Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Taxing questions

So now we know what he was hiding. Some of it, anyway. The missing piece remains who Trump owes all that money to. 

Some Russian gangster and dependent of Putin, perhaps? Or some oil monarch? No one who wasn't also a crook would have lent him money. Those people play rough sometimes. Just look at Navalny or Khashoggi.

Will once "respectable" administration flunkies want to go along for the plunge with this guy, who not only is personally immoral and cruel, but also a monumental failure at the game they think is reality? Looking at you, Bill Barr. This isn't about your beloved vision of a monarchical executive -- the man you work for is just a bankrupt swindler.

As Paul Krugman points out, when failure cascades on failure, the incentive for bankrupt businessmen is to strip their companies of anything of value to give themselves a personal cushy landing. There's no doubt that Trump's play. He was willing to kill hundreds of thousands of us by ignoring a pandemic in a bad bet on re-election. What more lies ahead?

And then, should we believe that we are seeing the flailing of a frightened man who, accurately, fears prosecution when he no longer has the protection of the office of the Presidency? So it seems.

Trump seems such a small man to have been able to wreak such havoc on a powerful, reasonably functional -- if habitually unjust -- country. It's on us if we let him continue.

1 comment:

Bonnie said...

Can't wait to see your take on the first debate. I had to keep turning away so I would not have another stroke. sigh...It will be interesting when Pence debates Harris, she appears to be a person that won't take bullying.