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Doktor Zoom's avatar

I don't know what word Evan has in mind, but that photo of him and Ms. Daniels could certainly be made into a slide that is then placed in a device of some kind and shown on a screen.

Land Shark 🇺🇦 🏳️‍⚧️'s avatar

𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗺𝘆’𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘆 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝗺𝗽 𝗶𝘀 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝗵 𝗮 𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮 𝗺𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗰𝗲

One of the most striking aspects of the court testimony Stormy Daniels gave on Tuesday is the Initially contradictory images of Trump she offered. At first, she described him as a comical figure: A pompous ass who did embarrassing things like compare her to his daughter. Then he basically bullied her into sex. In that part of the story, he’s a scary figure, someone she wanted to say no to, but couldn’t.

And yet, they are the same man. In fact, his clownishness is why he was able to corner her. She only let her guard down with him because he was too pathetic to seem like a threat, at least at first. Notably, E. Jean Carroll’s story followed a similar trajectory: First, she’s laughing at him, then he’s attacking her. (Daniels says he didn’t attack her, but she was clearly intimidated.)

I realized, reading the testimony Daniels gave, that this is what Trump does to all of us. He is a total clown, with his stupid combover and his over-the-top bragging and his “does he have a mirror?” make-up. It’s hard to take ol’ President Drink Bleach seriously. And yet, he is a singular threat to American democracy, and has a real shot at turning our nation into a fascist autocracy.

The two images aren’t actually a contradiction. As with Daniels, Trump uses his idiot persona to get people to let their guard down. Because he’s such a joke, they can’t remember how bad things were in his first presidency. They struggle to take his crimes seriously. But his very ridiculousness makes him so very dangerous, because it’s such an effective disguise.

-- Amanda Marcotte, SALON

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