The Notorious DJT
Trump’s circus echoes 90s hip-hop.
Most people would not celebrate being indicted on federal charges. But as he has demonstrated for over four decades in the public eye, former President Donald Trump is not most people.
And speaking of the public eye, that’s exactly where Trump placed himself before and after his arraignment on those charges this week. It started with the helicopter footage of his motorcade taking him to the courthouse in Miami, continued with a post-arraignment stop at a Cuban deli, and concluded (for the day) with a defiant speech outside his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Unsurprisingly, Trump turned the sadly historic day into a spectacle. By now, we all know that’s his schtick: Unlike any other politician in recent memory, Trump puts himself in absurd situations, then turns around and embraces that absurdity. Events that would embarrass other politicians or end political careers seem to fuel Trump and even win him more support. The current charges exemplify this: While other high-profile politicians have had issues handling sensitive documents, most of them cooperated with investigators, and the matter was considered done. Trump’s indictment isn’t solely for mishandling classified materials, but also for brazenly obstructing the investigative efforts to determine how badly he mishandled them.
Put another way: Federal agents are mad because he’s flagrant.
If you’re of a certain age, you know that’s a bad paraphrase of a line from “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems,” a 1997 track from the Notorious B.I.G.’s (a.k.a. Biggie Smalls, a.k.a. Christopher Wallace) posthumously released and appropriately titled album, Life After Death. In this massive crossover hit, Biggie brags about his experience in the drug trade:
B-I-G P-O-P-P-A
No info for the DEA
Federal agents mad ’cause I’m flagrant
Tap my cell and the phone in the basement
My team Supreme, stay clean…
It’s familiar thematic and lyrical ground for the Notorious B.I.G. In the classic video for his previous single, “Hypnotize,” Biggie and his producer Sean Combs (known at the time as Puff Daddy and known by several names since) cleverly evade helicopters and Humvees from unidentified law enforcement agencies. The lyrics discussed beating a murder charge by threatening a prosecutor:
At my arraignment, note for the plaintiff:
Your daughter’s tied up in a Brooklyn basement
Face it, not guilty, that’s how I stay filthy…
We can assume some poetic license here. Wallace seemed smart enough to know that delivering a threat via a written note — in a courtroom, in plain view of a judge no less! — would probably hurt his case. But that’s beside the point: Federal agents may get mad over Biggie’s flagrance, but his audience loved him for it. Smalls never intimates his innocence; he freely admits to criminality, but he stays out of jail (and maintains his characterized lifestyle) because he is smarter than the legal system.
Some swath of the American electorate cheers as Trump gives a metaphorical (so far) middle finger to the “federal agents.” Even those that don’t cheer can’t seem to look away from the spectacle, which has echoes of the Notorious B.I.G.’s bombastic disdain for law enforcement. (Heck, put footage of his motorcade to the courthouse in a sepia filter and it could have been rejected b-roll for that “Hypnotize” video.)
But this is more than Trump culturally appropriating one of the greats of 1990s hip-hop. Pop culture gives us plenty of similar characters. Michael Corleone, Danny Ocean, Walter White, Tony Soprano, and Vic Mackey (protagonists of The Godfather, Ocean’s Eleven, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, and The Shield, respectively) are each overtly and unabashedly criminal. But watch any of those shows or movies and you’ll catch yourself rooting for the bad guy to win.
Trump may not understand (nor care) how his public persona dovetails with pop culture tropes and likable stock characters, but it does. Whatever your views of his politics or policies, it’s pretty fascinating that this continues to work for him.
Over the past eight years, despite all the coverage devoted to Trump, political observers have struggled to process his rise to power. He takes divisive political positions and delivers caustic rhetoric, and makes no effort to distance himself from extremist elements that glom onto his campaign. That makes it tempting to write him off as a bad actor energizing the worst of American politics, a hateful demagogue whose supporters are a vicious mob of racists (as Hillary Clinton so famously did).
This oversimplification misses an unavoidable and remarkable reality: Donald Trump has become the dominant figure in American politics today, and he doesn’t even hold an office right now. Think about that for a second. In his eight-year political career, Trump has won exactly one election, was the third President ever impeached, lost a second election to a semi-retired Joe Biden, incited a riot intended to disrupt the ratification of that second election, was impeached a second time, has now been indicted twice since leaving office, leads the polls to win the Republican nomination in 2024, and recent polls give him a decent shot in the 2024 general election.
Why is it like this? This is a democracy, so if you’re an American, look in the mirror.
Trump’s position of primacy says less about him than it does about us, or rather how various players interact with our political system. His supporters love him: They laud his successes and overlook his sins. His opponents love to hate him: They call him a fascist and a dullard, at times allowing their hatred to blind them from critical flaws in those they support. The news media love to cover him: They know that he incites both camps to view, click, and share liberally.
Trump understands branding, and his current brand requires dysfunction and spectacle. Most candidates will try to win voters over by being likable, relatable, or personable. Trump has found success being something more: notorious.
