Interlude

With the Golden Grifter crouching behind a legal wall he hopes will withstand the flood of recriminations soon coming his way, I’m reminded of an old saying in post-World War II Germany, “Alles kaput.”

We have a little time to kill before the House January 6 Committee reconvenes or the former president is hauled before a grand jury. It will at least be Tuesday before the bloodletting resumes over the cache of secret documents the former talk show host stashed in his mansion and rental properties.

The biggest news yesterday morning was about a guy in Mississippi who wanted to crash his airplane into a Walmart before having second thoughts. He eventually landed safely in Ripley, Miss., and was immediately arrested.

The Mississippi flyboy’s situation made me think that the poor fool’s dilemma is a marvelous reflection of Trump’s dystopian world. What do you do when you’ve screwed up so badly that the rest of your life hangs in the balance?

Everyone Trump demeaned and belittled for four years has turned on him. Even the Trump-appointed federal judge hearing his appeal for a special master to review the documents he purloined has seemingly backfired. Instead of making an immediate decision, the judge ordered the FBI to release more information about their haul. There is some ice-cold irony there.

The number of pilfered papers recovered inside Trump’s Mar-a-Lago is up to 11,000 now. Our sister paper, The New York Times did an illustrative Saturday display of the documents spread out beneath the boxes they came from. That much material printed on standard 8.5” x 11” paper, at 300 to 500 words per page, would produce a bookshelf’s worth of unlawfully held government utterances.

Kind of like a shelf delinquent library books, except the fine for these could be a whole lot higher.

If the law is as clear as it sounds, the purloined documents were indisputably hijacked and hidden. Why they were taken and why they were concealed is the more compelling question. Perhaps the answer belongs in the realm of psychiatry.

So where does a guy who managed to co-opt democracy, shame its institutions and then dive behind a wall of delusion go? Trump has already tried patriotism and victimization without getting much more support than lukewarm expressions about the unfairness of it all. He created so many victims basking is his limelight that there is nobody left to feel sorry for him — except the true believers riding a rudderless MAGA ship of fools.

Missouri’s resident genius, Samuel Clemens, said patriotism is the first refuge of a scoundrel and the last bastion of a scallywag. Either way, his observation applies. It is hard to believe that Trump, the remarkably self-assured man who strode into America’s conscience in 2016, is now seen by all but his most ardent supporters as a pitiful victim of his own obsessions.

From our little house in the Missouri River bottoms, these events appear much more sinister than the emotional disintegration of a former president. At best, we see a traitor by default. Short of clinically destructive narcissism, what other excuse could withstand even cursory examination?

Most of us might never know, unless Trump is exposed for selling and/or sharing sensitive U.S. secrets for ill-gotten gain. The necessity of hiding behind a wall of secrecy concerning these documents could well apply.

There is no longer anything tangible between Trump and the people’s justice except his cronies’ bland threats and his own pernicious bluster. Yesterday morning, he was screaming on his fading Truth Social site about laptops and Hillary’s e-mails. He wants to be reappointed president for a do-over.  

His Praetorian Guard of Secret Service agents has been dishonored. The Secret Service agent he co-opted to be his deputy chief of staff has resigned under a dark cloud. Perhaps the mystery behind Trump’s limousine ride to his failed revolution may finally be revealed.

His own ostensibly loyal former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr has thrown him into the gutter. His big-money mouthpieces have fled, quit, or are otherwise standing dumbly while holding the bag.

Department of Justice lawyers are holding all the cards now. Many are the same proud professionals who felt the Grifter’s lash for four long years. Soon, he will feel their pain.

At least one old Texas peace officer can imagine Trump shuffling toward the other derelict winos congregating in dirty, wet, back alleys of broken dreams.

Revenge is best served cold.

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