Day 782 Wednesday February 27, 2019
614 Days to the 2020 election and 692 Days to Inauguration Day
Well, today is the day Michael Cohen is due to publicly testify in front of a Congressional committee. It’s hard to predict the reaction. There are certain things he can not talk about because of on-going investigations. Those are matters relating to the Mueller investigation into Russian meddling in our 2016 election (which seems like it was eons ago!) However, this leaves lots to talk about. Cohen who was one of Trump’s closest advisors for years knows a lot. There are court filings that mention an “Individual #1” and it is assumed (or stated) that that person is Donald Trump. It’s one thing to have everything point to that fact; it’s another to have it openly stated. Individual #1 is – to use the terminology of the Nixon Watergate era – “an unindicted co-conspirator.” That means that someone worked with you to commit a crime and they haven’t been charged. In this case, if the person was charged and found guilty they would be a felon. This is to say then that in most cases and given the likely probabilities the president of the United States is a criminal, a felon. For those of us who have been following these proceedings this is nothing new. However, if you are in the 30-40% who seem to side with Trump no matter what, there might be a new day, a reckoning. That is the part that is hard to predict.
Will the argument be “Well, I know he’s a criminal, but I’m sticking with him.”? This would be a variant on the “Well, he’s a business man…” argument. Let’s deal, once again, with the “he’s a businessman” claim. He has run businesses – true. Most of them have been closed private companies. The only public stock business he ran went bust. Any public venture he ran was either a scam and/or went bust. His private businesses seemed to have fared the same fate. What he has been pretty good at is convincing a lot of people that he’s a class guy and you should want to spend a lot of money investing in one of his real estate deals. The kind of people who seem to think Trump is a class guy seem to be shady characters. They may not even think he’s a class guy, but rather a conduit to move money into what appears to be legitimate business from what clearly was not. There’s a term for this and it’s called money laundering. That seems to be something Trump is pretty good at. So was Paul Manafort.
Trump seems to have one sales pitch, which has been very successful in conning the suckers. It’s the pitch he used for Trump University and the pitch he used to run for president. The wording and the phrasing is the same.
The claims he makes are easily proven to be false. Yet that doesn’t seem to bother those being lured in. I understand that. Who wants to admit they’ve been snookered? At some point you say I’ve had enough. There are many who put money up to get training from Trump University only to discover that they got little or nothing except in debt.
In the case of Trump University which was shown in court to be a scam Trump got out of it by paying a twenty five million dollar fine, I think to the State of New York. There should have been charges brought against him in Florida but he avoided that by bribing (I mean making a political contribution) to the state’s attorney general for $20,000 which went to her campaign re-election. This somehow this brought her on board and she never filed charges against Trump, and is still hanging around him. What about the claimants in her state? What about them? They’re screwed.
In fact, when I look at a lot of these Republicans they all have a similar M.O. Mike Pence did numerous sleazy power plays while governor of Indiana. His excuses and back room power plays to shut down women’s health clinics in that state were particularly egregious. These were similar tactics used by John Kasich in his state. Thom Tillis before he left the state legislature in North Carolina gave his staff huge pay raises while cutting teacher salaries and to add insult to the injury then approved a two million dollar construction project to build a covered walkway between the two chambers on the North Carolina legislative houses.
These guys seem to be able to fail upwards, which I find astonishing.
I keep hoping that they’ll get their comeuppance, and hopefully before they create too much more damage. Every once in awhile they face reality, but not often. Trump faced it in the United Nations when those assembled laughed in his face. He recovered quickly. First was the smile, and his comment that he hadn’t expected that reaction. I guess he thought he could unload his pile of steamy bull and they’d buy it like so many others. Or at least they’d keep quiet, like so many have had to endure. (I think about Jerry Brown having to keep his head down while Trump stood there and kept saying the wrong name of the town they had just seen that was burned to the ground. Trump “Pleasure”. Brown “Paradise”. Trump “Pleasure”. Brown “Paradise”. Trump “What?”
Bankers who dealt with Trump when his casinos in New Jersey were in trouble said that he didn’t seem to understand the basics of the problem. That he didn’t understand the numbers. It seemed he had not taken accounting or economics, which if you are a CEO, is kind of important to understand that stuff.
We also had the sudden retirement of Anthony Kennedy from the Supreme Court. This opened the path for beer boy Brett the K-man to get appointed, but why did he retire so suddenly? He had already picked his interns for the next session, had everything going along and then – boom – he retired. Why? Why indeed. His son worked for Deutsche Bank and was the principle bank that loaned money to Trump once no one else would. It was Kennedy’s son who was the one approving those loans. Why was this bank willing to loan money to Trump when no one else would? Was Anthony Kennedy worried that a case might come in front of the court involving his son and Deutsche Bank? Was he afraid he’d have to recuse himself and the vote would be 4 to 4? If he got off the bench then Trump could bring in another zealot like Gorsuch and the vote would be 5-4 and his son’s ass would be saved. Is that what he was thinking? (You betcha.) btw Current betting is that the money for Trump via Deutsche Bank came from Russia, if so they were merely a conduit for illicit money to be funneled to what appears to be a legitimate business. There’s a word for that, what is it? Oh yeah, money laundering. Wouldn’t that be illegal? Like felony illegal? Like time in the big house illegal?
In two hours at 10am Mr. Cohen is due to testify. Will this be that moment of truth for those Trump supporters? Will those people who have said, “Well, he’s a businessman …” realize that no he’s not that he’s a con man and they’ve been duped? That’s he’s a criminal? That he’s a mean petty bully? That he’s a narcissistic delusional fool? That he’s a terrible negotiator? That he’s a coward when it comes to actually firing someone?
What Cohen says will be revealing I’m sure. How revealing? I don’t know. What the reaction will be from the Trump supporters is hard to say. Will they have to see the president cuffed and booked?
My current fantasy is that Donald and Sean (as in Hannity) both get arrested and booked. I don’t know what for, I don’t care. I like the thought. Then the next day while Rush is tugging on the front of his shirt trying to let some of the steam from his BS waft into the air in his studio that he get arrested and cuffed.
Listen, I can dream. And no I’m not putting up pictures of people with crosshairs on them. Like some folks and organization are doing.
Have a nice day! 10am Cspan-3.
614 Days to the 2020 election and 692 Days to Inauguration Day
PS The walls are closing in.
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