Chuck Darwin<p>Trump’s retribution may focus on individuals, <br>but it’s a collective harm<br>-- So it makes sense to spread the cost of dealing with it.</p><p>In the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory and promised revenge tour, <br>a number of individuals have proposed the creation of an organization or fund <br>which would take on the job of defending the various lawsuits, prosecutions and generalized legal harassment Trump will bring to the table in the next four years. </p><p>It’s a very good idea. <br>It’s a necessary one. </p><p>So a few days ago I started reaching out to some people in the legal world and anti-Trump world to find out what’s going on, </p><p>whether any efforts are afoot and who is doing what.</p><p>What I found out is that there are at least a couple groups working toward doing something like this. </p><p>But the efforts seem embryonic. </p><p>Or at least I wasn’t able to find out too much. </p><p>The overnight news that Trump is now suing <a href="https://c.im/tags/Ann" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Ann</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Selzer" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Selzer</span></a> and the <a href="https://c.im/tags/Des" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Des</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Moines" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Moines</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Register" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Register</span></a> over her final election poll for “election interference” makes me think that these efforts aren’t coming together soon enough <br>or can’t come together soon enough. </p><p>(If you’re not familiar with the details, Selzer is a pollster of almost legendary status <br>and in what turned out to be her final public poll, dramatically missed not only the result of the election but the whole direction of it.) </p><p>Let’s take the Selzer/Des Moines Register suit as our example. </p><p>Trump is claiming that he was damaged and should be made whole <br>because of a poll that showed him behind and turned out to be wrong. </p><p>His lawyers are trying to shoe-horn this claim into an Iowa consumer fraud statute. </p><p>But we shouldn’t be distracted by that. <br>The idea that a political candidate has a cause of action over a poll is absurd on its face. </p><p>And really that is precisely the point. </p><p>Trump casts penumbras of power and fear with talk; he holds public space; he keeps opponents off balance and guessing. </p><p>This is another example.</p><p>A lot of the power and point of such an exercise is precisely the absurdity of it. </p><p>It is meant to spur a chorus of “You can’t do that” and<br> “How can he do that?” </p><p>But he does do it. </p><p>We have that same mixture of outrage, incomprehension, uncanny laughter, <br>the upshot of which is an overwhelming and over-powering belief that the rules somehow don’t apply to this guy. </p><p>That’s his power and that is the point. </p><p>It is a performance art of power enabled by a shameless abuse of the legal system</p><p>Trump’s opponents need to learn to speak in that language. </p><p>Otherwise it’s a professional wrestling grudge match, <br>a taunt-fest with only one side taunting. </p><p>I fear some folks simply don’t get this dimension of what’s going on.</p><p> It’s not something you learn in law school and not in conventional, old-style politics either. </p><p>Defending the targets is key. But that’s not the only point or even the main one. </p><p>It’s about demonstrating the limits of Trump’s power and embarrassing him, President or not.</p><p><a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-big-pile-of-money-and-lawyering-to-defend-trumps-legal-targets" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a</span><span class="invisible">-big-pile-of-money-and-lawyering-to-defend-trumps-legal-targets</span></a></p>