Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Life Lesson from Donald Trump 4

I have been listening to Alison Gill's reading of the lovely Jack Smith's revised filing in the light of the Supreme Court's ruling that the president of the USA is legally immune for official acts, on the Jack podcast. I have been howling with laughter every time she does her impression of the orange freak but nonetheless it's provided me with yet another life lesson from him.

This is that if you are going to pretend that you're concerned about, say, election interference you should act as if you are and not just go looking for it where it would affect you personally. Smith's case would be a lot weaker if he couldn't keep pointing out that Trump wasn't looking for actual electoral problems because he only looked for it where Republicans lost.

Besides, every time Smith calls tRump 'the defendant' I want to hump his leg even more.

Obviously you shouldn't take legal advice from someone pretending to be a dog on the internet, but I believe this reflects a legal principle whose name I can't remember, that you should at least behave in accordance with the position you are claiming. Until recently an example of this in UK law was in adverse possession, where if you squatted a property for long enough and the owner made no effort to get you out, after a certain length of time the property belonged to you. Whereas if you'd done that and in court the owner proved they'd been making endless efforts to get you out, you wouldn't be granted adverse possession.

Essentially in one case the owner is acting like he doesn't mind you having the property and in the other the owner is acting like he doesn't want you to have it. To translate this in Trump terms, he's saying the election wasn't secure but is acting as if he's just looking to win regardless of what he has to do.

This also reflects a magical principle often called 'acting in accord': you put your intent out there and it behoves you to act as if that's what is happening. If you act in a way different to the intent you have put out you're messing it up and it won't happen.

Luckily Donald tRump is obviously not a magician otherwise his hair and skin would look different. 😱