The Daily Fuckup

A progressive daily ledger of Trump-world self-owns, legal pain, policy blowback, and bad-faith chaos.

Edition · November 23, 2023

The Daily Fuckup: November 23, 2023 Edition

Trump spent Thanksgiving Eve doing what he does best: turning a legal mess into a self-inflicted public-relations fire. In New York, a judge asked an appeals court to keep the muzzle on after a fresh court filing detailed a flood of threats and harassment tied to Trump’s attacks on the judge and his staff. The same day, Trump went on the record with a holiday message that read less like a candidate and more like a guy trying to get the citation counts up.

On November 23, 2023, the Trump legal machine gave New York judges another reason to lock the doors. A court filing seeking to preserve the limited gag order in the civil fraud case laid out the threats and abuse that had followed Trump’s online attacks on the judge and his clerk, while Trump himself used Thanksgiving to keep the rage machine humming. It was a clean, ugly example of the campaign’s central pathology: every restraint becomes a grievance, and every grievance becomes more evidence for the next restraint.

Closing take

The throughline here is simple: Trump keeps mistaking discipline for weakness, and the courts keep treating his rhetoric like the public-safety problem it has become. On a day when most political operations were quieting down for the holiday, his was still manufacturing fresh material for judges, opponents, and voters who are sick of the chaos. That is not a strategy. It is a recurring ethics complaint with better branding.

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Court Filing Cites Threats and Harassment After Trump’s Attacks on Engoron and His Clerk

Threats and gag order Confidence 5/5
★★★★☆Fuckup rating 4/5 Serious fuckup

New York court officials asked an appeals court on Nov. 23, 2023, to keep gag-order restrictions in place while Donald Trump’s challenge was pending, citing threats and harassment aimed at Judge Arthur Engoron and his principal law clerk. The request came after an Oct. 3 gag order, a Nov. 3 supplemental order, and a temporary pause issued Nov. 16, all in response to Trump’s public criticism of court staff.

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