“….but… but… I thought we were BESTIES.”
Lev Parnas’ recent revelations have been explosive and, for obvious reasons, Team Trump is desperate to undermine their impact. Those efforts have run from the “he hasn’t said anything we don’t know, so he’s not important,” to “so what?” to “I didn’t know that guy,” dismissiveness. HAH! His story is the biggest bombshell of our lifetimes. Which is why the WH is trying so hard to dissuade the American people from believing Parnas. So I thought…just for funnsies…we should explore the essence of his credibility.
It is one of the more fascinating social artifacts of Trumpism that the guys around Trump idolize him like a prophet. I have concluded that this is because Donald Trump is the small man’s idea of a big man. Or perhaps, a better way to put it is--he is the embodiment of what every small, insecure, pathetic, weak man hopes to be….so successful at concocting a veneer of bravado and swagger that he is able to convince throngs of people that he is a Teflon Don, rather than little Donnie with the tiny hands.
Donald Trump is the walking hope for every unattractive, insecure, paunchy, bullied, Napoleonic guy who needs to feel superior to others, especially women. When such pathetic little men come into Trump’s orbit, they don’t just like him. They luuuuvvv him. They stan for him. They are profoundly and unwaveringly loyal to him because they deeply value proximity to the “God of Losers.” This explains their obsession with being photographed with him. They like his style. They like his wealth. They like the way he intimidates and cows people before him. And they like the women, the many vacuous women processing through their daddy issues by clinging to men they believe can take care of them (when all they really do is use them).
Lev, like Scaramucci, like Cohen, like Pappadopolous, like Jeff Sessions is one of those pathetic little men who fell into idol worship of El Trump. And like those men, he found himself bewildered by the total and complete abandonment, the D-I-S-A-V-O-W-A-L that occurred when their erstwhile “best friend” status became inconvenient for Trump. And like those men, once he was able to process the emotional pain of the breakup, he saw that no one was going to protect him but him.
Parnas’ love for Trump does not extend beyond Trump. In fact, he’s likely jealous and resentful of those who remain in Trump’s good graces. Why them and not him? But it is in the separation from the Insane Clown Posse (no offense to the real ICP) that he has finally been able to see how obscene his actions and those of his cohorts really were. And more importantly, he has finally come to terms with the fact that he isn’t EVER going to get back in good with “Dear Leader.” All is already lost on that front, and so….there is nothing left to lose.
Might as well let it ALL hang out.
Parnas also has a second and equally pressing motivation. What happened to Jeffrey Epstein terrified him. He knows that Barr is still in the inner circle, and that Barr is as ruthless and lawless as every other cretin on that team. Parnas knows that federal correctional custody protocols are no match for the type of goons he knows, and who would have an incentive to shut him up. Dead men tell no tails and all that. The secrets Epstein kept were his death warrant. When he died, he took those secrets with him. Lev has figured out that if he tells all (or most) of what he knows, the harm is done, and there is no incentive to keep him silent. He’s not afraid of going to jail. He’s afraid of what will happen to him when he gets there. And so he has shed himself of the most immediate bullseye on his back.
But let’s be honest, he’s a little bit like a jilted girlfriend trying to get back at her man. Trump really hurt him when he denied knowing Parnas, no matter how obviously and absurdly untrue that pronouncement was. It was straight “rejection.” And to me, there is a glint in Parnas’ eye every time he can put on the record just how close and how important he was to Trump, even if it was via Giuliani. Parnas isn’t trying to hide ANYTHING. He’s trying to trot it out and impress us with it, like a kid at show and tell. This may lead to some exaggeration on his part. But it’s unlikely that he’s lying. And the good news is, we don’t have to take his word for it. Like I said, he brought the RECEIPTS. And like any good jilted girlfriend, he is going to MAKE THEM ALL PAY.