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Trump has one superpower. He is a master con artist. He’s not that smart, but don’t tell him that. Despite his ignorance and astonishing lack of self-awareness, he does know how to manipulate others. He learned it from someone smarter than him — his father’s former assistant and lawyer, Roy Cohn.
Roy Cohn rose to prominence in the 50s as the sidekick to Senator Joseph McCarthy. Cohn was a young man during the McCarthy era and quickly learned from Senator McCarthy how valuable secrets could be to those wishing to keep them. McCarthy also taught Cohn to weaponize accusations without concern for their accuracy. (Both Cohn and McCarthy died in disgrace, as will Donald Trump, mark my words.)
Unfortunately for Trump, he is not nearly as intelligent as Joseph McCarthy or Roy Cohn. He learned their tactics, but his implementation skills are lacking. Trump also lacks strategic abilities. His idea of a long-term plan is deciding what to have for dinner when he gets up in the morning. He’s a one-trick pony.
When the FBI executed a lawful search warrant to enter Mar-a-Lago, Trump accused the Department of Justice of a publicity stunt before noticing that the only one who bothered to share the event with the public was Trump. When Trump demanded the DOJ produce the search warrant and inventory of items taken by the FBI, he neglected to mention that his lawyer had been given a copy of both documents and could have produced them at any time.
When Attorney General Garland called Trump’s bluff by asking the judge to unseal the warrant and the inventory, Trump accused the FBI of planting documents. Or was that after he said the documents had already been declassified? It’s hard to keep track.
At some point, Trump claimed he had a “standing order” to declassify anything he took to his quarters while still at the White House. Presumably, we are meant to believe that Trump regularly took classified documents to his White House quarters to “study” them while chewing on a Whopper, sucking down a Coke, and inhaling a vat of fries.
If this were true, which we know it was not, the classification markings on all the documents taken during the search would have been stamped to reflect their newly declassified status — in which case, the inventory of items taken from Mar-a-Lago would not have shown that documents still marked “Top Secret” were collected. (Oh yeah, unless they were planted.)
This brings us to Trump’s latest threat — that he will go public with the security camera footage of the FBI removing said documents.
If the footage is released, it will need to be doctored professionally unless Trump is now prepared to admit that the FBI did not plant the documents. But perhaps doctoring the tape is the next step in the strategy of a man who can’t think beyond the moment and is already tripping over himself.
His son, Eric, told one of the few far-right media channels willing to talk to him that they would release the footage “…at the right time.” Does he mean when the editing is done? Hard to say.
Meanwhile, there is still the question of the affidavit, which Trump’s people say he wants to make public. I am skeptical.
Even a heavily redacted version of the affidavit would tell us one thing with absolute certainty — it would tell us that the so-called raid on Mar-a-Lago was not the first attempt the DOJ made to procure the highly classified documents Trump illegally walked off with.
Though the DOJ will likely persuade the judge to withhold the names of witnesses, any informants who may have spoken to the DOJ, and the lengthy list of charges Trump may be indicted for, there is no reason to prevent us from seeing the extent of the efforts made to get Trump to give up the goods in the months before the warrant was executed. This is what the release of a redacted affidavit will show us — and it won’t be good for Trump, whose most consistent claim throughout this debacle has been how atrocious and unfair the FBI’s treatment of him has been in showing up unannounced and without legal process, to take from him what’s rightfully his. (Which isn’t his, and never was, but you already know that.)
I wonder how many more of Trump’s lies will be exposed before his supporters finally realize that everything they believe about him has been deliberately fabricated to make him feel powerful and to line his pockets at their expense.
Whatever the answer, the longer it takes, the worse it will be for all of us when the walls finally come crashing down. And as much as I look forward to that day, I’m betting it won’t be pretty.