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Stephen H. Provost is an author of paranormal adventures and historical non-fiction. “Memortality” is his debut novel on Pace Press, set for release Feb. 1, 2017.
An editor and columnist with more than 30 years of experience as a journalist, he has written on subjects as diverse as history, religion, politics and language and has served as an editor for fiction and non-fiction projects. His book “Fresno Growing Up,” a history of Fresno, California, during the postwar years, is available on Craven Street Books. His next non-fiction work, “Highway 99: The History of California’s Main Street,” is scheduled for release in June.
For the past two years, the editor has served as managing editor for an award-winning weekly, The Cambrian, and is also a columnist for The Tribune in San Luis Obispo.
He lives on the California coast with his wife, stepson and cats Tyrion Fluffybutt and Allie Twinkletail.
Ruminations and provocations.
Filtering by Tag: Anderson Cooper
By taking Trump seriously — whether it’s because he’s the president or because we don’t want to look petty ourselves — we make him appear credible. And he’s not. We shouldn’t treat him like he is.
Read MoreIt’s no wonder Donald Trump chose Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz to represent him at his impeachment trial.
These men are two peas in a pod. Trump personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, is more of an attack dog in the Trump mold, but beyond that surface similarity, Trump and Dershowitz have far more in common, and it runs to the core of who both men are.
It turns out, Trump and Dershowitz have quite a lot in common. Consider the following:
They both trample on the truth. Trump has done so more than 15,000 times since taking office, according to The Washington Post. And Dershowitz? Consider this gem: “The courtroom oath — to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth — is applicable only to witnesses... because the American justice system is built on a foundation of not telling the whole entire truth.” When Dershowitz said this, he basically admitting he has no obligation to tell the whole truth. Which pretty much shoots his credibility. Of course, lawyers and politicians are both notorious for spinning the facts to benefit their own interests. In a list of 15 professions in a 2018 Gallup poll ranked lawyers 12th and members of Congress 15th (politicians) sandwiched around business executives and car dealers. But that’s just the beginning of the common ground between Trump and Dershowitz.
They don’t care what the experts think. Trump thinks he knows more about war than four-star generals and doesn’t believe climate change is a problem, even though nearly every scientist says it is. Dershowitz, meanwhile, disagrees with the overwhelming majority of legal scholars who say impeachment does not require a statutory crime. His response, when confronted with this fact? “Most of the scholars disagree with me. I think they’re wrong.”
They hate admitting mistakes. Or apologizing. Trump hardly ever does (the rare exception being his televised apology for disgusting remarks made on an Access Hollywood tape). When confronted about his own record, Dershowitz tries to dance around the subject like, well, a lawyer. In 1998, he argued that abuse of trust was impeachable; in 2020, he said it wasn’t. When Anderson Cooper asked him if he’d been wrong before, he answered, “No, I wasn’t wrong.” He would say he was “much more correct right now.” People averse to admitting mistakes have one thing in common: egos. The big kind. The fragile kind.
They love the spotlight. Most presidents do, to be sure. But most presidents don’t put their names on hotels. And while we’re at it, can you name another chief executive who has used $60,000 donated for charity to buy a portrait of himself? Dershowitz’s actions speak louder than his words. He’s drawn to cable news broadcasts like the Mothman to a disaster waiting to happen. Like Trump, a former reality TV host, Dershowitz loves those cameras. And he also loves those high-profile clients that ensure he stays in the headlines: O.J. Simpson. Jim Bakker. Michael Milken. Jeffrey Epstein. ’Nuff said.
They associate with shady characters. In Trump’s case, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Rick Gates... In the case of Dershowitz, see the list directly above (which actually makes Trump’s bunch seem tame by comparison). These were, of course, not personal friends, but clients. Still, lawyers such as Dershowitz don’t have to take such cases. Why choose clients like these? Why not let the public defender do it? Because... see above: Ego. Spotlight.
They defy common sense. Trump uses a mix of intimidation, media marketing and hot-button topics like immigration, religious issues and gun rights. Dershowitz does it through legal arguments that make no sense. According to Dershowitz, a mixed motive is not corrupt. But that’s what “corrupt” means! If you put arsenic in a glass of milk, you’ve corrupted it. The milk is still there, but the whole mixture is toxic because you’ve added the poison. Put it another way: Dershowitz and the president’s legal team argued that a president can’t be impeached if he has a mixed motive. So, if someone steals a car because his mom needs a ride to the supermarket... that must be OK.
They shatter norms. Trump’s all about doing things his way: traditional standards be damned. (This is ironic when you think about it, since the Constitution is the ultimate traditional standard in American secular life.) Trump pulls out of treaties, sends unappointed cronies to foreign countries to dig up bullshit on political opponents, and governs by Twitter. You get the idea. Dershowitz, meanwhile, suggests that it’s impossible to impeach a president who does something underhanded to get elected. Why? Because the president thinks his election is in the public interest! And if he thinks so, it must be true, right?
They love to fight. And not just fight, but fight for extreme positions. As Laurence Tribe, another Harvard legal mind, said of Dershowitz: “He revels in taking positions that ultimately are not just controversial but pretty close to indefensible.” Sound like someone else you know? Former Trump publicist Alan Marcus told Politico: “If he’s not in a fight, he looks for one. He can’t stop.” And the more outrageous Trump’s position, the more people will criticize him, and the more he can...
They play the victim. Trump is the all-time champ in this department, with his absurd claim that “no politician in history — and I say this with great surety — has been treated worse or more unfairly” than he has. By playing the victim, he gains sympathy from his followers, and suggests any attack on him is an attack on them, too. It’s been an effective strategy. And Dershowitz? When Anderson Cooper and Jeffrey Toobin dared to challenge his “great and unmatched wisdom” (oops, sorry, that’s Trump’s phrase, not Dershowitz’s) on CNN, he accused them of being “two bullies.” Or maybe they were doing their job.
They claim to be something they’re not. Trump, a billionaire, the champion of the common man? This is a guy who spent $25 million to settle a lawsuit alleging he’d defrauded students who signed up for his non-accredited Trump University. A guy who violated the National Labor Relations Act by refusing to bargain with union workers at his Las Vegas hotel. I could go on. Trump the champion of churches? Yes, Trump belonged to a church New York City church in the mid-2000s, but the pastor didn’t see him there once in five years. Dershowitz, for his part, calls himself “a Hillary Clinton liberal Democrat.” Yet he’s called gun-control advocates “foolish liberals” and used a nonsensical argument to immunize presidents from oversight. Unchecked power is seldom, if ever, any friend of liberalism. I doubt anyone would have called King George’s lawyers liberals if they’d sued the rebellions colonies for breach of contract.
