Speaking About Trump,
Pangolins and Hagfish
There is an animal called a pangolin who has a very long sticky tongue that can reach up to 70 cm with saliva that is especially sticky and viscous. And then there is the hagfish, a disgusting denizen that is covered with special glands that can emit enough sticky slime at one time to fill a milk jug.
You could call them the slimiest creatures on the planet.
Which brings me to our ex-dictator in waiting and the news that trump’s longtime accounting firm has cut ties with him and his family business because the firm can no longer stand behind the legitimacy of a decade of annual financial statements it prepared for the Trump Organization. The firm’s decision, as reported by the N.Y. Times, comes amid criminal and civil investigations into whether trump illegally inflated the value of his assets. The firm, Mazars USA, compiled the financial statements based on information the former president and his company provided.
So, am I ready to do a victory lap, dance the jig and otherwise praise heaven that the most vile president ever may finally have met his match and may well soon be wearing an orange jumpsuit in some federal prison? No I have been fooled before by the master of chicanery and you know the old saying, “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
There is a Hebrew song that is sung around Passover and it relates to the gifts that God has bestowed on the Jews. Each verse ends with the Hebrew word “dayenu,” which means “it would have been enough.” That would easily fit the ongoing trump circus.
He was taped on a radio program for all to hear that he could grab “pussy” and otherwise take advantage of young women, and he arranged a payment of $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to stop her from disclosing an affair she and trump alleged they had in 2006. Dayenu.
He obstructed justice as identified in the Mueller investigation. Dayenu.
He bribed and extorted Ukraine with military aid to investigate his political opponent, then candidate, Joe Biden, and conduct another investigation undermining the Mueller investigation. Dayenu.
He coerced cabinet members and other federal employees to engage in partisan political activity in violation of the criminal political coercion provisions of the Hatch Act. Dayenu.
He solicited election fraud in a phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State in November 2020, Dayenu.
He committed criminal sedition in authorizing preparation of the unsigned draft Executive Order dated Dec. 16, 2020, pursuant to which trump would have ordered the Secretary of Defense to seize voting machines in certain states to look for evidence of election fraud. Dayenu.
He incited insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Dayenu.
And those are the crimes we know about and for which the man with the bad hair bragged about. So, no, I’m not ready to order the champagne and steak and scream hallelujah at a victory party, not quite yet. But at least there is a glimmer of hope.
The Teflon don has pulled the wool over our eyes so often that he has it down to a science, just like the Medieval fairs where robbers were always on the lookout for victims and their favorite technique was to pull the victim’s hood over his eyes while cutting his purse-strings. Hence the expressions to hoodwink and to pull the wool over one’s eyes. When I think of the man who is an overweight, bad golfer who lied to get out of the draft, any number of words come to mind, like bamboozle, beguile, bluff, buffalo, burn, catch, con, cozen, deceive, delude, dupe, fake out, fool, gaff, gammon, gull, have, have on (chiefly British), hoax, hoodwink, hornswoggle, humbug, juggle, misguide, misinform, mislead, snooker, snow, spoof, string along, sucker, suck in, take in, and trick, to cite a few.
Trump is merely the latest and most despicable example of the con artist, right up there with others like Gregor MacGregor, a Scottish soldier, adventurer, and confidence trickster who from 1821 to 1837 drew British and French investors and settlers to “Poyais,” a fictional Central American territory that he claimed to rule as “Cazique.” Hundreds saw investments shrivel that they made in supposed Poyaisian government bonds and land certificates.
Another shining example in the trumpian mold is C.L. Blood, an aptly named charlatan who died in 1908, but not before he cheated a lot of people out money to use his medicine treatment known as “oxygenized air,” which he promoted as a cure for catarrh, scrofula, consumption and diseases of the respiratory tract.
And of course, who can forget Bernie Madoff, who ran the single biggest ponzi scheme in the whole of history, having conducted fraud to the value of $64.8 billion. Madoff was eventually caught and will likely spend the rest of his life in prison, someday maybe to rub elbows with a certain wannabe fascist.
And remember that throughout history, men of ill repute have often either wiggled out of a guilty verdict or disappeared after they were determined to have committed a crime. Think O.J. Simpson whose trial was played out to the world, with lawyer Johnny Cochran showing the alleged gloves worn at the murder scene that were obviously too small for Simpson and Cochran’s immortal words of “If it does not fit, you must acquit.” Trump’s lawyers may use a similar defense, claiming that his company was corrupt but trump was not personally involved, “if he was not there, don’t be unfair.”
Or consider 32-year-old Lizzie Borden who was never convicted of the 1892 ax murder of her father and stepmother, which led to the timeless nursery rhyme “Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.”
And there was Dr. Sam Sheppard who was convicted of the 1954 murder of his pregnant wife but was acquitted in a retrial and went on to a brief second career as a professional wrestler.
And even if Gen. Bone Spurs is charged and convicted, who is to say that he won’t abscond, never to be seen again, like 9th century Muhammad Ibn Qasim (al-Alawi), who led a rebellion, was arrested and taken to Baghdad, when he somehow escaped, and was never heard of again.
Or like Henry Every, an English pirate, who vanished in 1696 after perpetrating one of the most profitable pirate raids in history.
And don’t overlook Rufus Henry Ingram, who led a gang of Confederate raiders who robbed banks and stagecoaches across California until he was arrested on July 15, 1864, only to flee the authorities and seemingly disappear into thin air.