Clown hall: Be wary of Trump’s attempts to drown us in bluster

There’s an episode in the cult classic TV show “Arrested Development” where character Michael Bluth finds a paper bag in the fridge labeled “Dead dove, do not eat,” opens it, and, after an initial shock, muses “I don’t know what I expected.” This is more or less our reaction to Wednesday night’s CNN town hall with Donald Trump.

The former president lied repeatedly about his defeat in the fair 2020 election, defended the Jan. 6 insurrection, mocked columnist E. Jean Carroll — whom a jury found Trump guilty of sexually abusing in a verdict handed down just the day before — and jeered at moderator Kaitlan Collins, whose efforts to fact-check the wannabe strongman were like slapping a Band-Aid on an AR-15 exit wound. What were we expecting?

This is Trump, always has been, always will be. He’s craven, crass, preternaturally insecure, and above all else, interested exclusively in the power and adoration he believes will remedy that insecurity, no matter the cost to anyone else, including his own supporters, who get tossed under the bus more often than juice boxes on field trip day. Not that the message got across to the cheering crowd of GOP primary voters in the New Hampshire town hall, who like the rest of his base confuse his performance with authenticity and against all available evidence believe him on their side.

The circus was just a taste of what’s to come as the Republican primary season heats up. The spectacle is certainly irresistible, the morbid comedy of it all very real, but we can’t forget that what undergirds it is real danger. Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic can be measured in cost to human lives. The results of his indifference to Puerto Ricans in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, or asylum seekers at the border, or countless other groups that wouldn’t net him votes or personal enrichment are long-lasting.

Always a showman, Trump knew in 2016 that he could coast on his bombast as the media short-circuited. We can’t make that mistake again.