Donald Trump’s telling reaction to his coming indictment

| 4:00 pm EDT May 28, 2021
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Since publishing my article about his blog “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” (May 24) where I criticized (among other things) the former guy’s monolithic approach to paragraphs, I was amused to notice that he has since broken his previously undifferentiated articles into paragraphs.

So I have to wonder: is Trump reading my pieces? Probably not, but maybe someone close to him is. (Not as fanciful a proposition as you might think, brothers and sisters. I know for a fact, for example, that Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen does in fact read Palmer Report.) But whatever the case I am struck by how little I care. I never thought I would say this about a former president, but I couldn’t care less what he thinks about me, whether it’s something or nothing at all.

Nor does his marginally redesigned blog change the fact that it remains sufficiently boring as to cause overflying flocks of birds to fall asleep and crash to the ground. Trump’s blog is as predictable as his tweets, dull, humourless, boastful, egotistical, soulless and heartless. He can’t write five short sentences without bragging about how great he is. He can’t write half a sentence that most of us couldn’t finish the other half for him. But then fascism has always been not just banal but predictable.

When Cyrus Vance Jr recently empaneled a grand jury to decide on one or more criminal indictments in the Trump organization, I expected Trump’s reaction (May 25) to be what in fact it was, another weary catechism of lamentations of how unjustly he’s been persecuted, from the day he “came down the elevator” to the Witch Hunt (capitalised) of “Russia Russia Russia” to “Impeachment Hoax” numbers one through two inclusive to this now “illegally leaked confidential information.”

No catalog of Trumpian jeremiads would be complete without a boast about how “no other President in history” has yadda yadda yadda blah blah blah. It’s surreal to go from having a whiny, hate-tweeting clown squatting in the Oval Office to competence personified. I still can’t entirely get my head around it.

In the midst of all his balderdash, of course, Trump avoids mention of what the grand jury is probably looking at. The answer is mountains of criminal activity including tax evasion, money laundering, bank fraud, campaign finance violations, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to commit all of the above, each crime perpetrated before, during and after his tenure in the Oval Office. There probably aren’t any unturned stones here.

An innocent man would address these rumored charges. In his blog Trump never mentions them, of course. A guilty man would change the subject to imputations that, for example, it’s Joe Biden’s fault that gas prices are now so horrendous. Trump in fact does just that because he is, in fact, guilty. (It is Trump’s fault that gas prices have risen so high. The economy slowed down because of his disastrous handling of COVID, which depressed gas prices at first then drove them up later. Now that the economy is picking up again, demand is causing those prices to rise even higher still.)

Of course, no inventory of Trump lies would be complete without a made up poll. Again, from the 25 May blog entry: “Interesting that today a poll came out indicating I’m far in the lead for the Republican Presidential Primary and the General Election in 2024.”

I cannot find this poll. What I do find is that in one poll Pence and DeSantis are neck and neck. On the other hand in another poll with a hypothetical face off between Trump and President Joe Biden in 2024, Mr. Biden would easily demolish Trump. The President still enjoys a much-deserved popularity that Trump could only dream about.

So there is no poll from 25 May or elsewhere, as far as I can see, that lends any credibility to Trump’s boast. In other words Trump is still lying. The gratifying part is that his lies lack the potency they once had when he was president. Then they were infuriating, now they are faintly silly.

But is this also an instance where Trump is whistling past the graveyard? Suggesting that he will even be around to run in 2024 is no small expectation. I’m referring less to the Grim Reaper and more to the Long Arm of the Law. By 2024 the idea that Trump will be in any position to run is looking more doubtful by the day.

I don’t expect death to claim him, either. For some reason evolution has a penchant for keeping corpulent fascists alive. I’m thinking of Idi Amin who made it to 78. I’m thinking of Henry Kissinger who is still alive at 98. Trump will be 75 in a little over two weeks and I think he has a good chance to still be around when justice, coming at him like a freight train, pulls into the station. To the infinite chagrin of Trump and his malignant acolytes I think that train is due into the station well ahead of 2024. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.