The world is everything that is the case? No way, Johann, says El Donaldo. The world is my will!
There is a great deal of debate these days about Donald Trump’s “state of mind” during the events both leading up and occurring on January 6, 2021—and, what the hell, a few occurring in the aftermath: Did Donald Trump know he had lost the election and thus was engaging in a number of illegal actions in order to remain in office after January 20, 2021 or did he “honestly” believe he had won the election and thus was “reasonably” acting to prevent a horrendous miscarriage of justice? “Trump's Prosecution Could Be Stymied by the Blurry Line Between Deceit and Self-Delusion: His state of mind when he tried to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election remains a mystery, perhaps even to him.”, sighs Reason’s Jake Sullum, throwing up his hands in theatrical despair for perhaps the ten-thousandth time.1
Now, I’m no Maimonides, but I can offer a guide to the perplexed, like Jake, on this one: trying to figure out what Donald Trump “honestly believed” about a given subject at a given point in time is, well, a waste of time. Donald Trump honestly believes only one thing, forever and always: that Donald Trump has a right to whatever Donald Trump wants.
Consider Trump’s response to then Attorney General and Hitherto Spit Licker in Chief William Barr, when Barr told Trump that his claims of election fraud were “bullshit”. “You must hate me,” Trump replied. Not, “Are you sure! Did you check every single precinct? Every single one?” Nor did he say, “Just make stuff up. Summon a grand jury. You can do that. Subpoena Joe Biden. You can do that. Make it happen.” No, he didn’t say either of these things. He said “You must hate me. You must hate me, because if you didn’t hate me, if you were loyal, if you loved me, as you should, you find the evidence I want and prove that I won the election, so I can have what I want. You can do this, and you can do it without lying, because the world is whatever I want it to be.”
You can find this same argument, with more matter and less art (probably), from Andrew Sullivan, pointing out Trump’s long history of inventing reality as the defining feature of his “soul”. The real purpose of all this epistemological hair-splitting on the “right” and the (I guess) vaguely libertarian right,2 is not to “normalize” Trump but rather to normalize his numerous die-hard supporters. “Yeah, personally, I find the evidence pretty compelling, but I can see where you’re coming from. I mean, there probably is reasonable doubt. And, you’re right, the Democrats are really the ones responsible for all this. I mean, the Justice Department is totally politicized these days.” The anti Anti-Trumpers—Sullivan properly fingers the editors of the National Review, for example, as playing this game, which they have frequently done in the past—are desperately hoping against hope—against reality, really—that there is, somehow, a “real” Republican Party left underneath all that, well, Trumpian bullshit, hoping that, when all this Trump stuff is over, we can get back to “normality” and the Trump-deluded masses will start behaving themselves again. But the anti Anti-Trumpers are wrong. There isn’t any “normal” Republican party any more: it’s Trumpian bullshit all the way down.
Aterwords
For a lawyerly look at Trump’s psyche, check out this post by The Volokh Conspiracy’s Ilya Somin.
Word can spell “Schopenhauerian” but not “Wittgensteinian”. I did not see that coming.
Who are the anti Anti-Trumpers? A partial list: the National Review; Josh Barro; Megan McArdle; Ross Douthat; Ramesh Ponnuru; Jack Shafer.
1. Michael Kinsley, former editor of the New Republic, once said that the basic rule of journalism is to always sell the same piece three times. Clearly, Jake has taken things to the next level, and perhaps beyond.
2. I read Reason pretty much religiously and find many excellent articles therein, but I find Jake’s endless pussy-footing on the question of Trump’s “intent” thoroughly off-putting. In Jake’s defense, he states pretty clearly—though, I would say, unenthusiastically—that the case against Trump regarding the secret documents he kept in Mar-a-Lago and attempted to conceal once they had been subpoenaed is pretty much a slam dunk.
