Folks who have been around awhile – awhile, in this case, being almost 60 years – may recall a film titled “The Flim-Flam Man,” starring the estimable George C. Scott, that was filmed in various locales around Central Kentucky, including Lawrenceburg and Versailles.
The story dealt with a con man, Mordecai Jones, played by Scott, who operated in rural areas and was always one step ahead of the law. Jones claimed to hold a degree in the deceitful arts he practiced, telling a would-be chiseler who sought him out as a mentor that he held a master’s in “Back-Stabbing, Cork-Screwing and Dirty-Dealing.”
That same background can be ascribed to a former president of these United States, one Donald John Trump, who, after last week, faces three indictments, one from New York state and two from the Feds, totaling 78 felony counts. Some of them deal with the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which Trump’s effort to maintain his residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue fell short by about seven million votes, an effort that led to the storming of the Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2020.
There’s more to come. Georgia is expected to indict him for his strong-arm tactics to finagle the results that provided President Biden with the state’s 16 electoral votes. And, lest we forget, the Master of Mar-a-Lago has already been found liable in a New York courtroom for sexually abusing a woman in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in New York City in 1996. The judge in the case declared that it is appropriate to declare that Trump raped his victim.
It’s a rap sheet that would make Al Capone envious. Despite all this presumed baggage, both proven and unproven, Trump is yet again seeking the Republican presidential nomination and, if early indicators hold up, he is likely to succeed, perhaps in overwhelming fashion. From there, all bets are off. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that a hypothetical match-up between Trump and Biden, the anticipated Democratic nominee, shows the two men tied at 43 percent.
Trump, like everyone else, is entitled to a presumption of innocence. But almost everyone, from a political and historic standpoint, is permitted to pass judgment on the abominable actions he took that led to the failed insurrection and the resulting trashing of the Capitol, the seat of government. And now it’s very difficult to dispute the fact that he raped a woman.
Yet here he is, the, perhaps, once and future president of the United States, the flim-flam man. That fatal vision, to quote Macbeth, may say more about the American voting public than it does about Donald J. Trump.
Just how Trump intends to defend these charges is ripe for speculation. He can attest that he truly believed that he was cheated out of a second term, but does that give him consent to spark an insurrection? He may claim he was somehow entitled to maintain the classified documents scattered throughout his Florida estate, including in a bathroom. But why didn’t he just return them as requested rather than lie about possessing them?
None of the throes of misfortune confronting the ex-president can dim the beam of adoration supplied by his supporters, who variously repeat his claim that the entire fiasco is a witch-hunt staged by liberals and Democrats to thwart his return to power and subsequent efforts to drain the swamp. The FBI and the Department of Justice have somehow been compromised by the left, which would shock the girdle off of J. Edgar Hoover. The entire mishigas is a conspiracy to devastate the movement to make America great again, with Trump, the only person in the world who could possibly achieve that lofty goal, at the helm.
It never seems to creep into the consciousness of these folks that Trump, perhaps, is not the messiah. Maybe, just maybe, he has stepped over the line into that great, gray area of abhorrent behavior that warrants a visit with a judge.
Or, more likely, they just don’t care if Trump broke the law. The white, cis males who comprise the base of his support have determined that they no longer are the undisputed heavyweight champions of the world and view the fight for Trump as their Battle of the Bulge – the last, great effort to foil the inevitable before bowing to reality.
Congressional Republicans, save for the likes of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, of Louisville, who remain understandably mum, are manning the parapets, engaging in an Armageddon-style of whataboutism, insisting whatever Trump has done, which is hardly worthy of a parking ticket, pails in comparison to the antics perpetrated by President Biden.
Rep. Jamie Comer, R-Whereverhehangshishatishishome, chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, is staging a Spanish Inquisition-style probe into what he characterizes as the Biden Crime Family, with the president assuming the role of Keyser Soze, presiding as the mastermind.
Comer, a moron (sorry, there’s no other way to put it), is leading a phony investigation resulting in a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. He insists that Biden is not only actively engaged in a series of business enterprises involving his wayward son, Hunter, with firms connected to menacing states like China, but his decisions as president are compromised because of Biden Crime Family ventures.
And the basis? You’re pretty much looking at it. Devon Archer, a former Hunter Biden business partner on his way to the can for a year and a day on a fraud charge, noted that the president calls his son on a daily basis and at that on occasion, perhaps 20 times over several years, the calls arrived when Hunter was meeting with business associates. On those instances, the president would greet those associates over speakerphone.
In an interview this week with Tucker Carlson, Archer said Hunter Biden was trying to drum up business based on his name and connections – a revelation that came as a surprise to no one – and that the president’s brief greetings could be viewed as “an abuse of soft power.”
From this, Comer has extrapolated that Biden was immersed and in control of his son’s business ventures, asserting that the president lied when he said he knew nothing about Hunter’s commercial enterprises.
The problem is Archer, when questioned by House Oversight Committee staff – Comer did not attend, he was thought to be golfing – said as far as he can tell, President Biden did nothing wrong in regard to his son’s business ventures.
Archer also noted Biden said “nothing” of substance during the phone calls with Hunter that included his son’s business associates.
“There are touch points and contact points that I can’t deny that happened but nothing of material was discussed,” Archer said.
Archer also threw cold water on another Comer boffo claim, that the elder Biden accepted a $5 million bribe from Burisma Holdings, a now defunct Ukraine energy company, to get a prosecutor thought to be investigating the company fired. Hunter Biden at the time was serving on the Burisma board.
Comer’s problem here is it has been revealed that the prosecutor in question wasn’t investigating Burisma. It has long been confirmed that Biden worked on behalf of the U.S. and its allies to get rid of the prosecutor because he failed to probe corruption within Ukraine. Archer said he was unaware of any Burisma money headed Joe Biden’s way.
But Comer, the moron, somehow came to draw the conclusion that Archer’s testimony was “a huge step toward implicating Joe Biden in many of these crimes.”
What this proves is Comer, aka Tail-Gunner Jamie, is not, and never has been, invested in conducting any honest investigation involving President Biden. Asked by another dolt, Sean Hannity, if he has the proof necessary to find Biden guilty of accepting a bribe, Comer said, “I sure hope so.”
While he prays for placing President Biden behind bars, Comer had nothing but sympathy for Trump.
“I think the American people see what’s going on, whether or not this is a weaponized Department of Justice trying to divert attention away from Biden corruption or whether they’re trying to take out their chief top political opponent in the upcoming election,” Comer told Fox News. “The American people see through this, and this is a sad day for the rule of law, and it’s a sad day for the justice system in America.”
Comer, and other Republicans, play a game – accusing the Democrats of wrongful acts that they themselves are guilty of. That’s the play here – protect Trump by claiming Biden is even worse.
That’s an impossible sell but Jamie is giving it the old, college try. What it shows is Trump isn’t the only one with a degree in “Back-Stabbing, Cork-Screwing and Dirty-Dealing.”