What, you find this all surpassing strange? Why? How did you expect the Trump Administration to close up shop? You thought Melania would be inviting Jill Biden over for tea and a tour of the Residence? You’re taken aback by the storming of Capitol Hill, and subsequent conversion of all of D.C. into a closed security zone patrolled by 25,000 troops, à la Baghdad’s infamous Emerald City? Despite everything, you didn’t expect the nuttiness to go right down to the wire, while some guy who sells pillows for a living acts as the President’s ultra-right wing de facto national security advisor?
You’ve been under a rock these past four years or something? You don’t pay attention?
Well never mind, look, here’s where we stand: Trump, all but isolated in a dark and empty White House, nobody calling him, nobody taking his calls, maybe not even Melania, sits in the company of a few die-hard dead-enders like sage White House counsel Pat Cippalone, continuing to insist that he won the election by a landslide. Into this near advisory vacuum, last Friday, strode Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, whose stalwart support over the years has earned him the status of cherished consiglieri to the Trump Family, a full Capo, even though his only credentials as a senior policy maven derive from the manufacture of purportedly comfy pillows and other sleepy-time accessories – Dean Acheson he ain’t. He’s this guy:
…and, well, he’s a lunatic, but he’s a Trump-lovin’, MAGA-fied, conspiracy-mongerin’ lunatic, and that’s just fine by Donny, who isn’t getting lots of visitors anyway, and has plenty of time to entertain the latest ideas on how he can thwart Biden from taking over as President. So Mike arrives, notes in hand, and the intrepid White House press corps, using some of their new-fangled telephoto lens jobs, managed to snap a couple of shots of the crib notes, from which it was possible to make out a few tantalizing tidbits of the larger presentation:
Just as an aside, it’s remarkable how much of the job-creating entrepreneurial class consists of psychopathic White racist extremists and religious bigots, isn’t it? Something about where most often resides the will to power or something, I guess. Anyway, the gist seems to be that Trump should invoke emergency powers as a result of foreign election interference from China and Iran (definitely not Russia), declare martial law under the Insurrection Act, and simultaneously shift loyalists into top intelligence positions at the NSA and CIA, perhaps to massage the intelligence findings about the purported Chinese/Iranian skullduggery. A blueprint, if you will, for Coup II, Electric Boogaloo, the first attempt having failed on the sixth. It’s all very much in keeping with the advice he’s been getting all along from Roger Stone, Mike Flynn et al., and sounds terrifying, except I’m pretty sure, what with the Joint Chiefs having sent around a memo to the entire armed forces reminding everybody that their duty is to the Constitution, not the President, that at this point all such schemes are now beyond the realm of the possible. I doubt they even pick up the phone at the Pentagon. Still, who knows what Donald will try?
See, he’s kind of in a pickle, our Donny. He’s got that second impeachment trial coming up, for which he hasn’t even retained counsel – everyone’s holding their breath waiting to see whether Giuliani will step into the breach, which he says he won’t, after saying he would, so, maybe – which is no big whoop since he’ll already be out of office anyway, except the outcome could be a vote to bar him from ever seeking office again, in which case there goes 2024, and with it his main leverage over the GOP once he’s back sulking at Mar-a-Lago. Then there’s all those other legal troubles that loom, with that prick Cy Vance in the Manhattan D.A.’s office fixing to nail his ass to the wall for whatever isn’t limitations-barred after fifty odd years of money laundering, tax evasion, bank fraud, and assorted other financial crimes. Meanwhile he’s got several hundred million bucks in personal loan guarantees coming due, with even the corrupt pricks at Deutsche Bank turning their backs on him, so where’s that coming from? The family brand is so tarnished that the PGA just pulled out of letting him host any more big tournaments at his frigging golf resorts, and, well, shit, it doesn’t look good. Going forward, there probably aren’t going to be all kinds of gold-plated condos looking to buy an expensive licence so they can plaster the Trump name across their facades in 25 foot letters, Trump Tower Moscow is definitely off the table (Putin’s not taking his calls either), and that planned reboot of The Apprentice looks to be kiboshed too, dammitall. And all those hotels! Who’ll stay at them now? No more foreign potentates buying up whole floors just to get an audience with His Trumpness, no more Secret Service rentals.
It keeps coming. There’s his frigging niece, the one with the book, she’s suing him too, claiming he cheated her out of her inheritance, which O.K., he did, and then there’s that other woman suing him for libel about what he said about her when she claimed he raped her years ago in a department store, which, all right, he also did, but Jesus Christ, doesn’t a guy ever get to live anything down any more? And yeah, he’s got the huge defence fund that he’s raised since the election, several hundred million, sounds like a lot, but if he has to hire a crapload of lawyers, real lawyers this time, the kind that don’t work if you won’t pay them, he might use all of that up in just a few months. What about the self-pardon? That sounded good, but then Cippalone told him that it wouldn’t do a thing to stop the lawsuits, or what Vance was doing under New York law, and besides, if he tries it he’s just begging the Justice Department to make it a test case which he’ll probably lose, since those disloyal little weasels on the Supreme Court won’t go for it just because he put them there, they proved that already – god-dammit. Plus either way the legals will be a King’s f*#@ing ransom! Sheldon Adelson sure picked a hell of a time to kick the bucket, the ingrate – it would have killed him to hang around for a couple of months? The money wells are all drying up! There’s always the Trump TV gambit, but you know, that’s not a sure thing, your own TV network can be a hellishly expensive thing to get off the ground, but there’s no other way, it’s not like he can sell a show to ABC or CBS anymore. Thing is, there might not be enough MAGA types out there with cable to keep the thing afloat.
Sell some pardons maybe?…
Yup, whatever scheme the pillow guy has cooked up might be starting to sound pretty good about now. We’ll soon see! Only about 36 hours to go!
Meanwhile, this is what the peaceful transition is looking like:
Where’s buddy with the football? That’s what I want to know. Donald too, probably.
the needlefish 