The Art of Losing

(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)

From his early childhood on Donald Trump’s father told him that in life there are only winners and losers, and that the latter, a plurality of mankind, are worthless and despicable.  It explains why Trump has always put on charades to present his many losses as triumphs of savvy business practices, a habit that was facilitated by the fact that the president genuinely enjoys lying, not just for practical purposes but also for his own amusement, as his niece Mary explained.  Therefore the first thing Trump said at his Georgia rally last Saturday was ‘I won the election,’ followed by his ‘arguments’ why he couldn’t possibly have lost: the fact that he won Florida and Ohio and his claim that he won 18 of 19 bellwether counties.  Looking for companionship in his suffering of electoral injustice the president told his audience ‘you’re all victims,’ and in a rare moment of truth telling added that he never in his life worked as hard as the last couple of weeks, implicitly acknowledging that stealing an election is harder than scamming his followers out of a quarter of a billion dollars. Meanwhile his court cases are not going anywhere with more than 50 losses, including one yesterday in the Supreme Court, and only a bizar lawsuit filed by the indicted Texas Attorney General still pending there.

With the end of Trump’s legal campaign to overturn the election’s outcome symbolized by Rudy Giuliani’s ending up in the hospital with COVID and Hizzoner’s sidekick Jenna Ellis also infected the president has turned to illegitimate means to achieve his goal.  After failed entreaties with Michigan legislators to have them appoint a slate of pro-Trump electors he called Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp under the false pretense of compassion with the death of a family friend to press him to convene the legislature in an emergency session and do the same thing.  Even Kemp, a staunch Trump supporter, refused to take that illegal action, but instead urged his state’s congressional delegation to take a good look at the now – after two recounts – trice certified results when they are presented to Congress on January 6th, a totally empty gesture just to appease the president.  Not yet discouraged Trump called the Speaker of Pennsylvania’s House, undoubtedly with a similar request but now pretending that it was just a social call.  After yesterday’s ‘Safe Harbor Day,’ when certified results can no longer be overturned, the president is entirely out of options, although he may hope for help from the more than 200 Republican Members of Congress who have not yet processed that Biden won.

In an attempt to take a victory lap before the race is over the White House on Tuesday organized a ‘vaccine summit’ from which the producers of the most promising vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna, were absent because the companies considered participating inappropriate.  Simultaneously it became known that the government failed to secure more than 50 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine last summer, so that there is already talk of a shortage before vaccinations have started, and with another empty gesture Trump signed an ‘America First’ Executive Order regarding the vaccine.

The art of the grift sits deep with the Trump family, and during a disposition by Ivanka in a DC court it turned out that the president’s hotel charged the Trump Inauguration Committee 35 times its normal non-profit rate, which explains why one year Ivanka took $4 million in profits home from the hotel.  Next to this self-dealing there were over 200 companies, special interest groups and foreign governments, all of whom benefitted from Trump’s policies, using his facilities and services.

According to all reporting Trump is still bouncing between rage and delusion, and during the presentation of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to wrestling coach Dan Gable on Monday his feelings spilled over.  When asked if he was going to attend Biden’s inauguration the president abruptly left the Oval Office, leaving Gable and his family flabbergasted and without official pictures.

Ga HIER naar toe voor alle afleveringen