He Heard It

President Trump and first lady Melania Trump paid their respects to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a crowd booed and chanted "Vote him out." https://t.co/M7m7kEIBg7 pic.twitter.com/tWYfyKIdIF

— CNN (@CNN) September 24, 2020

Trump can maintain that he barely heard whatever the folks in front of the court were chanting, but I simply trust and believe he heard, and he will continue to hear it. (Awake and also dreaming.) I think he was there to maintain the appearance that he can perform respectability, but the people who most admired Justice Ginsburg's work are also the people who most likely recognize that Trump is, in many ways, the antithesis of what she had stood for. She stood for equality under the law; he supports the law for some and mere order for others. (This is more particularly stated by Frank Wilhoit in The Travesty of Liberalism: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect...") He can pay empty respects as easily as make empty promises, but he remains who he is.

Being people who appreciate the rule of law and the importance of democracy, what was chanted there was not "Lock him up!", but "Vote him out!"--which has a meaningful difference. Trump's crowd wants vengeance for unspecified wrongs while liberals will settle for remediation of wrongs very well understood. I'm a poor liberal and I also want him to spend his post-presidency in court on the other side of the bench and looking up until his neck hurts.

I don't think he leaves his bubble often, or he would know he'd get a cold shoulder there. I understand that White House staff bottleneck information so that he doesn't become the recipient of too much bad news. I can't imagine what it must feel like to understand that one's presence brings down the tone of a funeral, but I'd have to understand that as a normal person. And I can't fathom how that registers with Donald Trump.

I know he heard it. How that registers with him, I don't know.