Donald Trump tries confessing to light treason
One of the most memorable lines from the fictional television show Arrested Development is “I may have committed some light treason.” In Donald Trump’s all-too-real criminal scandal, many of the developments these days are arrests, so perhaps it’s fitting that Trump is now essentially floating the “light treason” defense – and he’s even borrowing some of the verbiage.
Here’s what Donald Trump blurted out on Twitter this morning, in response to yesterday’s devastating developments: “Oh, I get it! I am a very good developer, happily living my life, when I see our Country going in the wrong direction (to put it mildly). Against all odds, I decide to run for President & continue to run my business-very legal & very cool, talked about it on the campaign trail. Lightly looked at doing a building somewhere in Russia. Put up zero money, zero guarantees and didn’t do the project. Witch Hunt!”
Wait, so he’s admitting to the accusation that he looked at building something in Russia, while he was running for president, with the specific Russian officials he knew were plotting the election in his favor – a conspiracy against the United States if there ever was one – and he’s saying it’s okay because he only lightly looked into it?
This is indeed something straight out of a fictional television show. The trouble is, Donald Trump’s version isn’t particularly witty or clever, and everyone is getting rather tired of watching it. Trump has reached the stage where he’s “lightly” admitting to his crimes, in the hope of minimizing them, which means that he knows he can no longer pull off pretending he didn’t commit them at all. If nothing else, this means we’re nearing the series finale.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report