Trump Faces Criminal Trial: A Spectacle of Sex, Money, and Power

This week, OJ Simpson, an American football athlete famous for the murder he committed and the trial that raised eyebrows in American society in the 1990s, died.

We have known throughout US history that televised trials gain great attention.

Now, Trump the politician/presidential spectacle has an appointment with a criminal jury in Manhattan.

The plot is about sex, money and power not of an American football player, but of someone who seeks to get his hands on the Republican presidential candidacy and return to run the White House.

Donald Trump, we know, will not seek credibility or accreditation or offer the truth before American justice.

His script to conquer the Presidency, stay at the top and seek to reconquer the most precious helm of government, we know, is the discrediting of all power and all authority.

Now that script will be updated by presenting himself as the victim of a conspiracy of the American justice system, of a witch hunt.

Trump will make the most of the spectacle of his prosecution, in a week in which the polls of his dispute with Joe Biden were balanced in favor of the Democratic President, perhaps due to the favorable indicators of the US economy.

In the middle of the scandal plot, a man who signs bibles and who preaches decency will confront a porn actress Stormy Daniels who claims that she accepted US$130 thousand dollars from Trump’s then lawyer,

Michael Cohen, before the 2016 elections, in exchange for his silence.

The morbidity and perversion of the accusation against Trump will involve accusations of marital infidelity and the fact that lawyer Cohen accuses Trump himself of various wrongdoings.

What is a fact is that 85% of Americans have strong feelings towards Trump – for and against – and he finds himself facing an ironic political and historical moment between two extremes:

The histrionic staging to achieve, in the pose of a national hero-victim, recreate the favorable consent of the Americans towards him, and a court case in which the New York jury can sanction criminal responsibilities.

Will we be facing the maximum moment of splendor of American politics and justice taken to its limits, with a presidential candidate campaigning politically from prison?

This will not be another episode of the Law and Order television series.

But the new season of politics does open as a spectacle in the purest American style and Trumpism.

Although the trial will not be televised, Trump’s strategy will surely be to give it maximum dissemination and capture attention to this moment of judicial prosecution, to be capitalized in the media and politically for his cause.

The more ridiculous, grotesque, transgressive, insulting and cynical the spectacle, the better it will be for Trump’s goal of returning to the Presidency?

Pedro Isnardo De la Cruz is a Doctor in Political and Social Sciences and a professor at UNAM. Published in 2017 Decisions

Presidential strategies in the USA: Taking advantage of the opportunity in national security and terrorism crises. George W. Bush and Barack Obama (2001-2012).

Juan Carlos Barrón has a Bachelor’s degree in Administration, a Master’s degree in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia (Norwich, England) and a Doctor in Philosophy of International Development. He is currently Academic Secretary of the North American Research Center at UNAM.