Hogarth, Mac the Knife awaiting execution
Thursday
Following the release of the Access Hollywood tape, I compared Donald Trump to John Gay’s Mac the Knife, an escape artist extraordinaire who avoids the hangman’s noose time and again, only to be brought down in the end by women. So confident was I then that Trump’s luck had run out—I didn’t count on the calculated release of hacked Democratic e-mails to distract the public’s attention—I could only gape as Trump once again slipped free of accountability. Compared to our president, Mac the Knife is a piker.
Mac ultimately does escape once again, however, when the beggar playwright, in an early instance of meta-theater, changes his ending and provides the highwayman a royal reprieve:
Player. But, honest Friend, I hope you don’t intend that Macheath shall be really executed.
Beggar. Most certainly, Sir.—To make the Piece perfect, I was for doing strict poetical Justice.—Macheath is to be hang’d; and for the other Personages of the Drama, the Audience must have suppos’d they were all either hang’d or transported.
Player. Why then, Friend, this is a downright deep Tragedy. The Catastrophe is manifestly wrong, for an Opera must end happily.
Beggar. Your Objection, Sir, is very just, and is easily remov’d. For you must allow, that in this kind of Drama, ’tis no matter how absurdly things are brought about—So—you Rabble there—run and cry, A Reprieve!—let the Prisoner be brought back to his Wives in Triumph.
After all of the amazing events on Tuesday, it appears that, as with Mac at the end of the play, the walls are closing in on Trump. In the president’s case, he saw a jury convict his former campaign manager, which added legitimacy to the Mueller investigation, and his former lawyer/fixer plead guilty for a crime while naming Trump as his co-conspirator. In Mac’s case, all of his multiple wives show up:
Jailor. Four Women more, Captain, with a Child apiece! See, here they come.
Macheath. What—four Wives more!—This is too much—Here—tell the Sheriff’s Officers I am ready.
So is there a miraculous out for Trump as there is for Mac? First of all, is there one for Paul Manafort? Some commentators are speculating that he is angling for a presidential pardon, which could explain why he didn’t invoke any witnesses on his behalf and has resolutely refused to flip on his former boss.
But forget about Manafort. Might Trump pull off the ultimate reprieve by pardoning himself? Legal scholars have been debating whether the Constitution allows him to do so.
But in a way, Trump has been receiving reprieves his entire life, with the American public having granted him his last one. After all, most legal experts agree that a sitting president cannot be indicted, which means he’s home free for the next two and a half years. Mac could not have dreamed that such an escape hatch existed.
In his own version of Gay’s play, Brecht made Mac’s reprieve even more outrageous. The conclusion of Three Penny Opera fits Trump’s miraculous ascendency to the presidency:
Chorus: Hark, who’s here?
A royal official on horseback’s here!
Brown: I bring a special order from our beloved Queen to have Captain Macheath set at liberty forthwith [all cheer], as it’s the coronation, and raised to the hereditary peerage. [Cheers.] The castle of Marmarel, likewise a pension of ten thousand pounds, to be his in usufruct until his death. To any bridal couples present Her Majesty bids me to convey her gracious good wishes.
Trump resides in his own Marmarel (although he considers the White House a dump), he and his family are making gobs of money off the presidency, and he has even been received graciously by the queen. At least for the moment, our promiscuous highwayman has escaped once again.
