Family Values

 

Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen testified that Melania Trump was the one who suggested that the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape be spun as “locker-room talk.” https://t.co/HFjiQhYgDO

— New York Magazine (@NYMag) May 14, 2024

Some folks might have wondered what effect this trial would have on Trump's marriage, but I don't really care, do you? 

And as for Trump himself:

But during his testimony, Cohen suggested that his former boss didn’t particularly care about protecting his family. He said he asked Trump what Melania would think about the scandal. “He goes, ‘How long do you think I’ll be on the market for? Not long,’” Cohen said. “He wasn’t thinking about Melania. This was all about the campaign.”

Some might say that's just Cohen's testimony--but given what we know about Trump's serial philandering, doesn't that ring true?  He just sheds people when they become a hassle and finds someone else who can do the job.  "Wife" is a job. 

TWGB: Predictable

 

Habba attacking the judge: But I was told to sit down today. I was yelled at and I've had a judge who is unhinged slamming a table. I don’t tolerate that in my life, I’m not going to tolerate it here pic.twitter.com/u6Sgd7dnqA

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 6, 2023

It took me forever to figure out what left me so bored and uninspired as a blogger following what should have been a BFD: the former president taking the stand in his own defense at the bench trial that he already...well, lost, to fight for whether he could continue to do business in the state he once called "home". 

It was predictable. Trump, after all, is a guy who said that the Emmy Awards were rigged against him.  The Nobel Peace Prize is rigged against him.  The 2016 Presidential election (that he won) was, nevertheless, rigged against him. The 2020 Presidential election was rigged against him, according to him, in various horrible ways. All these court cases that he has, in fact, managed to catch by the actual sweat of his very own brow, are supposedly "rigging" the 2024 contest. 

In Trump's world, if the results of any process are unfavorable to him, Donald J. Trump, Stable Genius, then, obviously, the process is the problem. And in the clip above, there's his lawyer, Alina Habba, complaining about how unfair the judge was to her, for admonishing her to sit her behind down when she was out of order and um, she did sit down because there was nothing the judge did wrong there.

She Was the Mother of His Children

 

They say if you want to know the measure of someone, see how they treat waitstaff and pets. Or take a look at how Donald Trump treats the gravesite of his first wife, the mother of his three oldest children. That little indent there is her flat little headstone. You can just about see it for the grass.

He owns that property. He pays groundskeepers. They keep up the greens that rich folks play on--but is Ivana Trump's grave kept nice? It's patchy. (Not unlike Trump's head.)

It's not because of affection or familial devotion, either. I know people who visit their dead loved ones regularly and get on their own knees to weed, because they care. They put flowers. They bring a weed whacker in the car. Sure. Regular people will do things like that. Cemetaries can only do so much.

But Trump is a wealthy man (so we hear) with exactly one grave with a more-or-less public view. He has to know the grave will be seen. He could have left standing orders to keep it nice just for the damn optics of not making look like he carted off her body to disrespectfully plant it at Bedminster for a tax break. 

But he doesn't really care, even about what it looks like. That's who he is. 

Ivana Trump ( 1949-2022)

 

I used to wonder where Don Jr. got his dark hair from until I saw this picture of his young, athletic built mother. She wasn't always blonde, but she was always striking. She passed at a strange time in the story of the Trump family--the post-White House period, a time of subpoenas and depositions (delayed) and occasional strife. 

I will admit--when I look back on when I got my first extremely negative impression of Donald Trump, it was because of the Big Divorce Story and Ivana's bid to get a little more than the prenup would allow after all she had been through. I took her side. I don't know what it was, but something about the whole deal told me that being married to Trump was absolutely a kind of work. And I didn't even know about the alleged abuse and rape, then, but felt like she had a story to tell that maybe we wouldn't ever know, fully, because she wasn't the type to tell, fully.  She struck me as a survivor. Not a person who tells tales. A person who lives through them.

I was a little proud of her "Living well is the best revenge" phase. She prepared for her landing.  She did not use her time after the dissolution of the marriage to disparage her ex, but to do her own thing. She raised the Trump kids until the age when they could choose to go follow in their father's path. 

Some people say she was Trump's twin, in that she also had an indefatigable will. Maybe.  I don't know what to make of the story that she fell down the stairs and received blunt force trauma to the chest a day before her ex and children were supposed to have a deposition in NY regarding their business dealings, but sometimes coincidences do happen.  It's only because of who Trump is and how naturally the question rises up in the mind that people are even thinking the thing that seems too shocking to say. 

But surely, that's only a delay and wouldn't be worth any person's actual life. Not anyone so near and dear to all concerned. Of course. We aren't so deranged by Trump's infamy to think the unthinkable. 

I do wonder what her residential security camera situation was, though. And whether she had any visitors that day. No reason at all. Just curious as any person might be. 

TWGB: Why I Don't Give A Frick About the Fricking Laptop

 

Six months after leaving the White House, Jared Kushner secured a $2 billion investment from a fund led by the Saudi crown prince, a close ally during the Trump administration, despite objections from the fund’s advisers about the merits of the deal. https://t.co/FDlmrzvYdw pic.twitter.com/OHfyPVHsHN

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 10, 2022

For some damn dumb reason, Donald Trump needed to make his daughter and her husband part of his administration. Just the way his business has always been a family business, one might say. This gave them an extraordinary opportunity to enrich themselves, while carrying out "US policy", which could, given all we know, basically mean using the US as the means to facilitate very profitable and extremely unethical relationships for themselves without respect to actual US interests or even global reputation.

This is because Trump and family don't give a shit about those things.  I have nothing but hollow, mocking laughter for people who pretend otherwise, and I'll append the phrase "And they called it 'America First'!" in the same way comedians have delivered the punchline of the infamous dirty joke: the aristocrats.

Take Don, Jr (please!).  It appears that the boy determined to be too stupid to collude when he actually received an email offering dirt on the opposition that basically said: We are from the Russian government and we're here to help you, was actively passing on methods on how to subvert the lost election and overturn it in his father's favor.  Before the election was actually called, as if he knew (because eveyone did) that his dad would lose and didn't care whether it was "rigged" or not, because of course he didn't.

Eric Trump May Have This Backwards

Eric Trump: Putin was in with the KGB. He can read people and he could tell that Donald Trump was a very strong person pic.twitter.com/1BqhstcUMP

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 15, 2022

For some reason, the lad seems to believe that Putin had a good relationship with his father because his dad was "strong". Because obviously, a dictator would love to have a relationship with someone who is guaran-damn-teed to stand in his way. 

Yeah, Eric, Putin admired your dad for the opportunity to be turned away from his imperial dreams by a phone call and a "stern talking to." This lump-less tapioca-for-brains dad, who is going around saying Putin just wants to put his country back together because of "love".

Putin understood very well what he was getting with Trump. A trainable puppy.

It's one thing to assume that Trump's #2 son is merely confused by his familial devotion--but what is literally anyone else's excuse? 

TWGB: Soon to be Deposed.

 

The decision today (to be appealed--hopefully unsuccessfully) that Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump should sit for deposition in the NY AG civil case regarding "copious financial fraud" sounds like the gentle rumble of the accountability train, coming at long last.  I think. I mean, I've had my head on this track listening for fucking ever. 

The case that was put on by Trump's lawyers to quash the subpoenas for his documents (is someone pouring ketchup on Trump Organization papers even as we speak?) and the deposition of Trump and family was absurd, but then again, TrumpWorld is a funhouse mirror universe where things always look bizarre. Is NY AG Tish James unduly biased against Trump? It would hardly matter given that the actual case against him based on copious available documents suggests justice would be served by giving him his day in court--why does Trump have a problem with that?  

And isn't Trump in a protected class? While obviously, former one-term twice-impeached presidents are rare, no, he isn't a protected class just because he used to have some vague kind of immunity (which should never have covered shit he did before assuming the office of POTUS, anyway). 

In a bit of weirdness, one of Trump's lawyers even pulled out "Why aren't you investigating Hillary Clinton for spying?" This is the sort of thing a badly-overmatched attorney might bring up if her briefcase were stuffed with notebook paper with unhelpful suggestion from the client scrawled in Sharpie marker. This is exactly how I imagine it, and how it will be portrayed in the screenplay. 

Another argument--won't it look bad? Was knocked down by the obvious answer: well, what if it is bad? If Trump pleads the Fifth Amendment, yes, it does work against him in the civil trial, and he should obviously consider whether telling the truth might be one way of avoiding that disaster. But if he obviously would incriminate himself if he told the truth and that information is shared in a criminal context--

Why are we doing this? Look, Trump has history. He had to settle Trump University cases and his Trump Foundation was scattered to the winds. It isn't that he isn't known to be crooked, it's that his fan club doesn't admit it to themselves because they are enjoying the ride he's taking them on and the system hasn't figured out how to shut him all the way down yet. NY AG Tish James is doing something very important here: the hard work of bringing a lawless business to account. Trump having been president should not exculpate him or his dumb kids. If anything, that and his potential for running again makes inspecting his morality and concern for the law more important, not less. 

Especially because there is every reason to expect that he ran the office of the presidency, from the very first day, with the same lawless attitude he engaged in his business practices. Especially because even his exit from that office is marred by lawlessness and involves the complicity of his family.  

Should Trump continue to benefit from the same luck he's experienced all his gifted, grifting, and corrupt life after all we know now? (Shouldn't his lease to his Washington DC hotel be voided because of fraud before he can sell it and get an ill-gained cash infusion for his suffering business?) 

Trump's party always likes to talk about being in favor of the rule of law, against crime, and for personal responsibility. Well, Trump is being made responsible. You gotta love it. 

I mean, unless for some stupid reason you put all your eggs in a deplorable handbasket, or something. But who is that dumb? 

TWGB: No Moneyman Can Win My Love

 

So: Allen Weisselberg and the Trump Org have been indicted with multiple counts in a 15 year tax avoidance scheme where many company officers received "fringe benefits" that were not reported for tax purposes. This is a good start. It probably should involve more years but there's statutes and whatnot. Anyway, bags of cash in the form of rent, tuition, and other nifty expensive shit kept top bosses happy so they didn't have to pay tax on their full compensation and went about their jobs (and I dunno, I'm not a lawyer, let alone a mob lawyer, but when folks in your employ are paid extra--it's because you expect extra--like keeping shtum about things that might otherwise be very interesting.)

Trump and his kids aren't named in the indictment--but I feel like we will get to that at some point in this investigation. I find it hard to believe randos not named "Trump" got special compensation and people actually named "Trump" working for that company did not. Have you seen these large adult children? 

Anyway, the charges here definitely imply lots of IRS tax fraud, and I would like to hope DOJ follows up on that part, because cha-ching. 

Anyway, Weisselberg is pleading "not guilty" because he is very loyal and has been comfortable for a long time and is totally stalling and maybe he thinks Trump still has some pull to help a brother out. I don't know about that, and I definitely suspect someone else is already diming out every bit of what Weisselberg could already offer, except for a few pieces. It might not matter whether Weisselberg "flips"  (All Trump scandals presume Trump is guilty and the only question is whether associated parties talk--you ever notice that?)

TWGB: If It Walks Like a Duck

So, the news that the NYT got hold of about 20 years of Trump's tax return information follows a story about how a bankrupt Donald Trump tried to hijack his father's estate in desperation, which follows on Mary Trump's suit against the Trump family for what she as her father's heir should have received, which comes after news that Eric Trump will definitely have to sit for a deposition regarding Trump Org business, and that New York state is definitely looking at a tax fraud investigation against Trump.

This adds to our understanding that Donald Trump isn't so much a self-made man as his father's well-funded failure, and that he's been keeping himself going by various forms of grift, such as using his charity as a slush fund and starting schemes like Trump University. But this week has, among other things, hammered home that the trouble with Trump's finances are also a White House issue, in that he's staying in the taxpayer-funded housing on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave to avoid having to stay in less luxurious taxpayer funded housing. He's grifting taxpayer dollars all the time. And his kids are probably not just following in his footsteps, but are also liable as hell.

Trump never was the amazing businessman he ran on for the presidency, he just played that guy on tv. 

If Trump were not elected to the presidency, this kind of financial scenario would make it impossible for him to be given a security clearance because he's basically wearing his leverage on his sleeve. (And he has been! Everyone knows this!) He had to demand Ivanka and Jared Kushner get their security clearances despite what where most likely business-related red flags (of which theirs were the tip of the iceberg to his) as it was.

But the big picture also has Trump scrambling to hold on to the office of the presidency not because he thinks he can do a great job with his second term (he can actually barely articulate what he even plans to do in a second term, which given all he has not accomplished in his first is seriously telling), but because he thinks he is shielded from having to face the music. Someone will shield him from the consequences. The taxpayers, or other interested parties, surely would....

Do what? And that's the problem we've got, yes? Trump needs someone to come to the rescue over his overleveraged ass and he's holding the whole damn US at stake. Winning the White House in 2016 convinced him that that Article 2 gave him special protection and that he owed whoever helped him win in 2016. So it's all very well and good that he says "America First", now (if for the low special customer price of $750 a year) but what exactly is he supposed to say when his notes are due?

(Spasibo i dobroy nochi?)

Anyways, at his press conference where he took very few questions and definitely wanted to talk about SCOTUS, he said the press should compare his financial statements, which he has released, to the tax information, but I think that's why New York State is actually after him in the first place.

(And not to leave this unsaid, my thoughts are with the family of Brad Parscale, who on this Sunday of all Sundays had some kind of bad patch, and I genuinely don't want people associated with Trump needlessly harmed or self-harming. And I also have Michael Caputo and his family in mind regarding his recent cancer diagnosis, which can spin anyone off their axis a bit. I'm the kind of g who prays for folks so they can testify someday. I'm not without a heart.)

UPDATE: This is also the best place to drop that Rosenstein was probably responsible for reining in the Mueller investigation to avoid info on Trump's finances  (Oh was that link deficient--here) due to it being Trump's red line for blowing up the investigation altogether. But Trump might as well have been saying "Yes, this is where the whole problem is please look at my finances" so?!?!?!?!?)

UPDATE: Trump has about 3400 conflicts of interest, which are about 3400 more conflicts of interest than any candidate for office should have, let alone a person who is already an incumbent.