Trump's countless scams are finally catching up to him
Trump's countless scams are finally catching up to him
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/04/donald-trump-russia-robert-mueller-legal-trouble?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX0d1YXJkaWFuVG9kYXlVUy0xODEyMDQ%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&CMP=GTUS_email
The news is generally reported piecemeal, with a focus on what just happened or the specifics of one story. The result is that the cumulative effect often escapes detection. Journalism tends to describe the fragments and not the pattern they make up, which for readers can be like watching a movie shot entirely in closeups. So it is with the travails of Donald J Trump. He is in so many kinds of legal hot water, and the explosive new stories tend to erase the earlier ones from view, just as his own transgressions tend to overshadow his earlier misconduct.
Who talks of how grotesquely he groveled before Vladimir Putin and denied his own intelligence agencies’ conclusions in the long-ago, far-away world of July 2018 when so much has happened since? Who remembers the abrupt firing of the FBI director James Comey in the ancient days of May 2017, when the abrupt firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions on 7 November is so fresh? The Washington Post’s running list of lies (up to 5,000 in September) and the New York Times catalogue of people, places, and things he’s insulted on Twitter (548 as of Monday) are helpful.
If you look at all his legal troubles together you see someone who is both reckless and lawless – which we knew – and perhaps in more trouble than has been noted. You might add to that list obscenely stupid, since he often seems to be the only one who believes his own lies, and since he and his children don’t seem to grasp that the scamming and cheating that got them through the dirty world of New York City real estate doesn’t work as well on the global stage.
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All this trouble exists in addition to whatever the Mueller investigation will bring as allegations and charges and perhaps grounds for impeachment. On 29 November, the Mueller investigation seized tax records from the law offices of Trump’s Chicago lawyer, Ed Burke. Maybe the most important new possible charge, a law professor noted to me, emerges from the report in BuzzFeed that Trump planned to offer Putin a $50m condo if he succeeded in building a Trump Tower in Moscow, while he was running for the presidency. If true, it is a spectacular violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This 1977 law makes it “unlawful for certain classes of persons and entities to make payments to foreign government officials to assist in obtaining or retaining business”. Trump seems to have admitted he was doing exactly that and apparently thinks that justifying it aloud was good enough.
Of course, Trump denied that he was doing business with Russia or in contact with Russian officials many times during the election and since. Paul Manafort was charged with lying to the Robert Mueller investigation last week, which seems, atop everything else, stunningly stupid (along with the witness tampering he was also caught doing). Didn’t he think that the legal team would notice if he lied to protect himself or Trump? Or are the circles he moves in so routinely dishonest that the habit is hard to break? Liars abound in Trump’s circle; Michael Cohen turned himself in for some more lies too, and his lies – about when discussions about the Trump Tower Moscow terminated – seem to have been told to protect the president. But it seems likely that for the first time in his life, nothing can protect Donald J Trump from the trouble he’s made, and the sheer scale of it is astonishing. Justice means there are consequences for your actions.
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You've heard the expressions "birds of a feather," "den of thieves?" Yes? Last week it dawned on me (I'm a little slow) that all the characters in the Trump saga are con artists, cheats, grifters. What attracts a con artist? A quick and easy way to make money. Who has lots of money and no honest place to park it? Other con artists, cheats, and grifters. What can be more satisfying to a con artist? Why to con another con artist, of course. The Trump crew attract and are attracted to one another like a den of thieves.
It's really too bad this is happening to our country, to our beloved constitution, and to our patriotic ideals. But there is a lesson in all of this. More than just one lesson, no doubt. What I see as a Buddhist is a widespread failure of ethical and moral values. Somewhere the pursuit of the god-almighty $$Dollar by any means became the highest value. Trashing the environment to convert natural resources into $$$$$ became ok. Rigging the laws to enrich the wealthy became standard operating procedure. Over many decades, we have lost our way. The reckless and lawless Trump is the penultimate American expression of greed and corruption.
