Opposites Attract, Right? Uh . . .

I have been working through some health issues, so I am now just catching up. Sorry for the flood of posts today. Steve

* * *

In the criminal trial of Donald Trump in Manhattan, N.Y. key witness Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and “fixer,” took the stand.

Mr. Cohen met Donald Trump in his office in Trump Tower where he went to collect on an invoice for legal services for his then law firm. After a brief conversation, Trump offered Cohen a job. You see, it was love at first sight. Cohen said he felt honored.

What it actually was that Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump both have criminal minds and they recognized one of their own kind, someone a little sleazy, morally impaired, and willing to please. That, of course is Cohen. Trump is more than a little sleazy, morally vacant, and willing to be pleased.

These are not opposites. These are two peas that could have come from the same pod.

Interesting.

And I have to call bullshit on many of the media channels feeding us the details of the trial. How on Earth is MSNBC referring to this as a “Hush Money Trial.” Mr. Trump is not charged with a hush money crime. Hush money isn’t illegal in New York. Trump is being tried for laundering the payments back to Michael Cohen he paid as hush money in the Stormy Daniels affair. If Mr. Trump had just written a check to Mr. Cohen to reimburse him for the $130,000 Cohen paid to Daniels to keep her story out of the news before the 2016 election, but he claimed on corporate documents (and I am sure tax documents) that those monies were for legal services.

Now, the party of Big Business, the GOP, will tell you that corporations would never do anything underhanded because that would lessen their reputation and hurt their business. Well, Mr. Trump did something underhanded, in order to hide his perfidy from the American public before the election.

Normal he would have been tried, convicted and jailed in 2016, but as President he used every trick in the book to get the feds to drop their investigations for these crimes and told the states to wait because the feds were still investigating, even though they weren’t. He should have been arrested when he was one day out of office but he still had people running interference for him.

This is what Trump means when he states he intends to weaponize the Department of Justice if re-elected, something the GOP loose cannons have criticized the Dems of doing anytime one of their donors gets their hands cuffed.

And, for the people who say “I’m shocked, shocked that Michael Cohen is a criminal,” I have to ask: what did you expect from the consigliore of a mob boss? Mr. Trump always brags that he knows the “best people” and he hires the “best people,” so why did he keep Mr. Cohen around for fifteen years? For that matter, why did so many of his administration appointees end up in jail? “Best people,” my ass.