There’s money to be made behind bars and Donald Trump knows it
Donald J. Trump, the disgraced ex-President of the United States has been called many things. Now he has a new title. P He is Fulton County, Georgia jail inmate P01135809.
Never before in the nation’s history, has a president or former president of the United States been photographed as a criminal suspect. But this is how history will remember the 45th President of the United States.
Donald Trump after Georgia arraignment:
“What has taken place here is a travesty of justice. We did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong.”
Trump, who hopes to be President again, has been arraigned for a fourth time this year on felony charges.
Charges are piling up
Trump faces 91 felony counts based on federal and state grand jury indictments. He’s charged with 13 crimes in Georgia.
His latest arraignment was in Atlanta, Georgia on racketeering and other charges in a grand jury indictment that names 18 others. Some of them are so-called presidential advisers associated with the January 6th attempted insurrection.
Trump’s booking photo was a menacing, defiant pose. It reflects the attitude of millions of whites who worship him. It appears he rehearsed the look in a mirror before going to the jail. This is Trump’s first official police mug shot in a long criminal career.
There’s money to be made
Within hours, Trump was selling T-shirts, coffee mugs and beer koozies featuring his mug shot. The merchandise featured the line, “Never Surrender” adjacent to a photo of Trump surrendering to be booked on felony charges.
It takes a certain kind of person with a certain level of intelligence to buy merchandise which says “Never Surrender” and features the mug shot of a man who has just surrendered to a county sheriff. Sadly, there are millions of Americans who fit that description.
There are reports Trump raised over $4 million dollars in the first 24 hours after the mug shot was released. Millions more are rolling in.
Donald J. Trump has been a scamming criminal his entire life. He’s like a bumbling Mafia kingpin who specializes in fraud, tax evasion and public corruption. He pulls it off—most of the time.
After Barack Obama served two terms as President, Trump saw white grievance politics as an opportunity to expand his flim-flam scams AND hog the spotlight. His backward-looking slogan, “Make America Great Again” or MAGA, is really code for Make America White Again.
Trump can barely string two sentences together, yet he is cunning enough to realize white fear and resentment of diversity add up to a bottomless pit of money.
Trump presides over a cult numbering in the millions. These are mostly frightened, ignorant whites. They harbor deep hatred of minorities. They blame black, brown and yellow people for eroding the “whiteness” of America. They resent women demanding a share of what was once unquestioned white male political and cultural power. And they think the queer population should go back in the closet and not be seen or heard.
A cult of saps
For Trump, his cult is a limitless source of saps whose pockets are to be picked by playing on their fears.
Which brings us to why Trump wouldn’t mind being sent to jail, for a little while.
The elephant in the room is bigotry. Trump never tires of portraying himself as a victim—a white victim. His mostly white cult eats it up, because they see themselves as victims, too—victims of equality. They discovered democracy in the American Constitution means everyone is equal and white men aren’t more equal than others. This is unacceptable to them, so Trump—and they—see themselves as victims. They want to elect him President again, and they’re happy to send him dollars by the millions.
Crime Pays
Being put in jail for a short time is a big-money scamming opportunity. Jails are run by a city or county. Jail time is usually measured in days, not years like prison.
Trump portrays himself as persecuted and on his way to legal crucifixion…imagery intended to scam donations from his supposedly religious base. Many in his Make America Great Again cult view him as the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. They believe Trump is somehow going to save America from everyone who isn’t white, hetero and allegedly Christian. Trump portrays his criminal indictments as persecution, not prosecution. He tells his gullible supporters, “I’m suffering for you. Send me money. Send me LOTS of money.”
Trump prefers to try his case—whatever and wherever it may be—in the court of public opinion instead of a court of law. In the past, his motormouth and delaying tactics forced many opponents to give up and give in. As a mentally unbalanced narcissist, Trump can’t keep his mouth shut—and he doesn’t intend to with these recent indictments.
Hoping to scare witnesses
Witness intimidation is a favorite Trump tactic. He deliberately puts pressure on witnesses against him, ridiculing them and making their lives uncomfortable. Witness intimidation is a crime, but the courts have never punished Trump for engaging in it, so he keeps doing it.
One of Trump’s most notorious threats was: If you go after me, I’m coming after you! It’s not aimed at a specific person, but the message is clear.
A perfect recent example of Trump’s witness intimidation is former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, one of the last witnesses to testify before the Fulton Co. grand jury that indicted Trump on racketeering and other charges. The morning Duncan was to appear before the grand jury, Trump posted an inflammatory social media message saying he testify. That is clearly witness tampering. In that same social media post, Trump called Duncan a “nasty disaster” and a “loser.”
Never-Trump Republican attorney George Conway tweeted a response, saying, “This morning’s first attempt at witness intimidation.”
Former Michigan U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade tweeted, “Witness tampering in real time.”
Regardless of his macho posturing, the Georgia indictment worries Trump the most because it’s a state case. That means his not-so-secret hare-brained scheme to win re-election as President and then pardon himself, won’t work. Presidential pardons cannot apply to state cases.
Moreover, under Georgia prison rules, Trump would have to serve five years of his racketeering sentence before a state parole commission could consider him for release. Donald J. Trump would have to do real prison time.
In the federal indictments, Trump is gearing up for battle with U.S. District Court judge Tanya Chutkan, an experienced, no-nonsense jurist who has handed out some harsh sentences to some of the mob that invaded the U.S. Capitol in the attempted insurrection on January 6th, 2021.
As soon as his case was assigned to Judge Chutkan, Trump began testing the limits.
Black versus White
For Trump and his White Supremacist cult, the trial before Tanya Chutkan will be a battle between black and white, between men and women.
From the moment the case was assigned to this black woman judge, Trump has been repeatedly insulting Judge Chutkan on social media and in campaign speeches. Chutkan will have to tread carefully because Trump is trying to set a trap for her to engage in judicial overreach which could be grounds for a mistrial or appeal.
Trump’s fellow racists in the Republican Party are itching to cause trouble for Judge Chutkan. They see her as a surrogate for Vice President Kamala Harris.
The deepest fear of Trump’s Whites
Vice President Harris is the REAL reason the White Right fears President Biden’s re-election. The President is entering his 80s, a decade of life when many people die. White Supremacists are terrified at the thought of a Black Woman as President. For them, Kamala Harris would be worse than Barack Obama.
The racial component of Trump’s legal dramas is not lost on him or his bigoted cult. Three of the key legal figures are black. For Trump and his Trumpers, it’s Us against Them.
Trump is literally betting his life on causing enough confusion and doubt about the cases and the justice process that one juror, just one, will be unsure about convicting him. In the justice system which requires a unanimous verdict, that’s enough to have a hung jury, which for Trump, means a new trial, and by his reckoning, that’s a victory.
History may record the irony of blacks and women battling to uphold American law and order against the Republican Party and its career criminal hero, Fulton County, Georgia jail inmate P01135809, also known as Donald J. Trump. The man the Republicans want in the White House is facing 91 felony charges in various courts.
The Republican Party used to be the party of the rule of law. But that was in the last century.
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