Suzanne Harrington: Will America really allow Trump back into the White House?

Former President Donald Trump speaks at the National Rifle Association Convention in Indianapolis, on April 14, 2023.(AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)

So it’s official. A serious contender running for US president next year has been found liable for sexual abuse and defamation of his accuser.

By his own admission, since the release of that  Access Hollywood tape in 2016 (“Grab ‘em by the pussy”), Trump has long been a committed sex offender.

What does this mean? Will America allow a man found liable for sexual abuse and defamation — who is also a twice-impeached, riot-inciting fraudster — back into the White House?

When Trump’s recent rape trial ended, the judge advised the jury not to disclose their identities: “Not now, and not for a long time.”

This is the kind of advice you’d normally associate with people being placed on witness protection schemes after mob trials, rather than that of a former US president — but then Trump is the leader of a violent mob, as January 6, 2021 showed. 

A mob in a permanent state of whipped-up grievance, with Trump its saviour.

POST-TRUTH

He oversees a post-truth cult where he can literally be accused of sexual assault by dozens of women, be damned by a jury in three hours, and remain reputationally unscathed within that cult.

If anything, accusations of sexual assault appear to enhance his reputation. What does this mean? What message is it transmitting to the rest of society?

The belief system within the Trump cult, noisily propagated by his own ALL-CAPS OUTRAGE, is that he is the ongoing victim of a conspiracy to silence him. He is a victim, and his followers are victims.

Suzanne Harrington at UCC. Picture: Denis Scannell

Women who accuse him of sexual assault are either delusional — too ugly to be raped — or politically motivated — part of the vast plot against him — or both. This is his narrative, and the narrative of his cult.

But what does it mean when these delusional Trump cultists interface with wider reality? What does it mean when their leader is given platform after platform — most recently CNN — so that he may pursue his quest for power, like some dumpster Bond villain? Why has the line of acceptability been moved so far over the horizon as to have disappeared completely?

Why — how — did wider society allow this to happen?

LOOKING ON AGHAST

Women have become numbers. (In the Trump cult, Melania is a 10, E Jean Carroll a two). Black lives don’t matter. Women’s reproductive rights don’t matter. Guns matter.

America is being made great again, via protectionism, unfunded tax cuts and putting children in cages, which Melania can visit wearing a coat that says: “I Really Don’t Care.” Now she’s married to a sex offender, and doesn’t seem to care about that either.

Remember those innocent “Free Melania” days? Long gone.

As we look on aghast at the possible green-lighting of season two of the dystopian Trump drama — something Margaret Atwood on ayahuasca couldn’t dream up — it seems that there is nothing this guy could do to turn his cult against him.

Open fire in a shopping mall? A primary school?

Nope. They’d be cool with that too.