The Witness Chronicles, February 20, 2024
Trump, Navalny, no shame left in the Republican Party
Navalny’s Death is Not a Fundraising Opportunity
When saying and doing bad things is profitable
It’s hard not to write a rant about Donald Trump every single day because every single day he says or does something repulsive. Yesterday, pressured to say something about the murder of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, Trump was first conspicuously silent then finally found a way to be his usual repulsive self on the subject.
He compared himself to Navalny as a fellow victim, without mentioning Russia or Putin, who likely ordered Navalny’s assasssination.
It was a prime example of a disease that originated with Trump but has metastasized across the Republican Party. The symptoms are saying things that are either blatantly untrue or self-serving, knowing they will raise money or galvanize supporters.
It’s called lying and it used to be reprehensible. It used to be for most Americans but now, somehow, it has become an acceptable means to political ends, among a party that has surrendered to a conman and thug*.
The prime example is Trump’s leveraging of his own alleged criminal activity to raise money, using court appearances and constant whining to get small donors to send him money, a lot of money.
Enough to pay seventy million dollars and counting of his legal bills, bills sent by attorneys who have lost every claim and case so far, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Why a political party should pay the bills of a repeat offender is beyond me, but somehow that too has become acceptable.
Those hundreds of millions are just the civil cases. On March 25th we will see Trump in court for criminal charges alleging he covered up payments to a well known porn star to help his election campaign in 2016. That is only the first of multiple cases against him.
The payments to a porn star are not the legal issue. The coverup is. Essentially he did not want the voting public to know tawdry things about him during the election, things which were true and which he does not dispute.
Right here we should say whoa, stop for a minute. Payments to a porn star, coverups, civil convictions for sexual harassment bordering on rape, corrupt business practices, and that is only the beginning? And people keep sending him money?
First, shame on us, all of us, not just the stooges who send him that money. The fact that we allow ourselves to become indifferent to these crimes and awful behavior, without remorse, is a stain on our entire country. We are all complicit, especially the press who report this abhorrent behavior as if it is normal.
The grift is in and Trump is riding it, even as he loses big time. He simply cannot stop. The most recent evidence of that is his pitching fake gold plated Trump sneakers for $400, the same day he was fined $354 million for his business practices.
The run of 1000 pairs sold out, even though the buyers will not get the sneakers for months and may never get them. The only pair that exist are those he held up while delivering his pitch. At least the sneakerheads booed him.
If that is not a classic sideshow scam, what is? The sneakers are only the most recent in a lifetime of similar efforts, like Trump vodka, a fake university, Trump trading cards, NFTs, which are worthless digital files, and many more.
These are cheeseball schemes that can only make chump change by any billionaire’s standards, except Trump, who simply cannot resist any opportunity to slap his name on some junk for a few bucks.
You know why they call it ‘chump change’, right? I guess there are a lot of chumps out there.
It has been my argument that the man is mentally ill and it is getting worse. Narcissism, a mental illness that he is a poster boy for, has been with him all his life. He simply must be the center of all attention, all the time, at any cost.
And those costs are adding up, fast. Yet, he cannot stop himself. That alone should prove him certifiable, yet his support is just as strong as ever. His acolytes in the Congress have not learned from his losses as they seek impeachments without evidence, even as their only witness, an informant is arrested for lying to the FBI.
That informant’s lies about the Bidens were the only possibly legit evidence for those impeachments and hearings. Fox News mentioned them repeatedly as proof, and now it turns out they were phony.
Faced with having to do something, anything about Ukraine, House Republicans abandoned responsibility and took off on vacation, a vacation we pay for, by the way. They have learned Trump’s lessons well.
Unfortunately they do not seem to be learning another lesson, that the piper must be paid. It is certainly dawning on Trump that he is in serious trouble and that trouble is getting worse. But he is mentally ill and cannot help himself.
Can those in his party make that claim for themselves? I don’t think so and they may soon find out they are not above the law and the will of the voters.
Or not.
*CNN reports, in a comprehensive piece, that 23 moderate Republicans are leaving Congress after facing personal threats to themselves and their families from Trump supporters or being cut out of decision making and governing by a small group of Trump junior thugs.
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