Wednesday
Miltonists may experience a shock of recognition as they watch Donald Trump attempt to wriggle out charges that he stole government documents upon leaving the presidency. After all, Adam in Paradise Lost turns to some of the same excuses when God questions him about eating the forbidden fruit. Adam, however, has nothing on Trump.
John Tures of the Missouri Independent lists a few of the excuses provided by either Trump or his defenders. I’ve added a few more, and there are probably some that we’ve missed. I don’t need to add that all the excuses are bogus:
- The “raid” (it was actually a search) was a wildly inappropriate move, a Gestapo-type tactic by an authoritarian president;
- There was nothing really important amongst the documents and Trump would have returned them if asked so a “raid” was unnecessary;
- Trump didn’t realize that the documents were important—he just wanted some mementoes from his time in the White House;
- Conditions were so chaotic in the presidential transition that the documents were accidentally thrown into boxes and transported to Florida;
- The documents were planted by the FBI;
- Trump was just bringing his work home, like so many hard-working Americans;
- Other presidents, especially Obama, have taken classified documents after leaving the White House;
- These documents were declassified by Trump by virtue of a “standing order” (which no one recalls);
- The documents shouldn’t have been classified in the first place;
- Mar-a-Lago is actually a safer place for the documents than elsewhere—and the law only pertains to destroying the documents, not storing them;
- Trump needed them for his memoirs;
- If the documents were so important, government officials should have come for them earlier so they’re the ones who are really negligent.
Add to these a Fox pundit’s accusation the judge who signed off on the search was an acquaintance of sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell (he wasn’t) and the threat by Trump’s lawyer that violence could erupt from indicting the president. There’s also the drumbeat amongst many on the right that if they did it to Trump they’ll do it to you! In short, you have an exercise in blame shifting worthy of a teenager caught smoking pot in his room.
Or of Adam when caught out by God. Adam’s blame shifting is in response to a direct question from God:
[H]ast thou eaten of the Tree
Whereof I gave thee charge thou shouldst not eat?
In reply, Adam starts by wailing that he has been put in an impossible position Either he must take the full blame or accuse “the partner of my life”:
O Heav’n! in evil strait this day I stand
Before my Judge, either to undergo
Myself the total Crime, or to accuse
My other self, the partner of my life;
Whose failing, while her Faith to me remains,
I should conceal, and not expose to blame
By my complaint…
Upon further consideration, however, he argues that he doesn’t deserve the full blame and prepares to blame Eve. First, he blames her indirectly: rather sneakily, he suggests that God already knows that she’s guilty, so Adam is less blameworthy for throwing her under the bus. Notice that he never accepts any of the responsibility himself:
[B]ut strict necessity
Subdues me, and calamitous constraint
Lest on my head both sin and punishment,
However insupportable, be all
Devolv’d; though should I hold my peace, yet thou
Wouldst easily detect what I conceal.
Then comes Adam’s accusation, which deflects blame in two ways. Not only did Eve tempt him but God is also guilty for having foisted Eve on him in the first place (“This Woman whom thou [emphasis mine] mad’st to be my help”):
This Woman whom thou mad’st to be my help,
And gav’st me as thy perfect gift, so good,
So fit, so acceptable, so divine,
That from her hand I could suspect no ill,
And what she did, whatever in itself,
Her doing seem’d to justify the deed;
She gave me of the Tree, and I did eat.
In other words, he’s the victim here. This is as Trumpian a maneuver as one could imagine.
God, however, is having none of Adam’s bullshit:
Was she thy God, that her thou didst obey
Before his voice…
For a dramatic contrast, Eve confesses straight up after God turns to her:
So having said, he thus to Eve in few:
“Say Woman, what is this which thou hast done?”To whom sad Eve with shame nigh overwhelm’d,
Confessing soon, yet not before her Judge
Bold or loquacious, thus abasht repli’d.“The Serpent me beguil’d and I did eat.”
Forget about ever getting a similar confession from Trump or anyone around him. In fact, the next move I expect from the former president is for him to employ Adam’s tactic of blaming someone else. Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows should be very worried.
For Trump and Trump cultists, confessing is a sign of weakness. Instead, they pretend never to have said what they said and simply go on to the next excuse.