Trump Sits in a Cell Already
(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)
Many westerns start with a scene where the main character has been found guilty of a heinous crime and sits in a cell, awaiting his hanging. He can hear the hammering of the men who are building the gallows and when he gets up he can see the contraption coming together through a small window. The convicted murderer, bank robber or horse thief is never hanged, because that would make for a very short movie, but he is usually saved by a beautiful young woman who believes in his innocence and sets out to prove it, after which they happily ride off into the sunset together. Sitting in the Oval Office Trump can hear the hammering of the men who are building the stands for Biden’s inauguration. Like those innocent convicts in westerns it drives him nuts, and for him the equivalent of maintaining his innocence is incessantly tweeting in all caps that he won the election. On top of that his campaign is filing – and losing – lawsuits in five states, which the courts are throwing out faster than an exterminator can kill a litter of mice. And with Rudy Giuliani, who has not litigated since 1992, now in charge of the president’s legal strategy that speed will most likely go up.
Although largely caused by Trump’s mental disorder which makes it impossible for him to accept defeat some pundits see a rational side to his behavior too. By pretending that he won’t leave the White House the president would be trying to keep his base motivated for the Georgia runoffs for two Senate seats, although one can wonder if Trump gives a hoot about the composition of the Senate after January 5th and will keep up appearances after Biden has been declared President-Elect on December 14th. More likely is that he wants to keep control of his electorate to be a Republican king maker in future elections and to run again in 2024, unless he yields that honor to his idiot daughter Ivanka. Maybe more importantly, when his presidency is over Trump will need a shitload of money to pay off at least $400 million in debt, and he will milk his followers for every penny they have via a streaming service where he can deceive them 24/7. At a MAGA rally in DC last Saturday thousands of Trump fans came to show their colors, inspiring Kayleigh McEnany, the incarnation of a Hatch-act violation, to mistake them for more than one million.
Today the president will have to decide if he’s willing to pony up $8 million for a second recount of votes in Wisconsin. Because Trump is losing money in business ventures on at least two continents the presidency and his campaign have become his main sources of income, and for this decision a thorough cost-benefit analysis is required, considering that the outcome of the election won’t change but that it will show him as still fighting for ‘justice’ in the eyes of the most devoted members of his cult. The money would be better spent than his investment in GOP convention fireworks but the president probably prefers to put it in his own pocket.
At a meeting with top advisors Trump was talked out of attacking Iran’s main nuclear site, but the fact that he even considered it illustrates his two tiered pattern of malfeasance: first there was collusion with Russia in the 2016 election and then he conspired with Ukrainian hoodlums, of which at least one was a Russian agent, against Biden; first he had the postal service screwed up and then he used mail-in voting to discredit the election; and first he stepped out of the Iran agreement and then he wanted to use Iran’s response for a ‘Wag the Dog’ attack.
Unlike the prisoner in a cell the president won’t be saved by a young woman but he’ll be dragged to Mar-a-Lago by a wife who was the first to acknowledge his defeat in a Christmas greeting. If he somehow receives a pardon for federal crimes he’ll still have to answer to insurance fraud, campaign finance violation and tax evasion charges in New York State and City, so that he may very well end up in a real cell after all, without anybody to rescue him.
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