TRump has met his match. In the tightrope walk of fame and illegal real estate schemes he has walked, there’s only room for one Donald Trump. Donald tRump has always had one massive card up his sleeve: the art of the crooked deal. He could con his contractors by the dozen. He could load up bad deals with his unwanted debt by the hundreds of millions. He could enlist hugely powerful allies to swing vast fortunes his way for a price all day. But it all revolves around a simple sleight of hand.
You never saw his face in court. But he’d sue you into oblivion. Now, on that most visible of high wires, Donald tRump the would-be King is trying to squeeze past Donald Trump the film-flam con man.
Both are destined to fall.
On “the Donald”’s playing field, he always had the drop on both his friends and his foes, for the simple reason that we are a country of laws, and he was always one step off the legal path. If he wanted to sleep with your wife, he would have her listen in while he had a chat with you about who you’d like to f*ck on speaker phone, all legal, and what are you going to do about it? If he wanted to steal your work, he would breach your payment contract, claim your work was inferior, and dare you to take his legal team to court. If he wanted to shut up an ex-wife, he would threaten to leave her destitute through enforcing a pre-nuptial agreement. If you are a brother who irritates him you choke off his son’s life-saving health insurance. Mistress? $20 million dollar suit for violating a 140k hush-money agreement. Need $100 Million, but your credit is bad? Off-shore banking helps foreigners buy at ridiculous prices because their money is as rotten as your business acumen! And you have a legal team that is just savvy enough to keep close scrutiny at bay.
TRump likes to put his iron fist inside a legal glove. He is a creature that exists solely through exploitation of a very strong American legal system.
He may not even realize it, but he really, really doesn’t want that system of laws to go away. Putin should be enough of a caution for anyone. MBS is definitely a flashing neon sign to Donald Trump that he wants to serve out his days comfortably however our great country sees fit. See, tRump has failed spectacularly as a proto-Russian American oligarch. He truly believed he would have limitless personal power as President. His enemies would cower in fear, and his friends would grovel for crumbs from his golden table. But: Our country does not easily allow for the kind of sweeping power that any of tRump’s favorite dictatorships do. And he should be glad. His family would never have made it past Brooklyn if it did. And they wouldn’t make it past ...whenever he is ousted, alive, if it were. He is great at one thing only: manipulating the law. He is not capable of exceeding it any more than a guppy can escape its bowl and ride the cat to victory.
The same legal framework that provides equal opportunity for braggarts and hard workers; mendicants and dreamers and visionaries has allowed Donald Trump to bubble to the top. It will let him go away safely too. At least he can rely on that.