My oh my. It’s been less than a week since federal agents raided Donald Trump’s Florida beachhouse in search of classified documents that Trump stole from the White House, but Republicans have come up with a truly dizzying number of excuses and smokescreens trying to cover up his wrongdoing—often several each day. Honestly, it’s been somewhat hard to keep track of them all, especially as many contradict one another, but we’re here to help. Below, please find our day-by-day catalog of every b.s. pretext Trump’s defenders have tossed out there.
Monday
Excuse: Everyone is corrupt except Trump—says Trump himself.
In fairness, if anyone can recognize vintage caudillo behavior, it would be Donald Trump.
Excuse: This warrant and raid business was uncalled for. Trump would have turned over everything had the government simply asked politely.
Oh, wait, they did subpoena him? Nevermind!
Tuesday
Excuse: It’s totally fine that Trump took all of those documents. The only issue is that he racked up some library fines for failing to return overdue government secrets.
Since Trump has never borrowed a library book in his life, he wouldn’t know the penalty for returning one after the due date, so he can probably be convinced it’s very serious, like they take away one of your golf courses or something.
Excuse: The FBI put it there!
Trump watched the raid of one country club on closed-circuit television from his other country club, so of course he’ll be releasing the tapes of all this planted evidence (“P. Tapes” for short) immediately.
Wednesday
Excuse: This is all the fault of the Deep State FBI, headed up by ultra-liberal Christopher Wray.
Reminder: Christopher Wray is a member of the Federalist Society and was appointed to his post by Donald Trump.
Thursday
Excuse: #Whatabout Obama? Obama did it, too. He did it worse, in fact. Also, he’s a secret Muslim.
So true. As the National Archives explained, they maintain Obama’s classified materials “in a NARA facility in the Washington, DC, area” and noted that Obama “has no control over where and how NARA stores the Presidential records of his Administration.” You can think of this facility as Obama’s version of Mar-a-Lago, albeit with a vibe that’s a bit more Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Excuse: LOL, like, the only thing that would justify this would be, I dunno, nuclear secrets.
Narrator: It was nuclear secrets.
Excuse: They didn’t raid Trump quickly enough!
Warrant was issued on a Friday, the seizure took place Monday. Everyone knows that most unlawful sharing of nuclear secrets happens on the weekend.
Excuse: Trump declassified all of this stuff with the power of his OWN MIND.
Just call him President Kreskin.
Friday
Excuse: Maybe it was aliens.
Maybe it was aliens.
Excuse: But her emails!
Damn, where was that frenzy?
Excuse: Oh, please, all you need is a smartphone to find the same nuclear secrets Trump took.
Even, like, an iPhone 6 will do!
Excuse: Trump only took a tiny bit of super-duper-classified stuff, and don’t worry about all the other documents.
A standard bankers box holds some 2,500 pages, or around 1.2 million words. It’s a well-known fact that even the smallest nuclear secret needs at least 1.3 million words to describe it.
Excuse: My fellow Americans, when you are busy fomenting a violent coup to overturn the results of an election you’ve lost, it is quite simply inevitable that you will also steal classified secrets in the confusion of it all.
In fact, it should be noted, one crime simply cancels out the other. That’s how it works.
Excuse: They’re only investigating Trump because he might run for president again.
This is definitely how it works. And if Trump follows this advice but changes his mind and does decide to run after all, that’s just tough noogies for the feds.
Excuse: Trump was just trying to prevent World War III. I think this was more or less the plot of Sneakers: Too many secrets!
After all, Donald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk, right, MoDo?
Excuse: Trump installed an Autodeclassifierbot 3000™ at the threshold of the Oval Office.
This is obviously why his attorneys signed a sworn statement telling the feds in June that all classified materials had been given back to the government—because there were none to return!
Excuse: Trump didn’t take those documents intentionally—the General Services Administration just stashed them in boxes that got moved to Mar-a-Lago when Trump exited D.C.
Guess these guys never heard that warning at the airport about accepting items from strangers.
Saturday
Excuse: This has happened to you: Your landlord gives you three months’ notice that you’ve got to move out, but you just don’t really believe them. Every week they keep telling you until, at long last, you finally realize they mean it, so of course your departure turns into a haphazard mess.
Also, in this case, you live in the White House and your landlord is the people of the United States of America. Very relatable!
What excuses will the coming week bring? Stay tuned! The bullshit never ends.
P.S. We miss any? Lets us know in comments!
Note: This post has been updated with even more nonsense excuses!
