Donald Trump’s nonstop bad news

| 8:00 pm EST December 29, 2022
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In concluding the last of its business, the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol released a final tranche of evidentiary materials. These materials included transcripts of interviews with the allies of Donald Trump. One of the transcripts included testimony from Trump’s director of personnel, Johnny McEntee.

McEntee told the committee that Trump was considering “blanket pardons” for rioters who stormed the Capitol. This contradicts Trump’s December 26 video rant, posted to “Truth” Social, where he claimed that some of the rioters got out of hand despite the “decisive action” Trump claimed he took to quell any possible violence.

Clearly Trump wouldn’t have considered pardoning any rioters at all if he didn’t think he himself was implicated in the violence and that there was a potential that the violent rioters could eventually testify against him. This is one of the many examples of Trump’s “mens rea,” or “guilty mind.” It also would have been highly inconsistent for Trump to consider pardoning anyone for a crime he thought was being committed against his wishes.

This is also an example of the legion of problems Trump faces as a direct result of the fact that he is constantly shooting off his big, stupid mouth. Any criminal defence lawyer will tell you that one of the worst things a potential defendant can do is to talk to the press. Trump constantly talks to the press — though admittedly the radical MAGA friendly press — and anyone else who will listen to him. His public statements are invariably recorded, and those recordings can and will be used against him in a court of law.

Another thing that Trump has going against him is the huge number of people who have testified about him. These are not Democrats or partisan people who hate Trump, these are former White House employees straight out of Trump World who are giving under oath testimony that is extremely damaging to the former president.

The year 2023 is shaping up to be a horrible one for Trump. It seems that every week, indeed, every day, worse and worse bad news about him is revealed. The bad news is almost always spectacularly and unrelentingly bad, and there seems no end to it.

It’s wonderful finally to see Trump getting the brunt of the bad news when for so many years he was the cause of most of it for us. Now he knows what it feels like, and I hope it tortures him to madness. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.