Follow the Money

 

“Democracies survive when all major players respect the ground rules. They crumble when significant players start to flout those rules -- and get away with it.” Sasha Abramsky, The Nation

Trump’s up, Biden’s down, Trump’s down, Biden’s up. The election will be a nail biter. It will be a blowout, a landslide for Biden because the overwhelming majority of the American people reject Donald J. Trump and the Trumpism Project. Trump is desperate for a close contest so he can challenge the results and possibly kick the final decision on the outcome to the Supreme Court. This partly explains why Trump is hellbent on ramming another product of The Federalist Society through the Senate confirmation process and onto the court, pronto.  Even though conservatives enjoy a clear majority on the Court, Trump’s not willing to gamble. Maybe that majority isn’t as solidly pro-Trump as we are led to believe. How many times has the most despicable bottom feeder turned and snapped at the hand that once elevated and supported it? 

Have you ever wondered what Putin and Trump spoke about when they met behind closed doors with only their translators present? I assume both sides have recordings. In Helsinki they met for a couple of hours, before emerging so Trump could tell the world that when it came to Russian interference in the 2016 election, he believed Putin over his own intelligence agencies. That should have spelled the end of Trump, right then and there. It would have ended the run of every other president since 1960. It was one of the first significant shocks of the Trump reign, an admission totally against the grain, but I don’t remember many ex-generals and Secretaries of State or Defense, former FBI and NSA and CIA Directors, losing their shit when Trump sucked up to Putin before the entire world. The spectacle was written off as Trump refusing to follow the norms of his office and the advice of people who know fifty times more than he does. 

Does Putin call the president, Donald? Do they have a secret handshake shared by grifters the world over? Is Trump in love with Putin? Is a desperate longing for the embrace of another man what lies at the center of Trump’s sociopathy?

Trump doesn’t let pesky details get in his way; he’s a “big picture” guy. 

As far as I know, Putin doesn’t play golf and Donald J. Trump doesn’t ride horses. (Frankly, the visual of Donald J. Trump attempting to climb, or be lifted by crane, onto a horse’s back is priceless.) So, what did these two men talk about in Helsinki, why has nothing been reported about it, and what have Putin and Trump talked about since? Does Putin call the president, Donald? Do they have a secret handshake shared by grifters the world over? Is Trump in love with Putin? Is a desperate longing for the embrace of another man what lies at the center of Trump’s sociopathy? Is he a self-loathing homosexual? Does that explain why an obese, weak, ignorant and cowardly old man goes overboard on displays of masculinity and menace? Or why he’s always threatening women who don’t stand for his bullshit? Pundits frequently tell us that Trump is projecting who he is on the rest of us. Why does Trump always pose before mammoth trucks, hold rallies using Air Force One as a backdrop, salute the military even though every active duty military member knows what Trump thinks about them? (Suckers. Losers.) Is Trump’s need for big toys, glittering women, and endless adulation all because he had a shattering, unrequited homosexual love affair at the New York Military Academy? Is reliving that experience -- those fleeting moments in the communal showers after lights’ out, when for the only time in his entire existence did Trump feel the stirrings of love and connection with another person -- the reason he’s up at all hours whining and bitching and spreading lies on Twitter? Because he lost his one chance at happiness? Because the one time his penis and his brain gave him diametrically opposed messages both happened to be true? That neither penis or brain were untruthful, was, and is, the torment. Trump’s brain screamed, “These feelings can’t be real!” while his erect penis answered back, “No, Donald, they are very real.” Donald buried the experience deep, under glitz and glitter and self-aggrandizing behavior, and it rarely surfaced until now, when the entire Donald J. Trump Show looks like being cancelled due to ridiculous storylines, bad writing, cardboard characters, incompetent directing and low approval ratings. Trump never bought the idea that truth, about anything, but in particular about himself, would free him. No, Trump believes a real man buries his deepest fears, regrets, lost opportunities, missed chances, failures, missteps, and feelings in the footings of a skyscraper. 

Follow the money. Follow the money. Follow the money. The key to who Trump is and what he does resides in his income tax returns, and that’s why he has battled for years to keep them away from public scrutiny. Recent reporting by the New York Times points to what a number of smart people, including the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Cay Johnston, who for years opined that Donald Trump is a tax evader, a tax fraud, and a business failure who isn’t anywhere near as wealthy as he claims. According to reporting by the Times, Trump is hundreds of million of dollars in debt.  He’s not a business wizard. He’s just a common white collar criminal. 

Trump will attack the New York Times, call for whoever leaked his tax information to be executed, and demand William Barr make the whole mess disappear down the memory hole. He’ll whine about being treated unfairly. We’ve seen this show many times, and it gets no better with repetition.