I was writing this post in my head when the Wall Street Journal served up this treat today at dinner time.
Donald Trump is, and has been for a long time, a bully, a liar, a con man, and a sociopath. Now he is something else as well—a doddering old fool. Whatever coherence his ramblings once had is disappearing fast. That said, one can construct something out of his disjointed utterings.
When Trump says that Thing X is a “hoax,” he means that
- Thing X actually occurred or is now occurring, and that
- Public knowledge about Thing X would reflect very badly on him—worse even than public knowledge that he routinely grabbed adult women by their genitalia, and bragged about this behavior.
I won’t regurgitate the whole sordid business. But it seems clear beyond peradventure of doubt that Trump is in the voluminous Epstein investigatory files, and that he is drenched in flop sweat.
To address this predicament, Trump now wants everyone to believe that Epstein was not in fact a pedophile; that he should not have been prosecuted (during Trump’s first administration) because Epstein did nothing wrong; and—by implication—that Epstein’s lover and co-conspirator, now in jail, did nothing wrong either; and that these wrongful prosecutions were the result of evil Democrats, just like the January 6 prosecutions.
To this end, Trump will cast James Comey’s daughter and career federal prosecutor, Maureen Comey, as chief villainess in the purportedly unjust prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. That’s why he fired her yesterday.
From Team Trump’s perspective, firing Ms. Comey was a very bad idea.
As a former corporate advisor, I always told people to be careful about firing unsatisfactory employees who had dirt on you.
Firing Ms. Comey is mistake number 796. She has dirt on Trump.
Meanwhile, In Late Evening Developments
Trump says he is suing the Wall Street Journal, and all its corporate uncles, cousins, and aunts, for publishing the Epstein birthday letter.
It is widely reported that MAGA influencers—trying to play both ends against the middle—are asserting that the WSJ story about the birthday letter is fake news.
And Trump says he’s ordered the Justice Department to go to court to seek public disclosure of grand jury materials relating to Epstein.
And a final nightcap:
Facing MAGA 