The recent New York County trial against Donald Trump put Trump Derangement Syndrome on full display. Hollywood actor Robert De Niro ranted against Trump outside the courtroom so badly, including calling him a “monster,” that the National Association of Broadcasters rescinded an award it planned to give De Niro.
The trial was a “show trial” designed to influence public opinion and cripple Trump’s campaign, but has failed badly at that. The trial charade has not fooled the American public, and he broke the one-day fundraising record with small donors due to this absurd verdict.
The liberal media chants “34 counts,” without disclosing that the counts are merely cut-and-pastes of each other concerning a minor bookkeeping detail in how an expense was labeled. The court set the sentencing date for July 11, which conflicts with activities related to the Republican National Convention, where Trump will be nominated for president.
This was merely an invented crime that never would have been prosecuted against anyone other than Trump. There was no violation of any election law, and the biased judge wrongly excluded the expert on federal election law from testifying to that at trial.
Yet the unrestrained, unapologetic derangement that flails against Trump can be seen raging against other innocent victims now, too. This is a potent mix of animosity and jealousy that causes bizarre outbursts of cheap shots and misconduct toward its targets.
Professional sports are supposed to be an example of sportsmanship, but emotional attacks have spread to women's basketball where the victim there is Caitlin Clark. Like the unreasonable animus towards Trump, several other players in the league appear to hate her for just being who she is.
Who Clark is includes winning twice the national women’s college player of the year, outdrawing the NBA championship games in television audience, and being drafted #1 by the WNBA. After becoming the greatest female college basketball player ever, Clark is like the goose that laid the golden eggs in Aesop's Fable, whom all of women’s basketball should be applauding and respecting.
Clark, like Trump, represents hard work and success based on merit, and her remarkable diligence and devotion have already lifted women’s basketball enormously. Like Trump making our country great again, Clark has the potential to make women’s basketball great again (or maybe for the first time).
Yet other professional women’s basketball players have been taking cheap shots at her on the court, and even cheering each other on in doing so. On Saturday one opponent knocked her to the floor from behind, with a surprise blow that left Clark unable to defend herself, and another opposing player appeared to cheer this.
The referees, refusing to rein in the derangement syndrome, declined to assess a significant foul for this despite the team’s request for review. The perpetrator was merely assessed an away-from-the-ball common foul during the game, rather than a technical or flagrant foul.
This and other cheap shots against Caitlin Clark by other players have created a crisis. WNBA league officials so far have done nothing meaningful to punish the bad behavior toward Clark, except on Sunday in response to widespread public outrage the WNBA did belatedly recategorize this as a flagrant-1 violation.
Contrast this with the NFL, which quickly comes down hard on any player who inflicts harm on another player contrary to the rules of the game. The NFL suspends and even bans players who perpetrate cheap shots, which of course can injure other players.
But not the WNBA, which seems just fine with Caitlin Clark Derangement Syndrome. Media criticism of misconduct by women’s athletes has been rare in the past, as though it is politically incorrect to apply the same standards to female athletes that apply to male athletes.
Clark makes only $76,535 in salary a year, plus endorsements, to take this abuse, and could be earning many times that by playing in the women’s basketball league in Europe. Other American women are playing in that league now.
The liberal media runs big headlines when NFL football players sometimes misbehave, even when the misconduct is entirely off-the-field as part of their private lives. Yet only a few media outlets, such as the New York Post, hold female athletes accountable for their bad behavior.
Even liberal comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who once boycotted a Trump charity golf event because of his dislike of Trump, recently announced that he misses the “dominant masculinity” that existed in the past in American culture. A masculine culture would discredit and reject the senseless emotional outbursts.
Trump has to fight derangement syndrome every day; it’s encouraging how strongly the American public has opposed similar attacks against Caitlin Clark. Trump should invite her to the White House on January 20th.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.