Four days ago I thought there was a chance that Comrade Trump’s refusal to concede the election could be a deliberate attempt to break democracy. I was wrong.
I’m not saying Trump loves democracy; he doesn’t. I’m saying he doesn’t care enough about democracy to do the work necessary to break it. Trump isn’t stupid. Wait…strike that. He’s fairly ignorant, but…wait, strike that too. He’s massively ignorant, profoundly and deeply ignorant, extensively and exhaustively ignorant. But he’s got a sort of feral business-oriented shrewdness that alerts him when he’s about to lose or when he has something to gain.
We’ve actually witnessed this several times. He’s got a business that’s about to fail in a spectacular way, and boom he’s got bankruptcy lawyers thick as ticks in every possible court making sure other folks get hurt while he walks away with some coin in his pocket. He’s got a building about to finish construction, and boom he’s got a wolfpack of carnivorous lawyers finding ways to stiff his contractors and leave him with a bit more coin in his pocket. He’s about to lose a lawsuit, and boom he’s got a squadron of legal Uruk-hai negotiating a settlement that will allow him to escape responsibility and keep some coin in his pocket.
Comrade President Donald J. Trump is all about coin in the pocket.
I feel pretty confident that’s what Trump is doing now. He knows he lost the election, so he’s turned loose the lawyers — partly in a desperate but lazy attempt to find some sleazy way to stay in office, but mostly making sure Trump walks out of the White House with a bit of coin in his pocket.
Trump, his ethically challenged brood of kids, his Congressional lickspittles, and his army of lawyers have been inundating his much-aggrieved citizen-supporters with fundraising emails, begging for money to ‘stop the Left from ripping power away from the American People.’ They ask for contributions to the Official Election Defense Fund which, contributors are told, will “increase your impact by 1000%.” It’s an OFFICIAL fund and increases impact…impact…by a full one thousand percent. Who wouldn’t want to get in on that?
It’s just that this is Comrade Trump. Who just lost an election. This is Trump on his way out of DC. And what does Trump want? To put a wee bit of coin in his pocket.
Careful readers (and c’mon, how many Trump supporters are careful readers?) would note the fine print contained at the bottom of the linked page. The fine print the lawyers put together to keep Trump and themselves from committing crimes. The fine print that tells contributors that 60% of their contribution (up to US$5000) goes to a political action committee called ‘Save America’. That money can be used in just about any way Trump wants; he can contribute it to other politicians, he can pay his kids, he can use it to weigh down his pockets. But wait…there’s more. A full 40% of money over the $5000 legal limit (up to $35,500) goes to the Republican National Committee’s operating account. The other 60% will go to offset the costs of recounts OR other legal expenses.
In other words, if one of his supporters contributes $5001, only sixty cents would go toward stopping the Left from ripping power away from the American People; five thousand dollars will go toward filling Donald Trump’s very big pockets, forty cents will go to the RNC.
The longer Trump draws out this post-election drama — the longer he can keep his followers believing he’s really fighting for them — the more coin he can stuff in his pocket. This isn’t about breaking democracy; it’s about keeping the grift alive as long as possible. Hell, he can keep this grift going even after he’s left DC and established himself at Mar-a-Lago. He can tell his believers they’re funding his 2024 re-election campaign. A lot of them will fall for it.
Credit where it’s due: Comrade Trump’s priorities have never wavered. He is now, just as he was before, just as he always will be, about coin in the pocket.
gregfallis.com 
Aside from all that this prick has done to screw up this country and the lives of its citizens (and lives of those from south of the border), what pisses me off most about his presidency is that he will be given the honour of a state funeral when he finally keels over, and that networks will be spending gobs of air/cable time covering it; that his official portrait will hang in the White House (likely) for posterity; that his name will be in history books; that his smug, smirking face will be in children’s colouring books for years to come.
I can only hope that there is a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that at the very least documents all he and his scoundrel inner circle has done, particularly that which we don’t yet know about. I suspect that there will be enough destruction of evidence to prevent a thorough investigation (although I hope that there was at least a few who quietly maintained copies of stuff), but I hope that some form of accounting of the corruption and evil is made public.
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I don’t much care if his portrait is hung in the White House or if he gets a State funeral. I don’t think it’ll matter. Everybody will know who he was and what sort of person he was. Everybody will know he allowed hundreds of thousands of US citizens to die because he wouldn’t take Covid seriously.
I suspect they’ll have to put a spit-screen over his portrait. And it’ll have to be cleaned daily.
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Geez Greg, I miss Billy Woody and his commentary. I still think he was a bit of a Poe, but it was always as if he was prepping for an intellectual colonoscopy and had chugged a whole bunch of laxatives. The nasty stuff that came out of that guy! But hey, as far as entertainment he was tops.
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I don’t miss him in the least. He is of the ilk that lives just enough of a comfortable life that Trump’s policies didn’t really affect him. I’m sure that he received just enough of a tax break to be able to prove Trump’s economic success. He’s just another child of Saint Ronnie’s anti-liberal generation.
He liked to take Greg and the rest of the liberals who participate here to task for lumping him in with the racists, but you know that he subscribed to every lie Trump told about Muslims and Mexicans.
Billy was a stain on any serious discussion on this site. I once told Greg that I thought Billy was an intelligent fellow, but the last week or so of his seriously brainwash-y spewing of Free Republic commentary changed my mind about that. All he is is smart enough to be dangerous.
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I once told Greg that I thought Billy was an intelligent fellow
Everybody had an opinion about Billy. Some of them were right.
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Billy had value as a gadfly. He was annoying, but he forced me to support my assertions — which sometimes meant doing more research. But like a lot of Trump supporters, the more it became clear that Trump was a loser, he became more aggressive and angry. His attacks became more personal.
I’m okay with folks who disagree with me. I’m less tolerant of those who question my patriotism, but I understand why some would do that. But I won’t put up with anybody questioning my integrity. When he said I didn’t care about Truth, I warned him. Then he called me ‘uppity’. And that was it.
At this point in my life I’ve lived in the North and Midwest longer than I’ve lived in the Deep South, but I’ve lived in the South long enough to be deeply offended by being called ‘uppity’. I know what folks mean when they say that.
I might miss him at some point. Right now, I don’t.
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Reblogged this on It Is What It Is and commented:
ONCE A GRIFTER, ALWAYS A GRIFTER!! … “He knows he lost the election, so he’s turned loose the lawyers – partly in a desperate but lazy attempt to find some sleazy way to stay in office, but mostly making sure Trump walks out of the White House with a bit of coin in his pocket.”
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I’ve been hearing some of the pro-Trump callers to C-Span, and right now they are gripped by panic and hysteria. They are absolutely convinced that the election was stolen and the radical left is coming to burn down their towns and turn America into a Marxist state. So yes, these people will be giving their hard-earned money to Comrade Trump–and I can tell most of them are working-class or retired, so they don’t have that much to spare in the first place. I feel bad for how gullible they are.
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I have mixed feelings about this. Yeah, I feel bad that Trump is grifting the shit out of his supporters, who don’t realize what he’s doing. On the other hand, it’s pretty easy to find out what he’s doing — and if his supporters aren’t willing to look critically at him, then they’re complicit in their own victimization. But on the third hand…well, you get the point. Mixed feelings
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Same here. I vaccilate between sympathy and snarkiness.
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When in doubt, go snarky.
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LOL…great life advice.
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My husband figured this out also, in quite the same way.
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