Donald Trump’s sense of projection just betrayed him

| 9:15 pm EDT October 12, 2019
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The Trump administration might seem volatile and unpredictable to the outsider, but there are a few patterns you can notice if you follow the news closely enough. One motif that’s particularly reliable, and proved an invaluable guide as I followed Trump’s 2016 election campaign: If Donald Trump denies wrongdoing, he’s probably done it. If he accuses his opponent of doing something wrong, he’s certainly done it (this is the part where he called Hillary Clinton a “Russian puppet” and much of the media just laughed it off. If he (or more likely a member of his administration) admits to wrongdoing, the problem is much worse than we’ve been led to believe.

A fixture of his deranged rally in Minneapolis last night was Hunter Biden, as Donald Trump’s son Eric urged the crowd to “Lock him up!” Even though Joe Biden’s son has been cleared of wrongdoing by Ukrainian prosecutors, Trump and his fellow Republicans are determined to declare him guilty and then find a crime that somehow fits.

In the meantime, media outlets are covering the accusations extensively, until the public begins to think there’s some merit to the accusations, and that because Joe Biden was vice president when his son had dealings in Ukraine, Joe Biden must be involved somehow. It gives Republicans something to hit one of their most formidable opponents with, even without having to dig up dirt with help from a foreign power.

Eric Trump is probably the last person who should be talking about the corrupt dealings of other people. Even without his father’s own reputation for playing fast and loose with the law, Eric has his own baggage with the Eric Trump Foundation. While he claims that his organization is a charity that gives to the children of St. Jude, a Forbes report from 2017 found that it spent $145,000 of money it raised on fundraisers at various Trump resorts. The foundation is still under investigation by the New York attorney general as a result of that report.