With New York abandoning its tax evasion and fraud investigation of Trump, I’ve concluded that he’s just too well connected in Manhattan and probably Albany. They’re not going to touch him.
However, maybe it’s not just Trump’s personal connections that have led to this prosecutorial miscarriage.
I had a conversation with a friend recently that turned to a retrospective on Trump. I told her that nothing surprised me about his presidency. Even his attempted coup was predictable. To another friend back in August 2020 that Trump would attempt some kind of overturning of the election if he lost. Everyone knew he was calling followers to Washington to get “wild.”
What shocked me was how close he came to succeeding. I repeated what I’ve often said: Trump is easy to understand and predict. His behavior is motivated by base fears and drives. A list of the latter bears a close resemblance to the Seven Deadly Sins.
However, his followers always confounded me. I never dreamed he’d get so many people in on the coup, both establishment Republicans and Right-Wing extremists. That’s why he almost succeeded. It wasn’t Trump’s dull brain but his brain trust that almost carried the day.
It’s understandable that a sleaze-bag freak like Steve Bannon, a money-grubbing cynic like Paul Manafort, leeching opportunists like Ted Cruz, or a child rapist like Matt Gates would support him. Yet, that career GOP operatives like Jeffrey Clark and all those “replacement” electors would do so was mystifying. I would’ve thought fear of prison or even sheer disgrace would’ve discouraged them.
It was then I was hit with a horrifying thought: among the wealthy class, maybe there’s nothing unusual about Trump! His narcissism, his sociopathy, his criminality, and his incompetence are common traits among the wealthy. Any GOP operative or candidate who’s held a GOP fundraiser already dealt with Trump-like people. He must be at least close to the mean average for his social class. Aside from the fact that Trump actually ran for office, nothing about Trump was shocking to Republicans or to the upper class.
Here’s where abandoning Trump’s aborted indictment might not be due to his personal connections. In New York, prosecuting a flagrant tax cheat would take the lid off investigating other wealthy people, whose tax evasion and fraud are open also secrets just like Trump’s. Who was really surprised that Trump had been evading state taxes for years, that he regularly committed fraud of all sorts? His rank-and-file followers see those not as “real” crimes, but as civil disobedience, and they just admire Trump’s “intelligence” at getting away with it. He wouldn’t have suffered any loss of popularity due to a conviction.
The major decision-makers for our country right now, like it or not, are from the upper class. Those are the people to which banks will extend huge lines of credit allowing them to live tax-free. They’re the ones put in charge of corporations, and who finance our politicians.
Just how many Trump clones are there in our de facto ruling class?
I expect that any serious investigation of Trump’s tax evasion and fraud threatens to take the lid of their racket. I’m not given to spreading conspiracy theories, but there doesn’t have to be much of one for this to operate. Only a tacit agreement among the wealthy that they want more wealth and power; along with their client politicians who undercut federal and state treasuries to give it to them. There’s no shadow to that plot even if it’s shady.