Part of the Trump phenomenon revolves around his charisma – alleged charisma, I say, but then I thought Bill Clinton, widely regarded as being a highly charismatic politician, quite creepy – and one of the sources of that charisma is his alleged, once again, wealth, and the business acumen that led to that alleged wealth.
So Wednesday’s ruling in the civil fraud case filed by NY AG Letitia James that Trump has committed fraud in his estimation of values for his properties and how it varied depending on the interested party has understandably put Trump allies in a tizzy, in a fix. They derive their power from an alliance with a man who has great influence over a large portion of the American electorate.
Should that swirl down the drain, so will the value of that influence. And Judge Engeron’s analysis of Trump’s business behavior is brutal, concluding with …
“Defendants’ conduct in repeating these frivolous arguments is egregious,” Engoron wrote. “The defenses Donald Trump attempts to articulate in his sworn deposition are wholly without basis in law or fact. [WaPo]
In other words, whatever success Donald J. Trump has achieved may be attributed to cheating. That’s dangerous to those allies.
So how is the right reacting?
First, Speaker McCarthy and his Freedom Caucus, nominal opponents, are creating quite the distracting uproar, and we can expect the government to go into shutdown in favor of a third-rate Republican clown show in the next day or two, despite the spring-time agreement of McCarthy & Biden. Oh, now I see McCarthy might be replaced, just to up the noise level. See, it’s easier to be pointlessly destructive than to come to a respectable, responsible compromise.
Second, Mark Levin seeks to throw doubt on the legal failures of Trump in the time-honored tradition of, uh, being intellectually lazy.
Isn’t it amazing to you that he never wins a case? Is it because he’s just wrong all the time? Is it because he’s been ripping off people by hundreds of millions or billions? He’s been roaming the country, raping and molesting women? Is it because he sold national security documents to the enemy and exposed our national security? Is it because he led an insurrection – is guilty of sedition on January 6th that, in fact, he organized a gang-style criminal enterprise in Georgia during the election?
I mean, ladies and gentlemen, they’re destroying his business tonight. They’re destroying everything he built in New York. They’re destroying his life. They’re trying to put him in prison for the rest of his life. I don’t even think Stalin would go through all this nonsense to take out one of his opponents. I’ll be right back. [Media Matters for America, includes video source of this partial transcript]
No, Mark, it’s because he’s a pathological narcissist. His behaviors all point to it, and the persistent incompetence that is traditionally seen accompanying this diagnosis explains why he continually loses.
And, third, right wing radio host and blogger Erick Erickson is still working on his long-term project of somehow morally equating President Biden with Trump. In this particularly breathless post, after hinting the judge is either corrupt or incompetent to his job, Erickson also suggests…
- “… the Biden Administration has been infiltrated by the Iranians and it turns out the Obama Administration was too.” A Chief of Staff for a DoD higher-up is implicated, and this is so important that Erickson is forced to twice tell the reader this is a real big deal. Twice!
- “A Chinese Communist wired Hunter Biden $250,000.00 to Joe Biden’s home at a time Hunter Biden was not living there.” Uh huh.
- And some questions about Obama-era security protocols.
Hey, maybe these are all true. So where’s the arrests, the trials, the reports from respectable news outlets? Maybe they’re coming. But the behavior of Erickson and the right has taught me to wait a few days and look for independent reporting before I get too excited.
Here’s the thing. Let’s stipulate those in the listing, not the judge, is true. How does this differ from Trump, then?
Intentionality. If, indeed, there were security protocol problems in the Obama-era, or Iranians have infiltrated our government, then I and every other liberal and independent should be happy to see these problems detected and procedures improved.
But Trump? Judge Engeron seems to believe that Trump deliberately committed fraud for Trump’s personal gain, much to the damage of the parties depending on accurate estimations of Trump’s properties. A personality who disregards personal honor, honesty, and all those other important attributes which Christ, Moses, etc presumably emphasized should not be trusted with positions of high responsibility.
And that’s one of the lessons of that ruling.
Given how much pain devolves on Trump’s allies if that ruling sticks, we’re seeing attempts here to discredit and distract from the ruling by said allies. Will they succeed? The road will be long, as there are three other cases to follow as well as the fallout from his loss to E. Jean Carroll.
And this may explain an unexpected decision by Trump in the Georgia election subversion case:
Former President Donald Trump will not attempt to move the criminal charges brought against him by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to federal court, his lawyers revealed in a court filing Thursday.
The move comes as a surprise, as Trump was largely expected to try to move the Georgia case as part of a bid to invoke immunity protections for federal officials. Under federal law, criminal cases can be removed to federal court if the alleged behavior relates to their government duties. [CNN/Politics]
Trump may be going to ground now in order to avoid damaging publicity, although I should think it’s too little, too late. Time will tell.
