Adjudicating Donald Trump
Adjudicating Donald Trump
Holding charismatic characters accountable
AS A COUNTRY, we’re wrestling with how to hold people accountable – especially the rich and famous – for abusing their power, for behaving as if rules don’t apply to them. In America, recent roads to accountability might begin in the professional or political spheres, such as losing a job or an election, but more often than not they end in court. Bernie Madoff. Tom DeLay. Harvey Weinstein. Celebrity parents paying bribes to get their kids into college. Yesterday we witnessed an unprecedented event: a former commander-in-chief indicted, charged with 34 felonies. An exceptional turn of irony for a president whose campaign rallies have long featured chants to “lock up” his political opponents.
At Literary Citizen, we turn to fiction to make sense of moments like this. With its remove from reality, fiction defamiliarizes the world and allows us to more objectively consider moral questions. This is what Stacey D’Erasmo has done with her newest novel The Complicities. It’s a fictionalized re-telling of the fallout from Bernie Madoff’s Wall Street Ponzi scheme that bilked billions of dollars from tens of thousands of people. It’s also an exploration of who must pay, and how much, for individual and shared wrongs.
Critically, The Complicities is told from the wife’s point of view. Suzanne is the fictional equivalent of Ruth Madoff, and we learn about her own journey alongside stories about her husband Alan gathered from his closest associates. At the novel’s opening, Suzanne has already divorced Alan, moved to the Cape, reverted to her maiden name, and changed her hair. She seems to us still stunned by all that has happened – that her husband was responsible for such terrible financial crimes, and that he thought she knew exactly what he was up to. How much Suzanne did or did not know, and how culpable she is for Alan’s past and future actions, is at the core of the story.
Suzanne makes Alan out to be a lot like Donald Trump. Mostly unmoved by the idea of accountability, at least for themselves, they’re larger-than-life personalities who believe their cunning and brilliance puts them above societal rules and legalities. In fiction, charismatic characters like these are “the sorts of people who force you to think about them,” the writer Charles Baxter says. They cast a spell on their followers, exert a kind of psychological grip.
“The audience members, and there must always be an audience, lean forward toward the person addressing them,” Baxter says. “And from their expectant expressions, you can tell that they're transfixed by the words that are somehow running parallel along with the charismatic figure’s physical presence. You asked questions, here, at last, are the answers.”
These kinds of characters demand to tell their own stories. They pontificate, obfuscate, spin. They grab microphones, hold press conferences to extol their own virtues and rail against their enemies. But here’s the most important thing: “In stories,” Baxter says, “the person afflicted with viewing or experiencing the charisma is at least as important as the charismatic figure. Only Ishmael can tell us about Ahab and the whale. Only Nick Caraway can narrate what happens to Gatsby. Same thing is true of Thomas Stupen in Faulkner’s Absalom Absalom, you need some distance and perspective to get the story down on paper.”
This is a reassuring thought. Yes, in our former president we have a ruthlessly charismatic character viewed by some as a charlatan and others as a truth-telling savior. But the stories we tell about Trump – especially with benefit of time and wisdom – are more revealing than anything he could say himself, in front of news cameras or on the stand. The power is now with us, the people, the voters. Power is embedded in our imperfect system that nonetheless provides pathways to accountability. This week’s arrest is a level-setting moment. When it matters most, Trump is no different from any of us. Even Mitch McConnell agrees: "President Trump is still liable for everything he did while in office," McConnell said following the events of January 6, 2021. "He didn't get away with anything yet. We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation."
In the third act of The Complicities, Suzanne’s actions, not Alan’s, result in terrible consequences. She continues to believe she is Alan’s victim, but her hold is slipping. A revealing conversation with Alan’s lawyer/business partner:
“But how could I have known that?” Why were we even talking about money at such a terrible time?
“How could you not? Who do you think you are?”
“I’m different now.”
“What, you live in some little shit town and you don’t dye your hair? That’s different? We all lived off the fat of the land for a long time, Suzanne. You, too. And one day the bill came due. You just didn’t want to pay it. What’s so different about that?”
The bill is coming due. For Trump, for all of us as citizens of this constitutional democracy. Alleged misdeeds – albeit those arguably less consequential than fomenting insurrection – will have their day in court.
But will this lead to restitution? Redemption? Is our system capable of being clear-eyed about a polarizing presidency and public figure? In The Complicities, both Alan and Suzanne find a kind of peace, albeit agonizing, and as with any true compromise, no one is happy with the outcome. We can’t predict the results of Trump’s indictment. But yesterday’s events opened a path toward fairness, and in 2023, that is a plot worth honoring.