Byline Supplement — ‘Trump In Bad Lighting’
My latest report in Byline Supplement documents the weirdness surrounding the first week of Trump’s criminal election interference trial in NYC
Thanks to everyone who is supporting my work, Monday came without the usual fascist creep blues. Instead, I reupped on my new favorite coffee, Urth Cafe’s French Roast — and plowed on.
Making the front page of Byline Supplement never gets old, and today my report “Trump In Bad Lighting” made its debut.
Here is an excerpt:
Trump In Bad Lighting — A Propagandist in a Pickle
Heidi Siegmund Cuda reports on the very weird first week of Donald Trump’s election interference/hush money trial
Five years ago, I quipped that the moment Trump’s base sees him in bad lighting, it’s over.
Trump is a media creature, born of make-up, hair dye, poorly sprayed fake tans, staging and production.
Like one of his beauty queens, he’s learned a few things about pageantry — his rallies are a cross between World Wrestling Federation spectacle and the 1976 film Network, where an unhinged anchorman becomes equal parts cult leader and TV game show host.
As he sits in a New York City courtroom in unflattering lighting in the first week of his election interference/hush money trial, reports leak of napping and nappies, while courtroom sketch artists deliver miserable visages of a man who has lost control.
He can’t play to the camera, because the trial is not being televised, so the jury gets to see the profound misery of what happens to a TV performer when he can only play himself — a proveably corrupt man who got caught trying to cover up a payoff to an adult film star through a fixer, who has already served time for the criminal act.
“What draws me in, as a scholar of autocracy, is the amazing and beautiful and never-to-be-taken-for-granted fact that this trial is happening at all,” wrote Strongmen author Ruth Ben-Ghiat. “A similar trial could never happen in Turkey today, or in Russia, China, or Hungary — which is a big factor in Trump’s boundless admiration of the leaders of those countries. They would never be in this situation. Personality cults across the political spectrum may present the leader as ‘a man of the people,’ but being treated as equal to those people is not an outcome authoritarians foresee.”
Trump, who likes to play alpha male on TV, must submit to “someone else’s authority”, as Ben-Ghiat noted.
Pleas for Violence
As I wrote in Byline Supplement’s Project 2025 report, violence is now Trump’s brand, and as his pleas for MAGA mobs to show up in New York fall on deaf ears, he makes excuses, unwilling to accept that his star may be fading.
As he does his Roy Cohn shticks in front of the courthouse, having elevated victimhood to high art, he blames the unfriendly business environment in New York for his low supporter turnout. Cohn, it’s worth noting, was a mob lawyer who was Trump’s mentor. He, too, stood in front of courthouses to play victim when the law caught up with his prolific criminality.
Truth is a liar’s kryptonite, and Trump has to endure the facts of his case, while being simultaneously both hamstrung and in defiance of gag orders. It’s a pickle for a propagandist. But Trump appears to be begging to be imprisoned so he can perform the ultimate starring role — that of martyr…
The trial resumes on Tuesday morning, and it’s all very weird…
Just days ago, we learned that Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator in a fake electors scheme in Arizona, part of a plot to undermine the integrity of the 2020 election. In a bit of Orwellian irony, the lawyer Trump put in charge of the RNC’s “election integrity” — longtime Michael Flynn ally Kristina Bobb — was indicted in that scheme. How about this for a headline:
RNC’s Election Integrity Lawyer Charged With Election Crimes
While Trump’s legal fate just keeps on happening, the extremists on the Supreme Court appear to be offering him a Hail Mary, as Thursday’s hearing of presidential immunity appeared to take place in Oceania and not in the United States.
Despite the bad lighting and what amounts to a bad week for Trump, billionaires are still writing checks to fund his 2024 campaign, and the auditions for vice president continue apace… South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem shows she’s cruel enough for the VP gig by posting a memoir about being a dog and goat killer. Not the flex she thought it would be…
As Trump’s decomposition occurs daily in court, he knows he can’t afford anything less than a perfect 10 for VP — immoral, corrupt, obeisant, telegenic. So many options.
To read the full report, please take out a subscription to Byline Supplement and help support a small, global team of investigative reporters. If you are unable to do so at this time, feel free to reach out to me directly at bettedangerous/gmail to request the report.
If you are new to Bette Dangerous, here is my latest report from my 2016 Election Attack series — this one, on ex-con Paul Manafort — a reminder that corrupt leaders need to surround themselves with criminals, as Ben-Ghiat often reminds us:
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More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
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