top of page

Ancient

925 Silver Collection

His Days Spent Gagging in Court

By DeWitt Cheng


IT TOOK TWO DAYS IN A FREEZING MANHATTAN COURTROOM TO ZERO IN ON THE CORRECT DOSAGE FOR A PATIENT WITH ELEVATED CAFFEINE ONSET THRESHOLD (ECOT).

A gibe at Dozy Don’s Manhattan courtroom naps, no doubt because he is unable to get 12 oz. of Diet Coke per hour, as he did in the Oval Office. He has at least retained the Coke button used to summon body man Walt Nauta in the good old days. In Jean Cocteau’s “Orpheus” movies, Death and dead persons have open eyes painted on their eyelids, a simple ‘practical’ special effect that works surprisingly well. This is all the doing of the head of the Biden Crime Family.



A BORED 45 ESCAPES INTO WEIRD REVERIE DURING OPENING ARGUMENTS. WHAT IS YOUR SAFE PLACE? “I ALONE CAN FIXZZZZZ IT.”

Trump’s courtroom napping reminded me of the pretended catatonia of Norman Bates at the end of Hitchcock’s “Psycho.” Then there was Mike Pence’s famous armchair nap seated next to Trump, and his ignoring a housefly on his head during the debate with Kamala Harris. “The mind is its own place” is quoted from Satan’s soliloquy in hell from Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Barr, nominally Epstein’s jailer, join 45 in his padded cell, where they are equally at home if for different reasons.



“CONGRATULATIONS’ ON GREAT AWAKENING, SIR! TRUMP REALIZES THAT HIS POOR BEHAVIOR IN COURT JEOPARDIZES ATTENDANCE AT BARRON’S HIGH-SCHOOL GRADUATION.

Trump’s lawyer pleading that his client is a husband, father, and ordinary man like the rest of us must have occasioned serious smirking in the courtroom after eight years of nasty messianic bluster. I imagine that this bad dad par excellence can finally see himself clearly as a victim of his own father’s sociopathy, and has repented tearfully. Kurosawa fans may remember that the Toshiro Mifune character in “The Seven Samurai” had a somewhat different realization while saving the orphaned baby of a slain peasant couple.



INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE BACKFIRES, STALLS: “OH, MY OFFENSE IS RANK. IT SMELLS TO HEAVEN. O WRETCHED STATE! O BOSOM BLACK AS DEATH!”

Trump the tormented, flatulent Shakespearean usurper and murderer of Hamlet, III.3. But we will find no remorse in this courtroom, only capital letters, misspellings, and violations of the gag order.



INSOLENT BAGGAGE. TRUMP EXITS. YOU HAVE DELIGHTED US LONG ENOUGH, SIR.

The grande luggage, available from some Trump partner, seemed perfect as a symbol of all the criminal baggage that Trump has carried for fifty-odd years. “Insolent baggage” was a term of gentlemanly abuse leveled by Victorian aristocrats against those who failed to show proper deference to their social betters. Lincoln looks on as secret papers and money leak from among the insolent thief’s badly packed souvenirs.



IT HAS TO BE VLAD’S HEAVY RUSSIAN TAKEOUT FOOD. MELANIA  ARRIVES AT RIKERS TOO LATE FOR CONJUGAL VISIT, HER NAPOLEON HAS DOZED OFF. BUT NO ONE DARES TO TELL HIS GREATNESS; IT HAS SLIPPED HIS MIND, ANYWAY.

Trump’s heroic, masterly image came a-cropper with reports of his nodding off in court — and worse of noisy, foul smelling farting, though the media seem reluctant to dwell on that. The mentally incompetent former president no doubt believes himself to be Napoleon who, like other lunatics, misses his Josephine because of a heavy lunch. His “sarcastic, joking” book, “I Did It,” released during the week of O.J. Simpson’s death, lies open on the floor beside a neoclassical bust of his great mentor, Vlad the Wailer. Politics junkies will recall that aides removed official papers from the Resolute Desk before Donny could sign them. And he never found out until their books came out.



DeWitt Cheng is an art writer/critic based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has written for more than twenty years for regional and national publications, in print and online, He has written dozens of catalogue essays for artists, galleries and museums, and is the author of “Inside Out: The Paintings of William Harsh.” In addition, he served as the curator at Stanford Art Spaces from 2013 to 2016, and later Peninsula Museum of Art, from 2017 to 2020.
bottom of page