The Swamp Creature Will Not Escape

There are times when I really hate being right, and this is one of them. A great many people who are smarter than I keep expressing surprise that Donald Trump is as corrupt as he is. They say silly shit like, “I never thought it would be this bad,” or “This is worse than I ever imagined,” and these are coming from people who claim to be “news junkies,” who immerse themselves in the news and who claim to spend every waking moment watching or reading “the news.”

Of course, these are the same people who obsess over “Rachel” (Maddow) and “Lawrence” (O’Donnell) and who damn near slit their wrists when Keith Olbermann left MSNBC, so their sense of what is “news” is perhaps stunted, as it were. Whatever the reason, there is no way anyone shouldn’t have seen the disaster that is the Trump Train Wreck long before he swore the oath he was never going to keep.

This week, we watched as two of Trump’s most prominent henchmen, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, went down, big time. Manafort’s crimes were not directly related to Trump (at least this time – his second trial in September will be different), but the fact that Manafort was convicted of eight felonies and Trump was bleating support for him every chance he got shows just how deep the corruption is inside the White House. Now, we have word that David Pecker, the guy who publishes the National Enquirer, has been given immunity, which means he will be telling even more about the deals Trump made to hide his sexual conquests from voters. Such is the swamp we are living in.

I know Trump promised his braindead followers he would “drain the swamp,” but goddammit, folks, he’s filled it so much, he’s about to drown in it. He’s already an “unindicted co-conspirator,” a designation that took Nixon two years to accomplish. The best news is, once Nixon became that, he never recovered. And as bad as Nixon screwed up, his since were nothing compared to Trump’s. Consider, Trump is already pretty much guaranteed to be found guilty on a couple felonies, and we haven’t even gotten to the Russia investigation.

This is something to think about. Donny has been fingered (eww) in two conspiracies to buy off women to save his campaign, and all he could Tweet this morning was:

Well, that came after a hint about a Manafort pardon yesterday:

“Poor, put-upon Paul.” All he did was evade paying taxes and screw others out of money. In Donny’s world, that’s not a crime, it’s simply a critical part of doing business.

And this is what makes the Trump regime particularly swampy, to the point that it looks as if the whole thing might drown. Donny has been getting away with all kinds of things for a half century that would put any small business owner in jail. However, because he was Donald Fricking Trump, officials essentially let him get away with it. Now, they can’t. See, Donny made a huge mistake when he decided to tun for president without knowing anything about the job. He thought he could be the “Boss of America,” continue to do what he did with the Trump Organization and get away with it.

As usual, he was wrong. He is under too much scrutiny as “president” to simply hide anything, and he’s too ignorant to realize this. If you think I’m wrong, consider the great fanfare that accompanies his “executive orders,” which he thinks are actual “orders” given by the “Boss of America” to the Americans. Look at how pissed off he gets when the courts are essentially “insubordinate” and knock down one of his orders for their lack of constitutionality. He becomes petulant and often talks about the courts as if they work for him.

Thankfully, what happened Tuesday and what is happening every day is a reminder that the system works, even with a Giant Orange Toddler in charge, and it will continue to be okay, as long as “we, the people” don’t neglect it. The swamp creature is on his way out, we just have to make sure this never happens again. That means getting rid of the entire GOP and forcing them to reconstitute as something that isn’t downright anti-American. The only thing keeping our Swamp Thing afloat right now is the Republican Congress, who refuse to create their legislative bodies with the respect and dignity required of them, and who keep the Swamp Creature alive.

Also published on Medium.

Comments are closed.