The Hypothetical versus The Real: Evaluating Donald Trump’s Character Now That He Actually is On Trial

American Eclectic posts articles twice a month, on the 1st and 15th. This is the second year of publication; previously published articles can be found on my site.

May 1, 2024 

There is an HBO documentary (found on Max) titled The Truth vs. Alex Jones.  The documentary addresses two trials that involved Jones based on his lying, his complete fabrication, that the Newtown shooting was a hoax.  Jones called it a “false flag,” and that it was designed to have the government confiscate guns.  The Newtown, Connecticut shooting involved 20-year-old Adam Lanza walking into Sandy Hook Elementary School and killing twenty children who attended the school and six adults.  This horrendous incident took place on December 12, 2012. 

Almost soon after this happened, Jones used his website show, InfoWars to begin to push the position that what happened was not real.  He stated, for example: 

My gut is, with the timing and everything that happened, this is staged. And you know I’ve been saying the last few months, get ready for big mass shootings, and then magically, it happens. 

It’s as phony as a $3 bill. 

Why did Hitler blow up the Reichstag — to get control! Why do governments stage these things — to get our guns! Why can’t people get that through their head? 

The documentary addressed two court cases where parents of the children killed at the elementary school sued Jones for making their lives miserable.  One parent discussed that she has been threatened with rape by people who believe the stuff that Jones has been saying.  A father said that a Jones believer said he urinated on his son’s grave and planned to dig up the coffin because he believed his son was not in there.  True believers of Jones are detached from reality and show their personality problems in how they think and act.  Listening to Jones both arrive and leave the court proceedings; you can hear followers in this documentary yelling their love for this man.  What these parents have had to live with only adds to the pain they feel with the loss of their children. 

I was thinking about this documentary and the jurors in the Trump hush money trial unfolding in New York City.  Jones has no remorse, no feelings, for the parents and what he has put them through, and I wondered if Jesse Watters who has a Fox News show (Jesse Watters Primetime) decided to lower himself to Jones’s level by the way he discussed the jurors in Trump’s trial. 

Soon after the Trump trial began, Watters decided that he would use his show to discuss each of the jurors in this case.  His tone on “Day Two” (as he announced) was set with his opening remark that “Democrats [were] putting Trump on trial.”  That was followed by his remark about what he now knows about the jury which was that “it is hysterical.” Added to those remarks he added that the judge “was a Biden donor whose family was paid by the Biden campaign.” And then set the tone for how to look at the jurors by saying “show me a juror who says they can be unbiased, and I’ll show you a liar.” 

Oddly, Watters addressed Trump’s lawyers as able to weed out potential jurors who would have been set in their judgments against Trump.  Watters saying that “radical liberals were almost seated” is his way of simply ignoring the capability of Trump’s lawyers to do their job and prevent anti-Trump jurors from serving on this case.  Watters then assessed the different jurors and through this process determined in his mind where each of the jurors stood. The foreman of the jury said he listened to both Fox News and MSNBC, to which Watters added, “Never met anyone who listens to both Fox and MSNBC.” Watters saw juror #2 as a problem.  I could not tell if it was because she is a nurse or because she reads the New York Times and watches CNN or whether it was because as Watters put it, she said, “I don’t really have an opinion of Trump,” and “No one is above the law.”  No reason to cover all the jurors; I bring up Watters’ comments because I wonder if he cares if he puts a target on the back of these people.  How different is this from Jones and what he has done to the parents of children killed? 

I assume as this trial proceeds that there will be devoted Trump followers who will take what Watters said and run with it—meaning they will try to find out who is on the jury.  Will jurors be stalked?  Will family members of the jurors receive phone calls in the middle of the night and threats made?  Will these people who simply received a notice to report to jury duty be hounded for years to come? 

Beyond the issue of Watters and others who address issues like the way Watters addressed how to look at the jury, will be those who emphasize their way of looking at this trial—as a kangaroo court. This stand-with-Trump approach to the analysis of the trial will only serve to heighten tensions about the jurors, the judge, the judge’s family, and the witnesses. Together the criticism by Trump supporters is to reach a broader audience—the minds of undecided or wavering voters. The theme of Trump being politically prosecuted (to some the word is persecuted) so he rightly deserves to be back in the White House to have the opportunity to carry out vengeance against enemies both real and imagined will be repeated frequently.  

One of the side effects of this trial and the others to come (if the other three take place before the election, which will not happen) is how voters will look at the 2024 election contrasted with the 2016 election when Trump was running to win the Presidency.  Some issues were, at least, raised in 2016 between Trump and Hillary Clinton that affected us all.  In the case of 2024, this trial might cast such a shadow over the election, that it will be difficult to figure out how any policy issues (inflation, border security, Ukraine, the Gaza War, economic growth) will ever be addressed.   

I looked at an ABC News/Ipos Poll that was conducted in late July and early August of last year on how the public viewed Trump related to charges brought against him associated with the January 6^th insurrection that was aimed at having Trump supporters disrupt the counting of Electoral College votes in the U.S. Congress.  Some 65 percent of the respondents saw the charges as serious, specifically 52 percent said Trump should be charged with a crime, but 46 percent said the charges were politically motivated.  At the time this poll was taken, whether Trump would ever actually end up in court was a hypothetical issue:  That is no longer the case.  Moving from polls addressing the what-might-happen to polls addressing what-is-happen, can change how the public breaks down their evaluation of what is going on. 

The hypothetical versus the real can begin to be understood by David Pecker’s testimony at the beginning of Trump’s trial. Pecker was until August 2020 the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of American Media (AMI) and was publisher of the National Inquirer. Pecker bought the Stormy Daniels story that she had an extramarital affair with Trump which she hoped would lead to her appearing on The Apprentice, the NBC show which starred Trump. Pecker’s decision to bury the story was to help Trump’s Presidential campaign. Pecker also bought the story of Karen McDougal, Playmate of the Year in 1998 that she also had an affair with Trump. That Daniels is a porn star would not have helped Trump’s campaign to become President. The $130,000 she received will become an issue (McDougal received $150,000 from AMI). On the stand, Pecker stated: 

I made the decision to purchase the story because of the potential embarrassment it had to the campaign of Mr. Trump. 

Elsewhere Pecker stated:

I said what I would do is I would run or publish positive stories about Mr Trump and I would publish negative stories about his opponents, and I said that I would also be the eyes and ears.

I must wonder how Trump’s sexual relations with these two women will be covered when they are on the stand. McDougal, for example, has already addressed having unprotected sex with Trump and stated in an interview, “We saw each other a minimum of five times a month up to bigger numbers." The details of intimacy may matter to some voters.

In other words, Trump’s character was an issue leading up to the 2016 election and it was known by both Pecker as well as Trump. These statements also raise the issue of whether Trump was ever concerned about his wife learning of these two affairs. Pecker through buying the stories of both women was able to prevent both from becoming exposed. Certainly, what stands out is that Melania, Trump’s wife, finding out about her husband’s affairs was not of concern to Trump. A statement by Pecker indicated Trump’s lack of concern about how his wife might react:

In conversations I had with Michael Cohen with respect to both of these stories, his family was never mentioned. Conversations I had directly with Mr Trump, his family was never mentioned. The concern was the campaign.

Michael Cohen was Trump’s attorney and will give testimony in this trial.

Going from the hypothetical to the real will affect how voters (some segments of them) view Trump. Anticipating any Trump trial was done in the abstract but here is a first trial with witnesses—the abstract is gone.

Did Pecker create a certain mindset for them regarding how to look at Trump, in ways none of them might have done before this testimony? 

An interesting study was done regarding the attitude people held toward a ban on plastic water bottles in San Francisco. Before the ban went into effect, it was not well received. But as one study that looked at this issue stated: 

[O]ne day later, [a] team again tested public attitudes. Already, views had changed: people were less opposed. There hadn’t been time for people to change their behaviour to adjust to the practicalities of the ban. So it seemed their mindset itself had changed.  

In other words, we rationalise the things we feel stuck with. It’s as though we free up brain space to get on with our lives by deciding it’s not so bad, after all. Laurin likens this to a “psychological immune system”.  

A ban on water bottles may seem far removed from whatever attitudes people have toward Trump, but maybe not. Trump was worried about how his character would be seen if it were made public that he had an affair with Daniels and McDougal, so he did his part to help hide it. How a part of the public that is wavering in their support for him, might begin to take Trump’s actions into account and lean toward Joe Biden in how they decide to vote. Suddenly Trump’s character might become important. This is part of the reason Jesse Watters and how he presented the jurors is designed to help Trump. Watters is simply being a good PR person for Trump, not a conservative television analyst or any other neutral title that gives him a sense of detachment from Trump and the trial. The issue of voting against someone rather than for someone can come into play.  

Elsewhere another study points to how people can change their minds: 

We’re reluctant to acknowledge mistakes. To avoid admitting we were wrong, we’ll twist ourselves into positions that even seasoned yogis can’t hold. 

The key is to trick the mind by giving it an excuse. Convince your own mind (or your friend) that your prior decision or prior belief was the right one given what you knew, but now that the underlying facts have changed, so should the mind. 

Will testimony and it is not clear testimony from whom, but just some piece of testimony might open an unusual way to see Trump that many had not considered before this trial.

It is interesting that in the Alex Jones case, Jones admitted after meeting the parents of the children who were killed that he might have been wrong about what happened. As he stated, “It was…especially since I’ve met the parents.” It is difficult to determine whether he honestly had a change of perspective about this horrendous incident, but this quote opens the possibility. Jones mouthing off with a completely insane conspiracy idea was babbling on his show in the abstract—it was not real to him so he could exploit it for his use. But meeting parents of children who were killed was real. To see the parents of children killed in the documentary and to see the pain they continue to feel, is disturbing. What was it like for Jones to meet them up close?

It is too early to conclude the impact of this trial on wavering voters. In addition, it is only May, numerous political studies show that unfortunately, too many voters are not paying close attention to the election at this point. As the election gets closer and by then this trial is over, will those wavering voters begin to pay attention to what had already happened? Political ads for Biden might highlight parts of this trial (as they might of the E. Jean Carroll case where Trump was found guilty of sexual assault). Biden would be foolish to not constantly emphasize in ads Trump’s character based on this trial as well as the Carroll trial. Watters will continue to lower himself to Jones’ level, which will have an impact on some voters. Even if Trump is found not guilty, details of the testimony might begin to sweep into the minds of voters trying to decide who they will vote for, and knowledge of this case might matter.

Notes 

Tal Axelrod, “Nearly two-thirds of Americans think Jan. 6 charges against Trump are series: POLL,” ABC News (August 4, 2023): https:// abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/thirds-americans-jan-6-charges-trump-poll/story?id=101954747 

Claudia Hammond, “The surprising reason people change their minds,” BBC (June 22, 2018): https:// www.bbc.com/future/article/20180622-the-surprising-reason-people-change-their-minds 

Kelly Rissman, “Arnold Schwarzenegger, concern about Melania, and ‘mentor’ Trump: Key takeaways from Trump’s day in court,” The Independent (April 26, 2024): https//www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/arnold-schwarzenegger-concerns-about-melania-and-mentor-trump-key-takeaways-from-trump-s-day-in-court/ar-AA1nG4IT?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=f9ff320369264f65c51cdbb190157a7e&ei=42

Vanessa Romo, “Former ‘Playboy’ Model Spills Details Of Alleged Affair: Trump ‘Tried To Pay Me’,” NPR (March 23, 2018): https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/23/596257288/former-playboy-model-spills-alleged-affair-details-trump-tried-to-pay-her

William Vaillan Court, “Jesse Watters Juror by Juror to Sow Doubt in Trump Hush-Money Case,” Daily Beast (April 17, 2024): https:// www.thedailybeast.com/jesse-watters-goes-juror-by-juror-to-sow-doubt-in-trump-hush-money-case.  The full 5:52 segment on Watters’ show is in here. 

Ramon Antonio Vargas, “Damaging Alex Jones tests mistakenly sent to Sandy Hook Family’s lawyers,” The Guardian (August 4, 2022): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/03/alex-jones-sandy-hook-shooting-defamation-trial

Ozan Varol, “Facts Don’t Change People’s Minds. Here’s What Does,” New Big Idea Club (September 8, 2017): https:// nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/facts-dont-change-peoples-minds-heres/16242/amp/ 

Elizabeth Williamson, “Here’s what Jones has said about Sandy Hook,” New York Times (September 28, 2022): https:// www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/us/politics/heres-what-jones-has-said-about-sandy-hook.html