid mouth. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.