For a brief moment last week I thought our long national nightmare was over. Rudy Giuliani went on Fox News, where else, to explain the porn star thing and didn’t try to stick the ridiculous cover story.
Yes, she was paid to keep her mouth shut. Yes, Trump paid for it. The $130,000 just came out of Cohen’s monthly retainer. At last, Trump was no longer acting like a swamp politician — waffling, trimming, cowering and fabricating. He was going to be Trump. Corrupt, vulgar, sleazy and proud of it.
But wait, Giuliani said it wasn’t a campaign violation, because Trump was paying to keep the —false — allegation of adulterous sex from needlessly upsetting his latest wife. After all, he did not have sex with that women, Miss Daniels.
Well, that wasn’t very Trumpian. He’s supposed to be bold, bad and unapologetic. No doubt someone had pointed out that paying $130,000 to someone you didn’t have sex with sounded insane. Why pay to hush up something you didn’t do? So Melania wouldn’t jump to an expensive divorce lawyer conclusion? And there was more bad news. Apparently, no matter what Rudy thinks, paying extortion in installments for not having sex with a person can still be a campaign finance violation and/or tax violation.
Not content with the mess he’d made, Rudy quickly lurched off script again. The payoff, a couple weeks before the election, was not political, though he hastened to add, “Imagine if that came out on Oct. 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton…” Right. so the payoff was political. Hillary would have not just cooked Trump’s goose but napalmed it. My God, such a scandal might even have negated all that meddling by those Russian trolls
Trump’s team was colluding with.
Despite Giuliani’s comic incompetence, it has pointed the way out of the dark labyrinth of sex, lies, and videotape that Trump finds himself in. Since he and his team can’t keep straight which phony story they are selling, why not just start telling the truth? Suppose he came out and said this:
“Of course, I had sex with a porn star, a “Playboy” playmate and dozens of other babes. Who wouldn’t? What do you think billions are good for? Greens fees? Yes, I grabbed all those women who said I did. It’s one of the perks of being a celebrity, like I told Billy Bush — same as those swag bags, the best seats wherever you go, and getting comped at Vegas.
“Also, do Americans really care what goes on in Russia? I don’t think so. And all those crooked oligarchs hiding money overseas has been very good for our business, as Don Jr. stupidly admitted. If you can’t make a killing as president, you don’t know how the system works. So, you bet I accepted the offers by Assange and Putin and Cambridge Analytica and Facebook to help steal the election. Nobody wanted Hillary, especially Putin and coal miners.
“It worked, didn’t it? And lifting sanctions on Putin was a small price to pay. You don’t like it? Tough. I’m the president. My base loves it. And nobody cares about complainers getting shot or poisoned by Putin. If they were worth keeping alive, they’d have their own bodyguards. I do.
“Guns? Buy all you want. Climate change? Doing something about it would be bad for businesses that gave a lot of donations to me and employs a lot of my voters. Let those snotty millennials do something about about it when their turn comes. My people care more about gas-guzzling pick-up trucks than a bunch of mangy polar bears.
“Diplomacy, who needs it? If someone’s going to run their mouth, it’s going to be me, not some wishy-washy compromiser from the State Department. And what’s wrong wth nuking Iranians and North Koreans before they can nuke us? However, if they want to put up a Trump Tower in Pyongyang or Tehran, we can talk. I’ll send Ivanka over.
“And by the way, Sessions, Rosenstein, and Mueller, YOU’RE FIRED! I want my Justice Department to give me justice and deny it to my critics. Attorney General Giuliani will see to that. And Sarah Sanders and Kellyanne, you can start packing. If I’m going to tell the truth from now on, why pay you to lie for me?
“I feel better already. How about you, America? This is the way MAGA is supposed to work —for me. I am the great and powerful POTUS. Tell Mattis to kill all the journalists, except Hannity, and burn all the books, except “The Art of the Deal” and this “Bible” thing my fans seem so fond of. But between us, turning the other cheek is for losers, and the meek inherit nothing.”