HOW HE GETS AWAY WITH IT
By now, the number of people who have commented about how it is that one Donald J. Trump has Gotten Away With It since he hit a teacher in school at age 6 for questioning him, and was caught three years later throwing rocks at a toddler in a playpen next door, to the multitude of felonies and misdemeanors anyone who has paid attention the past 40 years has seen him commit and still avoid responsibility for so doing, now up to and including Conspiracy to Commit Seditious Treason, must be in the millions.
Last night, one of the commenters on one of the MSNBC shows (I think it was Lawrence’s) pointed out how Trump’s M.O. is to commit the crime in public, which leaves people thinking that It Can’t Be That Bad if he did it in public, since most criminals do their crimes outside the public view. Maybe it’s true that he’s dumb enough he doesn’t know it’s a crime?
Trust me, he wouldn’t fight as he does, like a cornered wildcat, Every Single Time his “privacy” is threatened with being breached and the contents made public, if he didn’t know that likely every single thing he has ever done in his life could land him in jail.
He’s been such a secretive mob boss that he rips up into pieces any paper on which he has written anything, once he has spoken about that thing to the others involved. He’s fighting like a cornered Sabre Tooth Tiger to keep the New York Attorney General away from a file cabinet in his office in Trump Tower, in which - it is believed - are dated files of signed Post-It notes he wrote, that will prove his involvement with crimes he has always heretofore been able to dance away from since there was no evidence he was directly involved.
We’ve now arrived at the point where the Supreme Court has said he has to turn over the documents he doesn’t want anyone reading, where the New York AG is closing in on that filing cabinet, and where the Fulton County District Attorney has requested impanelment of a special grand jury to investigate his attempt to tamper with the election in Georgia. Any one of these things could be The Thing that lands him in an orange jumpsuit in a windowless 8x10 for the rest of his worthless existence.
If you have any doubt of his criminality, consider that his long-time “accountant” Allen Weisselberg, and his son Eric, both invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 500 times EACH during their depositions in the New York civil case against the Trumps and their criminal empire, the Trump Organization. Eric knows there are bodies buried somewhere, and they might be in his back yard; Weisselberg helped dig the graves and shoveled the dirt back over them.
The Fulton County District Attorney requested the impaneling of the special grand jury due to the fact most of the people she has attempted to question about the events surrounding Trump’s search for “one more vote that makes us the winner” have refused to come in voluntarily and must be subpoenaed. Just like the minions in the 1/6 investigation.
The proper way of looking at Trump is as a wannabe Mafia mob boss, though one more like Fredo than Michael. Or at least, that is how he appears. See above - “He must just be stupid, because if he really knew it was a crime, he wouldn’t do it in public like that.” Consider that there is a good chance that act is a sign of his actually being a criminal genius.
The filing from the New York Attorney General lays out how he operates:
One of the most mind-boggling examples cited involves his triplex apartment in Trump Tower. The residence’s real size is 10,966 square feet—big for anyone in Manhattan by virtually any metric. But that apparently wasn’t enough for the man who regularly convinced Forbes that he was one of the “500 Richest Americans” when he was one of the “500 most in debt” real estate “moguls.” He claimed in financial disclosure forms that the apartment was actually 30,000 square feet (almost half an acre). That threefold multiplication of size allowed him to claim it was valued at roughly $327 million in 2016, which would literally make it the most expensive home in the Northern Hemisphere of the planet. Under questioning, Weisselberg conceded it was worth roughly $200 million less than Trump had claimed.
If Trump was trying to impress Stormy Daniels or brag to his business associates, it wouldn’t be a matter for state and local investigators. But Trump he listed that inflated value on a series of annual financial statements that he signed, which were given to “financial institutions, other lenders, and insurers in connection with Trump Organization business transactions,” according to the filing. Based on those numbers, Trump was able to secure more favorable loans and insurance rates for his property. The Attorney General didn’t say so, since this is a civil case, but those actions amount to financial fraud. A felony.
Some of his Do it In Front Of Everyone actions were more conspicuous than others. His Seven Springs property in Westchester County, was listed as the future site of nine luxury homes the Trump Organization would build there, to justify inflating its value from $80 million in 2004 to $291 million in 2012. Following an appraisal in 2016 that the property—including the still-unbuilt houses—had a value of $56 million, the company removed it from its financial statements. The Seven Springs process gives some insight into how the Trump Organization comes up with such far-fetched figures—but it also suggests that it may be hard to prosecute him for these particular schemes.
In both these cases, there is testimony from both the banks and the insurance company that these valuations were accepted on the word of Eric Trump that they were numbers that resulted from review by real estate professionals. No wonder the kid took the Fifth a record 500 times.
The filing stated: “Evidence indicates that Mr. Trump adopted a practice of preventing the creation of written records with regard to his development efforts at Seven Springs.” One witness told the Attorney General’s investigators that Trump told him that “he did not want things put in writing in communications between us.” Sheri Dillon, a tax attorney whose firm worked for Trump at the time, allegedly told people involved in the process to use phones whenever possible to “avoid creating discovery unnecessarily,” referring to the process by which other parties can obtain internal records during lawsuits. When email couldn’t be avoided, some of those involved were instructed to send a new one each time instead of replying in a thread, apparently to make it harder for law enforcement or an opposing litigant to piece together what had happened.
No wonder Fatso Fatass is fighting tooth and nail to protect that filing cabinet full of things written by him.
At the same time, the rest of the world has been trying to avoid knowledge of him and his political activities since he departed for exile in Florida. “Don’t amplify him” has been the Press’ rule for itself. However, this past weekend he surfaced in front of a crowd unlike any he’s conjured before, and he said and did things that are so far beyond what he had said before, so far beyond what any American politician has ever advocated, that it is hard to have the imagination to believe it’s really real.
We may not have been getting hit by his insane wackery with his “Tweets at 3 AM” like we used to, but the True Believers have heard every word over the past year.
To me, what was more amazing than Trump and his public display of bullshit last Saturday night was the parade of Completely Insane Morons who cosplayed their complete insanity in public for him. What is terrifying is that reporters say these people have a good chance of being elected in a general election to the offices for which they are running. I’ve seen a lot of insanity in Arizona over the years, but the thought that even the wackiest Arizonans I have known would vote for these lunatics is so hard for me to believe, that I have just demonstrated the problem that faces us.
It’s hard - damn hard! Very damn hard!! - to believe stuff like this is real, that it’s happening, and that people this obviously nuts could win in 2022 and pave the way for worse in 2024.
That inability to perceive that the threat is an Actual Threat is the common thread in all histories of fascism, of how the fascists obtained power. The people who lived in Berlin between 1928-32, who told my friend that he was “a crank” for seeing Hitler and the Nazis as the threat they really were, who called the Nazis “clowns,” weren’t morons, fools or idiots. Most of them were the complete opposite.
Trump’s trick is to be as brazen, as unscrupulous, as immoral, as evil and wicked as he actually is, right out in front of us in public.. That’s because no one living has ever seen that much brazen, unscrupulous, immoral, evil, wickedness on display. It is an absolutely normal reaction to say “no one could be that bad.” He must be play-acting, and too stupid to know how awful what he pretends to do is. That’s what we tell ourselves.
He is exactly what he appears to be. And those who fall for him, who want to carry out what he wants done, who want to follow him and cheer him on, are as irredeemably bad as they appear to be when they stand on the stage with him and say the things they do, or rise to their feet in the audience to applaud.
We’re like my sweet little Ginger, the best little boy who ever lived, who never met a human he didn’t like, anyone who didn’t love him when they met him. Until he followed his curiosity four years ago and accidentally got out of the house, and walked up to say “Hi!” to the predator that ate him.
We’ve never had a predator like Trump in our history. Which makes us just like the animals in the Florida Everglades who don’t realize the python they’re staring at is the mortal danger it is.
Until it’s too late.
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“When I came back, twelve years later, all my friends, who told me the Nazis were clowns, were dead. Killed by the clowns.”
Thank you so much for this post, TCinLA. Most everything you write about so well is known to those of us who have been breathing since the 70's. Especially, those of us who live near NYC and used to read the daily newspapers! My hair has been on fire about him as a so-called politician ever since he rode down the escalator and started behaving like a mob boss before a national audience. Before then, we had his number as a grifter, playboy, loudmouth, bankrupt businessman and all around lowlife who ruined the NYC skyline with his ugly building projects. When the Trump Organization asked us to provide an estimate to work at Seven Springs (which is just down the road), I visited the estate just to see it. (I admired the previous owner and the estate's history.) But, the word on the street was that you wouldn't get paid by Trump. Or, you would get paid a fraction of what you billed. So, believe me, I am cheering on Letitia James. All I see when I look at Trump is a cornered, snarling rat with sharp teeth whose jaws are open and ready to bite. Pundits are now raising the possibility that if he declares he's running for office in 2024, he can't be prosecuted now for any of the crimes he's committed. We'll see how that plays out. Personally, I'm shocked by the past year's inaction and bewildered by the fact that he's not in an orange jumpsuit.
Agree with your other admirers, thank you! Also a big thanks for recommending "Matinee," which I found on Amazon for a pittance. In a funk yesterday, I watched it with delight, having lived through the Cuban missile crisis when we seriously thought we were close to annihilation. But so few airplanes, TC! I spotted only two. Anyway, it lived up to your rave. My favorite line: "There's no First Amendment in the Ten Commandments, pal." Hilarious.