'Huckster and conman': Analyst says trials are stage for Trump's 'hustler-like abilities'

There is a method to the madness behind former President Donald Trump's antics around his impending criminal trials, argued Salon writer Gregg Barak on Friday — it's his innate confidence man skills at play.

"Trump’s unique ability to acquire power, even after losing the 2020 presidential election and his failed coup two months later, came from his perseverance and expertise as a huckster and conman, along with his uncanny ability over decades to double down on corruption, lawlessness, and deception," wrote Barak.

In particular, he continued, Trump understands, "The usefulness of tabloid journalism, labeling, branding, and social media combined with his innate talent for self-promotion."

The former president, he said, is using his "shrewd salesmanship and hustler-like abilities to alter the social realities for tens of millions of Americans" — and he is using the public stage of the four criminal cases against him, plus the civil fraud case in New York, to air his grievances and put the system on trial.

But there is a darker side of Trump's tactics that goes beyond the public strategy, Barak continued.

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Trump's ability to escape criminal prosecution up to now, he said, "Is captured best in the various struggles to impeach and/or criminalize the ex-president, who is only three months away from Super Tuesday and on the road to securing the 2024 GOP nomination for president.

"I am referring to Trump’s acute abilities to corral and maximize economic and political power, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to his mobster like proclivities for corrupting, fixing, resisting, and intimidating not only ordinary people, politicians, victims, witnesses, and jurors, but even those members from law enforcement and the judicial communities."

And in some ways, he wrote, this is actually standard in the justice system — the rich and powerful use their inroads to get special treatment constantly, however much Americans like to pretend it isn't so.

With Trump now finally facing the legal system in earnest, Barak concluded, it is time to answer the question: “How long would it take for a twice impeached Commander-in-Chief undergoing a countless number of criminal and civil charges including stealing highly classified documents from the United States and a presidential election from the American people, before he would finally be charged and held accountable for at least one of his dozens of serious felonies?”

This answer he said, can only come once the verdicts of these trials are handed down.