When men make gods

Ripped from today's headlines

NEW YORK – Judge Juan Merchan held Donald Trump in contempt of court and ordered him to return to his courtroom immediately after the former President defied his gag order on several occasions.

Trump’s lawyer, who requested anonymity, told reporters that he did not know where his client was and that he was retiring from the legal profession. The lawyer refused to answer questions before being whisked away in a black Suburban.

Trump first violated the gag order almost immediately after his bail hearing by going on the Joe Rogan podcast, where he called the judge “retarded” and New York “a shithole, worse than the worst shithole in Calcutta and full of spooks.”

When one of Rogan’s associates mentioned that “spooks” was considered a racial slur, Trump said, “you know what’s a slur, your face,” after which he and Rogan spent a half-hour trying to call Kanye West on the phone to tell the associate Trump was not racist, without success.

From Rogan’s podcast Trump went to a feedlot in Bugtussle, Kentucky for an impromptu rally, attended by a few thousand spectators and every major U.S. news organization. Trump was onstage for a little over an hour, during which he recited the first two stanzas of the poem “Casabianca” by Felicia Hemans, adding impromptu commentary (“The burning deck that the boy stood on. Oh yes. That deck burned, folks. It’s still burning”), explained at length that the sun revolves around the earth (“Don’t believe what Fauci and the rest of those nerds tell you”), and promised to build a casino in Bugtussle now that gambling was legal in Kentucky and that his casino would take bets on “when someone else is gonna beat up that Rand Paul, I hear everybody hates him worse than [Senator Mitch] McConnell.”

Contrary, again, to the gag order, Trump discoursed to the crowd on his case, telling them he had never even met Stormy Daniels, but had seen her picture once on a billboard and thought she was “one ugly Magilla Gorilla,” and claimed Judge Merchan was “taking orders” to fix the verdict from “whatshisname, that old Jew everybody hates.” He also said juries were “a stupid idea” because “you put twelve guys in a room like that and you think you crack the case, and then Henry Fonda comes in like a wise guy and screws it all up. It’s for the birds.”

Trump then suggested a method by which he could be tried:

To judge my case, and only God can judge, I think your, he was native of Kentucky, Tupac, Tupac Shanker, he said that. Only God can judge. But I would be proud to stand before, as their former Commander on Chief, to stand before the soldiers of the U.S. military, the soldiers and the sailors, and the Navy, not the woke military, not that guy Milley, he looks like a Milley, Millie the Model is what I call him, I mean the big strong guys with the tattoos of the iron cross and whatshisname the skull in the comics, Knight Rider, I don’t know, how are you, sweetheart, you know about this skull in the comics, good to see you too. I would stand before them and I would say, my fellow soldiers, my big strong men, am I a guilty man? And with tears in their eyes, and these are strong men who never cry, they would say, no Mr. President, we will kill the Mexican judge instead. And then they would beat that son of a bitch to death and nobody would ever bother me again.

Trump was conveyed from the scene to Louisville International Airport where his jet was waiting, a distance of some 80 miles, in a limousine with loudspeakers mounted on the roof, through which the former president occasionally announced his intention to kill Stormy Daniels, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, former associate Michael Cohen, TV personality Keith Olbermann, and “that guy on the TikTok commercial who taught his son to read, I hate him.”

In Louisville Trump boarded his jet and took to the air; he most recently landed at Minot International Airport in North Dakota, where members of his entourage went into the airport to pick up several dozen orders of chicken fingers before the jet took off again.

Amid reports that a warrant had been issued and marshals sent to apprehend the former president, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared on Fox News to defend his former boss’ actions. Looking frail with a black eye and a band-aid on his right cheek, but grinning ferociously, Giuliani told viewers, “Look, I’ve been a lawyer many, many years but you gotta understand, the old rules, the old laws, they’re history. It doesn’t matter what a judge says, what a D.A. says, there is only what Trump says. Actually it’s terrifying.” He giggled maniacally for ten seconds and then, as he bled from his eyes and ears, the former mayor’s laughter redoubled and the network cut to a commercial.