NEW YORK CITY

Each morning from now to June, a fat yellow-haired man awakes in an ornate bedchamber, one of many rooms in his triple-deck Manhattan penthouse atop a Fifth Avenue skyscraper. He is alone in bed, or perhaps accompanied by someone other than his Slovenian-born wife, ensconced in the couple’s sprawling Florida estate and golf resort, known as Mar-a-Lago.

Lumbering through the immense bedchamber—like all other rooms in the penthouse, fashioned in the flamboyant style of the French monarch Louis XIV (1638-1715)—the fat man enters a spacious powder room. There, he spends hours in performance of an elaborate toilette.

First, he perches upon a gilded toilet for the time it takes to excrete the detritus of yesterday’s hamburger and diet Coca-Cola consumptions. Still squat, he puts his ubiquitous cellphone on social media mode to begin the day’s prevarications and denunciations.

Über germaphobe that he is, the fat man then steps into a steaming hot shower bath and furiously scrubs himself with a two-jar regimen of jasmine body wash and lotion—available at $40 the set (€37.36) in the gift shop off the skyscraper’s lobby, with its walls veneered in pink and white veined Breccia Pernice marble, or at any nearby pharmacy in the city for less than half that price.

Next, he applies a heavy coat of bronzer over his normally pink face—per the brand name Bronx Colors Orange BHC06, so swears a grizzled lady on the housekeeping staff. After which comes meticulous maintenance of his odd coiffure, developed by television stylists between 2008 and 2015, when he hosted a Hollywood reality TV show, so-called. According to the New York Times, the fat man claimed a $70,000 (€65,100) tax deduction for the curious coif.

Following earlier scalp reduction surgery, according to journalist Michael Wolff, a saucer-sized patch of skin remains at the pinched center of the fat man’s otherwise bald pate. Strands of long, stringy hair, dyed in a generic beauty parlor shade called “desert gold,” are drawn from the front, sides, and back of his head, then looped over the skin saucer and bound into a flattened knot. Leftover strands are combed vertically to meet at the topknot, then swept backwards and sideways over the enhancement and secured in stiffening spray.

Finally, the fat man slips into his customary ensemble: navy blue Brioni bespoke suit, with unbuttoned jacket and trousers sufficiently baggy to accommodate incontinence pads; a screaming red, extra-long Hermès necktie that distracts the eye from his beltline pooch; and custom-made brogues fitted with lifts and shined by a butler.

Ready for the day’s obligations, he is met by a contingent of United States Secret Service agents who had waited patiently in the anteroom of the bedchamber. The agents wear stern faces, sunglasses, and Glock 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistols concealed in their dark suitcoats. They address the fat man as “Mr. President.”

The fat man and his government guardians—required by law to protect ex-presidents, including the ones they find personally distasteful—leave the penthouse via an express elevator to an underground V.I.P. parking garage. Once below, they pile into a black, bullet-proof Chevrolet Suburban SUV equipped with a tear gas canon built into the front grille.

Now they are off from the glitzy uptown world of Fifth Avenue for the grungy downtown confines of the Manhattan Criminal Court.

• 

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Upon surrendering his cellphone to security officials on the building’s fifteenth floor, the “president” struts into Trial Room Number 1530 and takes his place between a pair of expensive lawyers hired to defend him against thirty-four charges of falsifying business records. If convicted on all counts, the putative felon with the desert gold hairdo faces a maximum prison sentence of one hundred and thirty-six years.

Why the allegedly cooked books?

“Legal expense” is the defendant’s claim of record, which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg contends is a term that camouflages a racketeering scheme whereby hush money that ultimately failed to hush was funneled in the way lawyers funnel to a leading lady of the American pornographic cinema—one Stormy Daniels, who insists in her published memoir to have had a Las Vegas hotel fling with the fat man at a time when his current wife, the aforementioned Slovenian immigrant, was freshly home from a hospital maternity ward after delivering her husband’s fifth child. (The four others from two previous wives.)

Why the alleged camouflage?

Mr. Bragg asserts, Whereas a financial inducement to hide away a sleazy tryst is not illegal under ordinary circumstances among the ordinarily debauched, a hush money sum of $130,000 (€120,900) offered and paid to Ms. Daniels on behalf of the politically-minded fat man amounts to felony interference in the U.S. presidential election of 2016, to wit:

Had American voters known of his unseemliness, vis-à-vis a Las Vegas rendezvous with the star of such films as “Copulation Control” and “Sack Lunch,” the fat man likely would not have been chosen to despoil the White House for four years. Especially not since news of L’Affaire Stormy followed closely on the heels of an audio tape obtained by the Washington Post, in which this day’s keenly observed defendant spoke of his regard for beautiful women:

“I just start kissing them…I don’t even wait…And when you’re a star, they let you do it…Grab ‘em by the pussy…You can do anything.”

Comes now the time for opening statements in the fat man’s trial, just moments away on the Monday morning of April 22^nd.

A flock of media photographers crowds the defense table, snapping their final shots of a jut-jawed study in defiance. The camera posse moves off at the urging of two beefy bailiffs. And next, the fat man is obliged to stand, as a customary gesture of respect for the American legal system personified by the entrance of a judge—in the case at hand, Juan Manuel Merchan, an immigrant in a black robe born in faraway Bogatá, Colombia    

NOTE: The fat man—I so dislike writing his name— is well known for his virulent nativism and his cozy relations with white nationalist organizations. As such, it is ironic that the judge who will decide his future as a free or incarcerated man is an immigrant. And that his first and third wives were and are likewise immigrants—the late Ivana Marie from the former Czechoslovakia, whom he buried along the first fairway of a golf course he owns; and Melania Knaus, former nude model from Novo Mesto, Yugoslavia, now a part of present-day Slovenia.

Ironic as well that the fat man’s prosecutor is an African American, whom he denounces as an “animal” dumbly doing the bidding of “radical left lunatics.”

Once more now, the fat man is obliged to rise as seven men and five women of the jury enter. They are a multi-racial group, drawn from a borough of the city where only nineteen percent of the electorate in 2016 deemed him fit for public office of any rank, this being a frequent complaint during his early morning social media rants atop the golden toilet.

I observe the courtroom proceedings from the last row of public seating in the drab trial chamber, number 1530. Two flies dance in my view, as if they’re in the mood for mating. The chamber air is suffocating, despite its cool nip. Judge Merchan explains to all concerned that the building’s heating/cooling system is notoriously fickle; thus, thermostats must be left untouched. “As for me,” said the judge, “I’d rather be a little cold than too hot.”

Later, the fat man complains to reporters, “It’s freezing in there!” He will squawk about the temperature daily and angrily.

I notice that at least one of the entering jurors winces, his nose wrinkling as he makes a close pass by the defense table enroute to settling into the jury box, located to the left of Judge Merchan’s high bench overlooking all else in the chamber. The fat man has begun an early round of his day-long stream of flatulence.

There is an additional unpleasant smell in chamber 1530: the fug of coffee breath, trapped in the room’s still air.

Two more flies perform a fandango.      

Judge Merchan directs prosecution and defense counsels to address the jury, each side appropriated fifteen minutes’ time to outline arguments for and against an historic first for the United States—the possibility of determining a former president guilty of crimes punishable by as many as one hundred and thirty-six years behind bars.

The whole world is watching as the opposing lawyers kick off a criminal case of alliterative elements sure to inspire the snorts and guffaws of every 13-year-old boy in America: a president, a porn star, and Mr. Pecker.

—Besides being a surname, “pecker” is a comical euphemism in the English speaking universe, referencing the male appendage. In other words, der Pimmel.

Assigned by Alvin Bragg to prosecute the matter of The People of New York v. Donald J. Trump, attorney Matthew Colangelo opens with:

“No politician wants bad press. But the evidence at trial will show that this was not spin or communication strategy. This was a planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior…It was election fraud, pure and simple.”

Defense attorney Todd Blanche counters with:

“[Trump was trying to] protect his family, his reputation and his brand. It’s called democracy. They put something sinister on this idea, as if it was a crime. You’ll learn it’s not.”

All of it predictable, both statements. Even dull. So much so that the fat man’s eyes blink, then shutter entirely. His chin drops, and he falls into sleep. Relaxed, he fills the already fetid air with more intestinal funk. Someone behind me whispers, “There goes Drowsy Don.”

He awakens as Mr. Colangelo calls to the stand the people’s first witness—David Jay Pecker, long-time ally of Drowsy Don and publisher of the National Enquirer scandal sheet at the time of L’Affaire Stormy.

Given immunity from prosecution in return for truthful testimony, Mr. Pecker’s alliance with the fat man ends forthwith as he outlines exactly how his publication colluded with one Michael Cohen and others for Drowsy Don’s benefit. In the parlance of a less-than-kosher bar group, Mr. Cohen was a “fixer” for the fat man. He was convicted in August 2018 at his own trial, in federal court, over the same charges now faced by Drowsy Dan here in New York.

Mr. Cohen served a remarkably short three-year term at a minimum security federal prison in acknowledgment of his time-saving guilty plea at trial. He no longer bears goodwill for his former client. Mr. Pecker outlines how he and Mr. Cohen created an intricate arrangement of shell companies, banks, mis-labeled expenses, and so-called “catch and kill” tabloid fodder involved in the attempt to hush Stormy Daniels—who will herself eventually testify against her one-time (ahem) client, whose manhood she describes in her memoir “Full Disclosure” as having a “huge mushroom head, like a toadstool.”

Drowsy Don is not pleased. He glowers at his ex-friend. That night on television, the esteemed news anchor Rachel Maddow would tell her audience of the fat man’s demeanor, “He seems considerably older…He seems like a man who is miserable.”   

Outside the Criminal Court building that morning, meanwhile, was a passel of reporters and cameramen representing foreign media. They loitered on a stretch of pavement that Drowsy Dan predicted would be chock full of his supporters.

I counted two, as did a loitering cameraman for CNN Television:

•

Apart from its entertainment value, the fat man’s unprecedented trial is the drama of polar opposite sensibilities in America. Which is to say, the people of Earth One versus the people of Earth Two; a fact-based planet versus a planet populated by conspiracy mongers, willful ignoramuses, mindless thugs, science deniers, gun zealots whom I would define as ammo-sexual, and scary religious types who proclaim the fat man who now peddles Bibles to raise money to cover his lawyers’ fees as sent from Heaven by Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

The people of Earth Two accept in full the clash of contradictions embodied in the ample flesh of Drowsy Don. They accept the absurdity of his damning the ongoing legal action against him as a “communist show trial,” even though they falter when asked, as I have asked them, the definition of communism or the nature of a show trial.  

I am not alone in my low opinion of the fat man. A well-read contributor of social media diatribes who signs himself or herself Advocatus Peregrini shouts his or her opinion from the rhetorical rooftop. He writes of the criminal defendant in Trial Chamber 1530—

“Talented and well-practiced in every vice, a stranger to compassion or empathy. A liar and a cheat so complete in perfidy that he has elevated his dishonesty to…ersatz moral principle. Violent, so long as he can order someone else to do the dirty work; grotesque in body, graceless in action; in possession of a wounded self-regard…treasonous, not only to country, but to every ally he has ever had…the poisoned fruit and rankest flower of racism and contempt for women…utterly devoid of shame.”

And yet, the U.S. presidential election come this November is virtually tied between the two candidates—President Joe Biden, standard bearer of the Democratic Party seeking a second four-year term, and the fat man, presumptive nominee of the Republican Party.

How can this be? How on Earth—either one—can half the electorate favor a man like Drowsy Don over the general decency of Joe Biden? An adjudicated sexual offender long before his current trial, a man who has paid millions of dollars in settlement of past fraud trials, over Joe Biden? How can this be?

Mr. or Ms. Advocatus Peregrini suggests that a mere trial such as the one ongoing in Manhattan Criminal Court will not answer such questions. Instead, he or she wishes us to consider that something has gone profoundly wrong. To those of Earth Two, Advocatus Peregrini writes of worshipping the cursed man who would be president again, God help us—

“He is your leader…to whom you give your money. That is who you follow and laud. That is whose banner you willingly carry. Why? Because he is a mirror, not a lighthouse. You see yourselves in him. He is what you would be, if you had inherited money and could shed the last vestiges of conscience and shame. …I do not ‘respect your choices,’ nor do I admire your loyalty and dedication to this miserific, demoniac vision. …[Y]ou will never, ever admit you were wrong because you see your dark, twisted, resentful dreams in him…and to renounce him is to renounce yourselves.”

•

Uptown at the skyscraper with the eponymous name of Trump Tower, topped off with Drowsy Don’s penthouse, commercial tenants are in flight and stock is running low at the gift shop once crowded with trinket-buying tourists. Residents of the building’s overpriced condominium apartments try their best to sell off their homes. A recent headline in Daily Kos, the online news magazine, read: TRUMP’S LANDMARK TOWER IS NOW A CHEAP, EMPTY, CLOSED-OFF NEW YORK EMBARRASSMENT.

Where once was a man living large, but now dying small.

And downtown, on a stretch of pavement outside the Manhattan Criminal Court, I saw two bent men struggling with a wind-whipped campaign banner in the name of the fat man. Two bent men in place of a promised throng. What does it mean?

I sense that it may represent hope.

** **

THOMAS ADCOCK’s journalism has been published in  American, Canadian, Mexican and European newspapers and magazines—as well as university publications in the United States. His magazine and newspaper career began at the Detroit Free Press. He has written for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Chicago Today, the Toronto Telegram, the New York Times, and the New York Law Journal. As U.S. correspondent for CulturMag, the international journal of art & commentary, he contributes essays on American politics and sociology. He is an editorial consultant to major New York corporations, and nonprofits engaged in social justice. As recipient of the Edgar Allan Poe Award, given by Mystery Writers of America, his novels have been published worldwide.

His website thomasadcockny.com here.

contact: tadcocknyc@gmail.com

All his posts with CulturMag here. His books: