Toward the end of July, Donald Trump gleefully proclaimed on Truth Social that he will do what only the dumbest criminal defendants do: he will take the stand in his J6 defense. This, in Trump’s case, is a prosecutor’s dream scenario.
Here’s what he wrote:
We’ll have fun on the stand with all of these people that say the Presidential Election wasn’t Rigged and Stollen [sic]. ‘THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY!!!’”
His lawyers must have passed out. If he’s indicted for his J6 shenanigans, Trump explaining himself in the witness box would be fun. However, not for him. His mouth has a habit of making things worse. So much so that testifying in his own defense would surely lead to (1) multiple convictions (2) more criminal indictments; and/or (3) reasonable grounds for an insanity plea. So, let’s encourage him. Perhaps sign on to Truth Social for a few minutes and fire him up!
Today, Donald Trump announced that he had received a target letter from the Office of the (Jan. 6th) Special Counsel. Generally, a target letter leads to an indictment. Immediately after receiving the letter, the former president issued his own target letter to “the US government.” Written in hand paint and ketchup on chunks of dry wall, he specifically lambasted Special Counsel Jack Smith, whom he accused of “politicaling [sic] the J6 which [sic] hunt.” In closing, Trump dismissed the Office of the Special Counsel; “everybody says I should have done this sooner, and now I did.”
Appoints Himself the “Real President”
Also, President Joe Biden reported receipt of a target letter, accusing him of “treesun [sic] for unlegally [sic]” carrying out his duties and “enforcing the BIG LIE” that he is the president. Moreover, Trump claimed that Biden had politicized every component of the Executive Branch. This includes the big and the small, for example, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the survey office of the Department of Interior, and all janitors. Finally, he included a White House eviction order.
As for the Rest . . .
He next turned on the judiciary where he overturned all judicial decisions – state and federal – that held that his big lie was, indeed, a big lie. Dismissing all judges involved, including life tenured judges, he demanded that all judicial robes, gavels, and paraphernalia be returned to Mar-A-Lago.
The legislative branch was sent packing as well. He repeated his observation, “I alone can do it,” but promised to select new Members “to replace the blood sucking Democrats in a hurry.” He finished with a flurry:
“I shall personally be the entire membership of Congress, asuming [sic] the office of the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate, which also makes me Vice President.”
Trump target letter, July 18, 2023, drywall panel 3
The former president ventured far from the traditional target letter. Nonetheless, his originality often results in a dramatic rise in his poll numbers. Speaker Kevin McCarthy, still the Speaker until Trump’s orders take effect, observed:
“Well, of course I condemn it and he should withdraw it immediately, yet he is the president. He can do what he pleases, which I approve wholeheartedly.”
We’re living in an era as yet formally unnamed, but as history marches on Donald Trump is the odds on favorite to dominate it. Among his attributes we already know, lying will be front and center in any telling. Lying in all its forms, from white lies to blue lies to preposterous lies, to lies about microscopic things (the COVID virus Clorox cure) to bold universe embracing whoppers (“I alone can do it.”). Lies that stun like a charge of electricity, and lies that cause you to question your sanity, sometimes simultaneously. In short, he’s a savant of prevarication, a creative lying machine fueled by . . . what, we do not know. That’s a task for some seven year old child, today wondering how egrets fly, who will eventually unravel the Gordian knot of Donald Trump, perhaps, thereby to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
In the past few days Trump’s falsehoods have thrown confusion to his enemies, notably all those involved in preparing the government’s case against him in the documents case (Documentgate?), particularly Special Counsel Jack Smith and his courtroom team. The question reminds one of the board game Clue: “What actually happened in the ex president’s office at his Bedminster, New Jersey cottage, sometime in July 2021?” And – Clue aficionados – did the butler hide the tape recorder with a screwdriver in the office near the garden?
Except it is, like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this. This was done by the military and given to me.
At that time Trump was in a meeting with a publisher and a writer working on a Mark Meadows memoir. During the meeting he casually displayed what he termed as military plans that were “highly confidential, [and] this is secret information,” and he disclosed that he had not declassified them while president, neither formally nor telepathically. He encouraged them to look at the documents. One could hear them shuffling around seemingly having wings.
They laughed and laughed, one said, “Now we’ve got a problem” as Trump bemoaned that he could not now as an ex-president declassify the document. Declassify a newspaper article? Why, for example, did Trump say this about the document he was discussing, “Except it is, like, highly confidential. Secret. . . .This was done by the military and given to me.” Like a ten year old, at the end of this sequence Trumps says “It’s so cool.” This scene of excitement and hilarity was kindred to a group of ten year olds looking through their buddy’s stolen baseball cards.
I told you I wanted a par 70 course!! Resume your duties.
Next, by stretching his big lie into a new shape like a balloon aficionado, Trump told FOX news that he was referring to “plans of a golf course” and “building plans.” So, the documents supposedly viewed so excitedly by his Bedminster guests were golf course plans? Apparently the golf plans were in the bailiwick of the Department of Defense. General Milley had a second assignment: golf course architect. That’s another classification in Trump’s taxonomy of lies, the stupid lie that is effective when fed to his supporters who, context challenged, will gobble it up. True context, however, suggests “preposterous.” More was quickly to come.
Bravado
Few bought his preposterous lie that he had no classified documents (except the usual suspects). Never daunted, after the initial lies were nearly unanimously panned, our virtuoso liar came up with a new idea produced in his laboratory of falsehoods, and a splendid one it was. Counter intuitively, a form of bravado. He’s bragging about all this? Yes, but with a purpose.
I would say it’s bravado,” Trump said, according to reports from both [FOX’s] Scott and Talcott. “If you want to know the truth. It was bravado. I was talking and just holding up papers and talking about them, but I had no documents. I didn’t have any documents.
“If you want to know the truth.” Starting a sentence with “if you want the truth” does nothing but prove his previous excuses as lies. Yet, he’s still lying, he’s lying about his claim of bravado, which he advances as defense number three. It was not bravado at all, it was another lie which he called the truth. He’s lying about telling the truth, explicitly.
This is where it gets interesting, and in a Dr. Evil sense, brilliant. “If you want to know the truth” sets up empathic, sympathetic folks (widows, orphans, liberals) to think, “Ahh, now he’s going to tell us everything even if it embarrasses him. Good. We all boast sometimes, don’t we?” In sum, he purports, explicitly, to tell the truth, when in fact he’s lying about telling the truth about what he also presented as truth in his previous pair of whoppers. Taken together, these consecutive and contradictory excuses provide a prima facie case that the was displaying classified defense-related materials. He strives here to do two things: elicit sympathy by implying “I’m only human” even at some embarrassment to himself, and with some evil savvy, to distract, distract, distract by throwing confusion at the enemy. This is called, in his lexicon, the bravado ploy.
Recall that all of this started with his blatant and ridiculous initial lies that he was not displaying classified documents, or that they were golf course plans, or it was all bravado. We now have three nonsensical lies to deal with (as of June 30, 2023). For a confused media the ratings game afoot may be to argue away valuable time about whether or not Trump displayed classified documents, but to parse each of his three tall tales. For what reason? Ask Donald Trump, Grand Master, Lying.
[This will be updated as perhaps more lies emerge.]
The Department of Justice has just revealed that it has indicted George Santos for a crime or crimes to be revealed later when the indictment is unsealed. Congressman Santos, however, appeared entirely nonplussed by reporters’ questions when rushing to the nearest Longworth House Office Building exit, and responded by denying that he is the “George Santos” who was named in today’s indictment news. Furthermore, he maintained, that, as well as being a fourth term congressman, he was a senior staff attorney in DOJ’s Public Integrity Unit and, therefore, has “inside information” that another individual, “coincidentally, named George Santos,” a man who now resides in Panama City, Panama, was the subject of DOJ’s action today. In addition, the congressman George Santos revealed he will personally leave post haste for the capitol of Panama deputized to arrest the other George Santos which may take, in Rep. Santos’s words, “many months, perhaps many years to accomplish” and thereby, “unfortunately cause me to be absent from the United States for my role in the House of Representatives.”
Quickly, he passed through the exit and into a taxi, on the trail of a dangerous criminal. Who does not wish him well?
