Consider the crowd I travel with, but I was startled by how many people read Bart Gellman’s piece in The Atlantic — the one about all the manners of hell that could play out if/when Trump refuses to concede defeat in November. But I suspect many more will be reading The New York Times deep and epic dive into the fraud and incompetence revealed within the past 20 years of The Donald’s tax records.
If it doesn’t tell us everything we’ve wanted to know about Trump’s finances — and there’s no “specificity” about money that may have come in from Russians — it’s as good as we’re likely to get until the day Cy Vance in New York lays it out in a public trial. It’s a long read, as was the Times’ 2018 Pulitzer-winner detailing the fraud old man Fred Trump and family ran for decades while building up the fortune … that Donald quickly blew on casinos, bad steaks and cheap vodka.
While this latest Times piece confirms virtually everything any clear-headed adult suspected of a carnival act like Trump for the past 30 years, it will likely mean nothing to MAGA nation, assuming they even hear a word about it in their thickly-insulated echo chamber. But the moderator of next Tuesday’s first debate, Chris Wallace of FoxNews, will commit journalistic malpractice if he doesn’t push Trump on what is in the Times story.
That said, my alleged mind has jumped to something else. Something both James Carville and ex-Obama chief of staff and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel have been saying over the past few days.
Namely, that all the noise Trump (and Bill Barr) have been making about the “rigged” election and “getting rid of the ballots” and the “continuation” is a tactical device to build leverage for a “deal” with Biden once Trump is defeated. (I’ve written about this before, because I think it is palpable likelihood. Like a layer of flop sweat forming under a bad con man’s comb over.)
As today’s Times story lays out, Trump is in (ridiculously) deep debt, with huge bills coming due in the next couple years, for which he is personally on the hook. And the tab gets bigger if he loses his much-referenced tax audit (over $100 million including penalties), and bigger still if New York and god knows how many stiffed contractors, harassed women, former employees go after him … hard … post the immunity of the White House.
Trump desperately … and I do mean desperately … needs a way out of this looming apocalypse. One way is if he wins the election. But barring that he needs something like blanket immunity from the state of New York. And that would mean striking … a deal.
As I’ve said before, only a hopeless idiot would enter into any deal with Trump that didn’t have airtight conditions and abusive-level penalties.
So this is my proposal:
Trump agrees to concede the election. In return, the Biden administration, in union with Andrew Cuomo and Vance in New York set the following conditions for Trump — and his family, (since Ivanka and the boys appear to have fat chunks of fraud splatter in their laps as well) — to avoid prosecution.
The deal requires Trump to submit to a public interrogation by tax and white collar fraud attorney/prosecutors into any and all of his business dealings, from the time he took over from his father through to today. This would include everything involving the Russians, the Saudis, the Qataris, the Turks, and any other thug-ocracy he’s been trolling for loose change.
It also stipulates “the deal” is voided the second Trump lies, “misstates” or “mischaracterizes” any pertinent fact.
Why “public”?
Because the story of Trump and the foundational lies of Trumpism has to be told. It has to be admitted to and confessed by Trump himself. History has to be written by the winners … from the mouth of the loser.
Gellman’s post-election hellscape is based on the premise that “we will never know”. That the fog and stench of Trumpism and Federalist Society Bill Barr-ism is desaigned to prevent anything from ever being truly knowable. (Such is Putin’s game in Russia.)
I believe Adam Schiff for one will eloquently argue that accepting anything less than a full peeling of the Trump myth simply enables a smarter, less louche and preposterous Trump from picking up the pieces and starting all over again. Even the most oblivious and deficient Trumper has to be presented with stark evidence that they’ve been conned … again.
Thirty nine percent will ignore the Times’ tax blockbuster and/or dismiss it as “fake news”, and Biden still needs a solid victory in Florida election night and a landslide overall to neuter any plausible claim Trump and Barr might present.
But the basis is now visibly forming to squeeze Trump into a corner from which his only escape is a Walk of Shame, to reference the entirely apt “Game of Thrones.”
A great analogy would be with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, where apartheid government people who confessed their crimes would be forgiven–but they had to publicly confess, and it had to be truthful and complete–absolution only for those things that they admitted to.
Even if he gets another 4 years, he won’t solve his problems without outright bribery, and that would set up another huge problem for him when he has to had over power. His only way out is to stay in power forever….which seems to me to be a highly unlikely scenario. Of course, maybe he just wants to die in office….
I find it hard to imagine his ego allowing for anything like this, to be frank. Maybe if his kids are threatened with jail time…. Or maybe they try to turn some of the kids/wife by offering deals. Could get interesting/ugly.
Former GOP strategist/hack Mike Murphy mentioned the Truth & Reconciliation Commission a couple days ago. I’m guessing he spoke with you, Pete. But yes, that is the basic idea — along with the essential work of laying out the facts for the historical record, rather than have what is obvious to all of us fogged over by deadender Trumpists, Federalist Society legal shenanigans and Rush Limbaugh. The boil that is the Trump phenomena needs to be lanced in the most devastating way possible to keep it from reforming in the mouth of Tom Cotton or whoever comes next … and there’s a deep supply of chgaracters lined up to play off the victimology of Trump being “hounded from office” by the liberal press. It’s a different thing if he has to admit it himself. Not that his ego would ever allow that to happen. Beer soon?
From your lips to God’s ears……..
As an old altar boy I have special access to God’s ear.
I am a huge fan of Brian’s work but his idea of doing a deal in order to complete a Presidential election is terrible. Regardless of the presumed advantages of the deal, the very idea of a Presidential transition based on special accommodation is a terrible precedent. Making such arrangements a “normal” part of the transition makes us subject to extortion and reduces our politics to Mafia-like standards. Even the degraded US can do better.
No deal with this motherfucker.
No prosecution for anything he did in office. This is no “Lock him up” moment. But prosecute to the hilt for all, all, every goddam one, of his crimes before his inauguration.
As James Carville said a week or so ago about Jared Kushner — “He’s not going to do very well in the penitentiary.”
A small crack in the darkness, perhaps a harbinger of dawn. God bless journalists, god bless the failing New York Times.
Whoa! Hangin’ Judge Benidt showin’ no mercy … way east of the Pecos. The question I guess is what is most important? The sweet (sweet) vengeance of watching Donald and little Ivanka fitted for orange jump suits? Or a full “confession” of the monumental fraud that has been his whole adult life? So much of his appeal to TrumpNation is that he is a “success”. Proof that given a few breaks here and there THEY could be the same kind of success as he, since he thinks and talks like they do. Trump on TV laying out … brick by brick … every fraud and lie and corrupt deal he made to build his “brand” would — I say — have a powerful impact on the ever-credulous low information Trump crowd … many of who live under rocks in Pasco county.
“While this latest Times piece confirms virtually everything any clear-headed adult suspected of a carnival act like Trump for the past 30 years . . . ”
Trump looks and smells like fraud. Any banker’s lawyer with halfway good eyes and a nose should be able to tell that. It amazes me that he seems to have been able to continue to borrow money. (So much for the brilliance of the lending community, I guess.)
There was a poll, last week, I think, that said voters, especially white men, thought Trump would be better at managing the economy. I hope they run that poll again.
At this point, his re-election campaign seems like a strategy to delay the inevitable. Debtors in trouble do that.
And this is why we citizens have to bail out banks with our money.
I have always been in favor of what the French did. They had a “real” revolutionary war after all. But simply put, I think that. Guillotine on the steps of congress could easily take care of this problem .