Trump's reckoning, GOP threats, and employees' "Beautiful Mind" mockery over 45's paper fetishes

It wasn't a good week or look for Donald Trump.

Republicans are shocked, shocked I tell you that there could be criminality at Mar-a-Lago! The Trump indictments have unleashed a cacophony of GOP-style outrage, asserting the unfairness of it all that our mean old system of justice could be holding him accountable, at long last.

But the indictment is sobering in its relentless clarity, describing in jaw-dropping detail what Trump’s done with/to our national security – shabbily treating the country (and our allies’) most important secrets as if he were kicking them to
the curb, or tragically, hanging onto them for dear life. 

GOP same ol’ same ol’
Predictable as a clock, the Republican grievance machine has been ticking off reasons why they’re ticked off – polishing off the now familiar tropes of “witch hunt,” and “hoax,” with some “what about Hillary’s emails?” thrown in for good measure.

Finally
But after a lifetime of bullying; shell-gaming; skirting the law; getting others to do his work, dirty or otherwise, and then stiffing them; making false certifications and omissions in official contexts; seeking out the company of grifters and criminals; and spewing ongoing lies, even as a sitting president, the better question may be: How has Trump gotten away with so much for so long? 

Until this year, at the ripe age of nearly 77 (his birthday is June 14), Trump has so far avoided any material responsibility for anything, really, although plenty of people have tried.

According to an April 2 report in the Washington Post that tracked 50 years of Trump’s criminality before he ran for president, “Trump has been investigated over matters small and huge in New York including alleged lobbying violations in New York and whether he played a major role in the Russian government’s effort to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”  

 After two impeachments when not enough Republicans would join Democrats to vote guilty (and get Trump out of everyone’s hair once and for all), and multiple brushes with the law in his pre-presidency, Trump has always emerged well enough to fight another day.  

The beginning
Trump’s lawlessness began in the 1970s, a time when federal authorities charged Trump and his father Fred with discrimination against black renters.  The case was settled out of court, giving Trump his first business-related slap on the wrist – the kind that would become typical of Trump’s brushes with the law, until now. 

Representing Trump and his father Fred against the fed’s suit was the notorious New York lawyer Roy Cohn, who would become Trump’s attorney archetype, his ideal. In fact, before hiring Bill Barr, his third Attorney General in two years, Trump famously rued his bad luck in picking non-compliant-enough AGs by bemoaning, “Where is my Roy Cohn?”

Cohn’s hitman persona worked effectively while defending the often shady dealings of the Trump father-son duo.  In the 1950s, Cohn earned his spurs as chief counsel for the red-baiting Senate Committee to root out communism in America, chaired by Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy. Like Trump, McCarthy was a shoot-from-the hip type who often made baseless, demagogic accusations against his political opponents while vehemently attacking their character (politico 9.19.2019). 

An award-winning documentary on Cohn by film director Matt Tyrnauuer – aptly titled “Where is My Roy Cohn?” – describes the New York lawyer in terms that seem eerily synchronistic with the 45th president:
*  He didn’t pay his bills or taxes; he dared creditors to sue him
*  He didn’t give a s*** about rules
*  He was your go-to man if you wanted to give a middle finger to
    “the system”

*  He relied less on preparation and more om belligerence
*  He was “accessible only to those unhampered by morality” (columnist
    Liz Smith)

 *  He was the prototypical Teflon man

According to biographer Arthur Linan, Cohn became a second father figure to a 20-something Donald Trump in the ‘70s, putting the younger Trump in touch with the “right people,” meaning the people “who would make Trump, Trump.”

By the mid 1980s as Trump’s star was rising in the Manhattan firmament, Cohn’s was fading.  Cohn contracted AIDS at a time when there was still no viable treatment. A closeted homosexual, Cohn refused to honestly acknowledge the nature of his disease, insisting publicly he had contracted “liver cancer,” not HIV. 

In 1985, his final year, Cohn’s world had shrunk down to his secretary and just a few confidantes, with Trump no longer among them.  

As Cohn’s disease progressed in the mid 1980s, his financial situation deteriorated; his karma was catching up with him.  By then the feds had seized his Connecticut townhouse for $7M in back taxes. Professionally, the New York State Bar revoked his law license because of some shady stock dealings, not repaying a loan from a client, and lying on a Washington D.C. bar application.  Perhaps the unkindest cut of all was Trump’s refusal to pay Cohn some money he owed him, apparently having learned from his mentor all too well. 

Holed up, waiting for the worst
Meanwhile, 37 years later, the “make my own rules” philosophy that caught up with Cohn may be having the same effect on his former student.   Now in his late 70s, Trump’s options appear more limited as age and a dystopian future of endless litigation, fines, and possible imprisonment, closes in.

And details from the United States v. Donald J. Trump indictment suggest, the former president hangs on to the top secrets documents as the last stand of an emotionally stunted man, ridiculed behind his back by the Mar-a-Lago workers tasked by Trump to continuously move, tag, hide, move and hide again the former president’s trove of national secrets  – coveted symbols from a former life. 

“The Beautiful Mind” sick burn, and others
In this exchange captured in the indictment, two Trump employees compare the former president’s obsession to the ravings of a wildly obsessive-compulsive John Nash, the mathematician at the center of the 2001 Ron Howard film starring Russell Crowe, “A Beautiful Mind.” As seen below, the workers seem to refer to the scene where Nash, in deep mania, collects bits of paper and string, believing he’s conducting counter-espionage analysis to thwart a Soviet plot. 

“Trump Employee 1” and “Trump Employee 2” are quoted in an indictment passage as they’re trying to figure out where to move the boxes since resort staff have told them they need the boxes removed from the business center because they’re taking over the office space.  The workers decide to move the many cartons to a bathroom, called the “Pine Room.”

Trump Employee 1:  “There is still a little room in the shower where his other stuff is. Is it only his papers he cares about? There’s some other stuff in there that are
not papers…”

Trump Employee 2: “Yes, anything that’s not the beautiful mind paper boxes can definitely go to storage.”

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd maintains the paranoid neurosis analogy in today’s column, describing Trump’s obsession as similar to the weird fetishes often showcased on cable TV.

Dowd writes: “The indictment – charging Trump with violating the Espionage Act – offered devastating photos of America’s secrets stacked up like something on Hoarders, spilling out under the dry cleaning, a guitar case, and other things.”

Meanwhile, House and Senate Republicans, still afraid of Trump's expected retribution should they, sanely, acknowledge the necessity of suing Trump to protect national security. They vow retribution against the prosecutors and their deep state overlords, in the GOPers’ view.  

Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Senator Ted Cruz, Congressman Steve Scalise, and others pledge to exact revenge on Democrats once Republicans regain the presidency, presumably by reinstating the former president.  Then they can replace AG Merrick Garland and special counsel Jack Smith with Trump appointees – presumably, given their extreme rhetoric, in the form of the latest iterations of
Roy Cohn. 

–trg