A PR Stunt Made in Heaven, or Thereabouts

Even Donald J. Trump has a bucket list. How vast the bucket must be to hold all the items on that list is best left to the speculation of superior minds. But one thing is sure: he’s been checking things off that list at a fast and furious pace. 

It was just March when the Supreme Court ruled that Colorado cannot block Trump from appearing on the state ballot as a presidential candidate despite the fact that both a Colorado trial court and the Colorado Supreme Court found that Trump had “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Federal government. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that, under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment instructing states to disqualify such individuals from appearing on their state ballot, Trump was ineligible to appear. The U.S. Supreme Court opined in unanimous opposition that Trump cannot be removed. The liberating ballot decision came a day before Super Tuesday. Trump was fiercely ecstatic. 

The year held other highlights for Trump, for example, his stellar success in delaying three out of the four criminal trials against him, tangling the courts up in knots. His luck has been astonishing as well in cajoling perfect strangers, many with little money, to send him whatever they do have to cover his legal costs. (If they keep giving, the Trump vs. You-There-in-the-Way case will never end.) As bonus, Trump got the Republican National Committee to give him a cut of their take. The man has been cruising.

His batting average nearly 1.000, the man then learned on July 1 that he was immune from criminal prosecution for any crimes he committed as president during the performance of core presidential functions. His lawyers had requested the Supreme Court to dispatch that bucket item as a kind of a joke, but fortune favored Trump once again and a whopper of a bucket list item has now been checked off. At the same time, Trump was awarded presumptive immunity for any crimes he committed during performance of essential presidential functions. What more could he ask for? Together, this provided the clever man with universal immunity, because he is practiced enough to know how to massage any action he performed while president to fit into one of those two categories. From experience, he also knows people high and low will believe him.

Now that he was immune, what was the point of being so clever and devious and in-your-face obnoxious? The sparkle was gone.

That is the single phenomenon that mildly bewildered Trump these past years: to learn that people would believe him no matter what he said. His first reaction was that it was a great bucket item, something he had always wanted. But his enthusiasm for this charm waned. Watching people suck up time after time, rally after rally got kind of boring, and he began to veer off a lot during his juicy talks, because they weren’t that juicy anymore. No matter what he said, they’d cheer, they’d clap, they’d chant, swallowing whatever crap he dished out to them. It had gotten too easy and, frankly, disgusting. 

Another wish that worked out awkwardly was how easily he had beaten the legal system through the sheer volume of his transgressions. He alone had been able to discover its limit because he alone had had the audacity to challenge it by committing all those transgressions. A sane man would have stopped long ago. But the fun had gone out of that, too. He made the courts look silly, lame, paralyzed, confused, and now he was immune. So what was the point of being so clever and devious and in-your-face obnoxious? No one could touch him now, and they knew it. That killed the sparkle. There’s no tingle anymore, no risk. He could try a moonshot on one of Elon Musk’s discount rockets. Perhaps there’d be a rise in that for him.

Yet, gloomy Trump was handed another triumph. The cautious, but thorough Judge Aileen Cannon threw out the classified documents case against him based on the incidental advice of the thoughtful and impeccable Justice Clarence Thomas that special prosecutors are unconstitutional. Bingo, and so what. If you’re immune, you’re immune.

But fate switched gears for Trump on Saturday. It unexpectedly revved up to Trump speed, delivering the heightened sensation and titillation he craved.

A bevy of Secret Service agents crowded around him, pressing the comforting petals of their bodies against him, offering their flesh up to be shot instead of his.

The supernatural good fortune bestowed on him that evening had not been on his bucket list. Trump would never have had the nerve or the imagination to put it on there, although he did daydream about it from time to time. It was also an event not even a Trump budget could cover, an operation not even Trump’s most able cohorts could have planned. Neither could Trump’s ambition have stretched this far because Trump would have lacked the nerve to go through with it. Instead, most wonderfully, it just happened, without collusion or collaboration, no sneaky phone calls, winks, or nods, no callouts to Proud Boys on Trump Social, no violation whatsoever committed to taint the virtuous victim. The whirlwind simply twisted up to warp speed and wrapped itself, all by itself, and benevolently, too, around Trump, got the man shot in the ear by someone who was not a marksman and yet, the more astounding, did hit the tip of Trump’s ear, and only the tip, a part of Trump’s corporality he’ll never miss but which was close enough, most conveniently, to splatter a little blood across his face. 

It was thrilling! A bevy of Secret Service agents crowded around him, pressing the comforting petals of their bodies against his, offering their flesh up to be shot instead of the so much more valuable Trump flesh, while other agents prowled with genuine leopard-like stealth, wielding real weapons ready to take out the merest sign of threat against the great man, having already with understated drama shot dead the 20-year-old rifleman seconds after he fired and hit the tip of Trump’s ear. Trump got himself photographed with real blood on his face, his fist pumping in the air, the American flag maneuvered by the quick-thinking man into background position as he chanted “Fight. Fight. Fight.” or something similar.

The advantages Trump will reap from this event are limitless. Trump’s anxious followers will redouble their contributions and never take off their MAGA hats again, never put down their little MAGA flags, to prove to the world that they are true to Trump. Trump allies have started blaming liberal Democrats for causing this, Trump’s biggest bucket list entry of all time, with renewed calls for Biden’s arrest for arranging it. Better yet, they are condemning those liberal Democrats for their violent language. And, not least, Trump can spin his providential escape into an obvious sign that God saved Trump because God has chosen Trump to fulfill God’s mission, and we all know what that mission is: Trump for president in 2024 and forever after, blessed to collect, with immunity, his due tribute from American taxpayers to heave him up into being the wealthiest and most powerful man on the planet, bigger than the big boys MBS, Kim Jong Un, Xi, Putin, and you, too, Elon Musk with your rocket ships. Now that’s a Trump-worthy bucket item, and there’s just a little way to go to check it off. Caesar himself would be envious.

Harrowing as the assassination attempt was for allies and opponents alike, the clipped ear incident provided a photo shoot of a lifetime, Trump loved every second of it, and will be cashing in on it forever more.