Great news, MAGAs! Devoted family man Donald Trump will be allowed to attend his son Barron’s high school graduation after all! This is what y’all wanted, right? Even if Trump himself didn’t. In fact, what Trump really wanted to do the day of his son’s commencement was pull in some serious cash at a fundraiser, and so … that’s exactly what he’s doing. Maybe he thought no one would notice.
Weeks after Trump bitterly (and dishonestly) complained that Judge Juan Merchan, who’s presiding over Trump’s hush money trial in New York, was refusing to allow him to attend his son Barron’s graduation—even though a decision hadn’t yet been made—Merchan delivered the worst news Trump’s gotten since McDonald’s stopped cooking its fries in beef tallow: Court would be out of session on May 17 to allow Trump to attend the ceremony.
Trump is clearly delighted. So delighted, in fact, that he’s celebrating with a small coterie of his closest friends—i.e., anyone shameless and venal enough to spend $100,000 on a table within suck-up range of America’s most notorious sexual-assaulting, document-stealing insurrectionist. If Barron wants to see his dad—from a distance, of course—he can cough up 15 large for a loser-adjacent “State Host Table.”
While it’s unclear if this fundraiser will prevent Trump from attending Barron’s commencement—the event is scheduled for a 5 PM CT start in Minnesota, so at the very least Merchan’s kind gesture has paved the way for an extra day of grifting—it does call into question his devotion to his son. Barron’s graduation is scheduled for 10 AM ET in Florida, but if Trump does show up, he’ll need to cut the photo sessions, well wishes, and any celebratory dinner short so he can spend some quality time with his real family: obscenely greedy plutocrats who have so much extra money they can afford to hand it over to a confirmed business fraud who continues to insist he’s a multibillionaire even as he begs old ladies to send him their Social Security checks.
Of course, there’s something particularly delicious about all this. Weeks ago, Trump and his followers cynically used the fact that Merchan hadn’t yet made a decision on pausing the trial to pretend Trump was, once again, being brutally persecuted—you know, kind of like when Trump absurdly alleged he wasn’t being allowed to testify in his own defense.
On April 15, shortly after his trial began, Trump groused about the tribulations surrounding his trial.
“I was looking forward to that graduation, with his mother and father there, and it looks like the judge does not allow me to escape this scam,” he whined.
Trump was even more stable-y and genius-y later in the day on Goof Social, regaling all fair-minded Americans with this lachrymose ode to his cherished son:
Of course, Trump’s whining perfectly fit his M.O.: make wild accusations and baseless appeals to low-information voters who are enraged that the legal system is working exactly as designed and intended. He probably raised beaucoup bucks from MAGAs who are somehow under the delusion that Trump could pick Barron out of a lineup if he wasn’t a nearly 7-foot-tall man with a younger iteration of Trump’s own face. Then reality hit Trump like a goose flying into Fabio’s head on a roller coaster—he could attend that graduation after all. And when he heard the good news, he apparently rushed to find a great graduation present find a fundraiser to attend as part of his historic campaign to stay out of prison.
In fact, Trump’s performative mewling on this issue perfectly illustrates who he is: the most persecuted and put-upon man in the history of the planet, according to him. After all, this is the same guy who once tried to blame his business failures on three Trump executives who’d previously died in a helicopter crash.
“I didn’t like working somebody who would blame dead men for his problems,” said John “Jack” O’Donnell, another Trump executive. “I didn’t like anything about his character as it developed over time there. I didn’t like anything morally about him. I got to know he was just a facade. This wasn’t a brilliant businessman.”
This is also the same guy who tried to pretend he was a man of the people by claiming he’d helped with the hands-on response to 9/11.
In other words, Trump rarely misses a grifting opportunity—whether it be large, small, or downright picayune. And he’ll use anyone or anything to dishonestly push his preferred narrative, including his newly adult son.
Unfortunately, he may have really stepped in it this time. Because now, after screeching for weeks about the unfairness of it all, if Trump doesn’t show his face at Barron’s graduation, his supporters will surely notice—those supporters being Melania and Barron Trump. The rest will be too busy checking out the value of their Trump Superman NFTs to take note or remotely give a shit.
That said, his fans really need to be more careful about the dishonest crusades they choose to launch on Dear Leader’s behalf. They might as well agitate for Trump’s right to go on a Hamptons antiquing weekend with Tiffany. Or maybe they’ll circulate an angry petition demanding Judge Merchan suspend court proceedings so Trump can spend National Golf Day in church praying for the peaceful repose of Herman Cain’s soul. After all, the only thing preventing Trump from becoming the sincere, loving, fiercely loyal family man he was always meant to be is this out-of-control, Trump-hating judge.
It’s so clear, isn’t it? If only all we Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers would just open our jaundiced eyes.
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