Shut Up, David
It’s one thing to be jonesing for a spectacular Trump downfall. To be Alex Jonesing is another matter altogether.
Ho hum. Just another quiet, August dog days’ news week. Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson splitting up. Flash floods in Death Valley. The FBI executing a search warrant to recover secret government documents from a former president’s Palm Beach club and residence.
Wait. What was that last one again? Nuclear secrets in a resort storage locker? That horrifying and delicious and shocking and wholly unsurprising bombshell has dunked Trump into yet another boiling cauldron of legal jeopardy to go with the Georgia election-interference criminal case, the New York State corporate-fraud civil case and its Manhattan City criminal-investigation cousin, the presumed federal obstruction-of-Congress case, the E. Jean Carroll civil defamation case, the Mary Trump civil fraud case, the six lawsuits alleging incitement for the January 6 insurrection, five other miscellaneous lawsuits and two fledgling criminal investigations.
As the old saying goes, “Where there’s smoke, there’s a gluttonous orange sociopath with a flamethrower setting fire to truth and decency wherever he accidentally encounters it.” And the stolen-records jaw-dropper seems at long last to make him not only vulnerable to legal consequences but quickly vulnerable — as in months, not years. Which is like schadenfreude fentanyl for those of us in the fuck-Trump-eternally-in-hell demographic.
But, even so, people have to calm the hell down.
Assuming that the FBI inventory of seized documents is accurate and some are of the highest level of government classification, and assuming some of those refer directly or indirectly to national security — even nukes — there are some things we know. First, they are not allowed to be in Trump’s possession. Second, he failed to send them to the National Archives immediately after leaving office. Third, when archives asked after them, he did not return them along with 15,000 other documents. Fourth, he did not surrender them even after the Justice Department subpoenaed them. And fifth, he did not surrender them to the DOJ officials who visited Mar-a-Lago in early June.
And because the law doesn’t distinguish between illegal possession of classified or unclassified government property, it doesn’t matter if he did, in his final hours in office, declassify them by presidential incantation. In short, per the long unrequited desires of the sentient bloc of American voters, he’s fucked. But, as with many of his inexplicable predations, there remains the question of motive. Why and how could he be so careless/arrogant/vain/self-destructive/stupid?
There are but three possibilities:
He liked having the stuff around to impress asshole Republican fat-cat members of Mar-a-Lago and the various dignity-surrendering dignitaries who float in from time to time. His whole life has been about trying to inflate himself for the people around him, with tales of wealth, power, genius and irresistibility. Presumably because he could never impress his parents, in spite of (or because of) the endless lies he told about anything and everything to justify his transgressions and burnish his image. Hence, the “Best Sex I Ever Had” headline, attributed to his then girlfriend Marla Maples, based on a Trump leak to the New York Post. Or his claim that he was wooed by major-league baseball teams from his tiny New York State military academy, where he played 1st base for a bad team and couldn’t hit a lick. (As Slate reported, he claimed he gave up his pro ambitions when he found out he was up against a prospect named Willie McCovey — even though McCovey was already a San Francisco Giants star for five years when Trump graduated high school.) Or his claim that hospital staff performing his physical were all abuzz about his gorgeous chest. Or, bragging to the CIA about the biggest inauguration crowd in planetary history or how, in matters of the military, he “knows more than the generals.” Or, “Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.”
He wasn’t going to let Biden, and Hillary Clinton and Obama and The New York Times tell HIM what to do. They are very bad, very mean people. Despicable people, frankly, persecuting him like no one has ever been persecuted before. They want him to return what is rightfully his? Fuck them.
Something much, much worse. For instance my brother, my own flesh and blood, assumes Trump is simply going to create “official” autographed copies of the documents and sell them for bigly sums to the 73 million morons and deplorables who support him. Or maybe a series of NFTs. Who knows? But here’s what I said to my brother. “David, shut up.”
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Not that the idea is implausible. No, it is utterly plausible and fully on-brand for a grifter who had already begun fundraising to the MAGA faithful about his persecution before the ink on the search warrant was dry. So, yes, autographed contraband is a very well-imagined bit of speculation based on the history of a career criminal whose life has been a garish Russian nesting-doll-set of fraud. Trump University. The Trump Foundation. Real estate loans. Birtherism. Forbes billionaire list. Emoluments. The “perfect call.” Stop the Steal. The Stop the Steal “defense fund.” Sooooo plausible. But, alas, irresponsible.
In the wake of the FBI search, social media was awash in vastly more terrifying but equally plausible scenarios speculating on just what mammoth iceberg these documents are the tip of.
Jon Cooper @joncoopertweets
Aug 11
Trump steals nuclear docs. ↓ Saudis hold golf tournament at Trump resort. ↓ Chinese president Xi Jinping visits Saudi Arabia next week.Thom Hartmann @Thom_Hartmann
Aug 13
Newsweek reports that the documents Trump stole include payroll records for US spies. Exactly the kind of thing for which Putin or Saudi Arabia would pay the Trump family billions. Was there a bidding war the Saudis won with their $2 billion to Jared?Andrew Weissmann @AWeissmann_
Aug 11
Documents about nuclear capabilities are worth billions to our adversaries [insert countries here, like Saudi Arabia, China, etc]. Anyone think that didn't cross Donald Trump's mind?Dash Dobrofsky @DashDobrofsky
Aug 14
Jared Kushner hasn’t said a word since the FBI seized classified documents from Mar-a-Lago. Jared was Trump’s Foreign Policy Advisor, and reveived a $2B investment from Saudi Arabia. He has since disappeared from the National spotlight. I want to know what happened to Jared:Lindy Li @lindyli
Aug 11
TRUMP STOLE OUR NUCLEAR SECRETS Saudi Arabia’s $2 billion investment in Jared Kushner and $1 billion in Steve Mnuchin deserve a second look right about now How much of this was funneled to Trump? This is damning as hellSandi Bachom @sandibachom
Aug 14
OK follow me here. July 20 was Ivana’s funeral Trump’s deposition was postponed because of it and he had a Saudi golf tournament two days later. Is it possible some of the boxes were moved to Bedminster?
Once again, once the facts are known, I'm prepared to believe virtually any scenario of Trumpian venality, corruption and malignant self-regard. The man is a career criminal so vile, so narcissistic and so utterly detached from the rules that govern a free society, it’s hard to imagine what for him might constitute a red line. To paraphrase his own boast, he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and sell the Phased Polaron Cannon to the Klingons and still not lose his base. And I’d be shocked not at all. Clearly, nor would these Twitter influencers. But absence of doubt in general is one thing, and speculation about specific high crimes is another matter altogether. Without documented evidence — of the sort that will hold up in court — this exercise in rampant supposing is unhelpful, unfair, journalistically unethical and just plain un-American.
The favorable enumeration of disquieting facts is not the same thing as evidence. Remember evidence? That’s the thing that Trump, and MAGA, and the GOP, and OAN, and Fox News, and Breitbart, and Alex Jones don’t need before making accusations — no matter how grave or how preposterous. (See “Q.” See “FEMA concentration camps.” See “Sandy Hook.” See “vaccine microchips.” See “pedophiles.”) It is central to the depravity of the political right.
We despise these people because they make a mockery of truth, fairness, reason, due process and the rule of law. That is why they are so fucking evil. Any one of those imbeciles can cherry-pick any number of isolated or random facts (or lies) and Glenn-Beck them into a scare story. Their depravity isn’t in their suspicions; it is in the act of airing guesswork and conspiratorial invention as reporting.
Has Trump been hatching a 6-year scheme to cut a filthy, treasonous deal with the Klingons? I wouldn’t bet against it, but I sure as hell wouldn’t float it in public — unless I knew there was a case built on a lot more than deep suspicion and wishful thinking. Sorry, David.
Great!
Bravo - as always brilliantly stated.