33 years ago, Nirvana released Nevermind, the record that really put them, and grunge, on the map. One of the album tracks written by the Late Kurt Cobain featured a lyric line that said, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you." He got attribution for that phrase for a long time, and still does in some places, for writing that line. But it actually originated from the mind and pen of Joseph Heller 30 years before Cobain sang it.
Catch-22 is a 1961 satirical war novel that is a very dark look at the tail end of World War II, yet has a lot of very funny and memorable lines, the truth about paranoia being just one of them. A movie was made 9 years later starring Alan Arkin, Jon Voight, and Art Garfunkel, of all people. The book was an obvious influence into the early adaption of the CBS series, M*A*S*H*. The paranoia quote sure rings true today when discussing events surrounding former President Donald Trump.
There are few people walking the planet today that have higher name I.D. than Donald Trump. Maybe Pope Francis, perhaps Oprah Winfrey, and you might throw in Taylor Swift. But outside of those three, it's hard to find someone who hasn't heard of Trump, and more importantly, who hasn't formed an opinion of him. But when you look at what's being done to him by supposedly constitutional democrats in a functioning democratic republic, set what you think about the man aside, because it's totally irrelevant regarding how far this country has strayed from due process and rule of law.
On Friday, Judge Arthur Engoron handed down his much-anticipated decision in the civil case of fraud against Donald Trump in a New York courtroom. $354-plus million dollars is what Trump must pay for over-inflating the value of his real estate holdings, and cannot do business in the state of New York for the next three years. If you tack on pre-judgment interest, the meter is running north of $450 million dollars.
Kevin O'Leary, one of the four principal venture capitalists on ABC's Shark Tank, has been an investor and an icon in business for decades. He's a conservative, so allow for the lie of the green, but from a purely business perspective, he was flat-out incredulous about what was just done to Trump, because it's exactly what real estate developers worldwide do every day, 24/7.
The construction loans Trump took out were repaid in full. The banks got paid. The workers got paid. Taxes got paid. This is a fraud verdict that is penalizing the former President for defrauding no one. There were no victims.
The former President has made remarks a couple of times since the verdict was handed down. First, fro outside of the courtroom:
Then, at a rally in Michigan over the weekend:
I've always had my problems with Trump's comportment, as well as with some of his policy and personnel decisions, but on the whole, he over-delivered with me during his term based upon my bar of expectations. I had no problems voting for him in 2020, because I thought Joe Biden was too old and senile then, and figured given half a chance, a President Biden would totally screw up the Middle East. It turns out that 2020 Biden was the mental and physical equivalent of Jack_LaLanne compared to the Biden we get to see and experience on a daily basis in 2024. And I take no joy at all in saying I was right about the foreign policy disaster that is the Biden administration. From the botched withdrawal in Afghanistan, the enabling of Iran to ramp up terror around the Middle East, and delaying aid and armaments to Ukraine resulting in war with Russia going into its third year, tens of thousands of people have died through direct or second-tier effects of Biden's policies, and that doesn't even begin to include the carnage going on at the Southern Border.
But the most insidious thing Joe Biden unleashed through his Department of Justice is targeted lawfare of conservatives, and intensifying that effort against Donald Trump the closer we get to the election in November. We see it with the Jack Smith proceedings, and the atmosphere flowing down from DOJ has inspired Letitia James and Alvin Bragg in New York, and Fani Willis in Georgia.
Now you might think I'm buying into the conspiracy that there's some coordination between elected lefty elites and their colleagues on the bench, and should therefore be wearing my tin foil hat. My response is to point to New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who was on WABC-AM770 radio Sunday morning with John Catsimatidis. She was asked what she would say to the thousands of other real estate investors and business people who look at this decision against Trump as see it as a harbinger of lawsuits to come. Here's what she said.
Don't you worry yourself at all, other normal business people. We're only doing this against Trump, because, well, he's Trump. He's not normal. Remember, Trump is doing what every other investor does. That's why they're so concerned. Hochul's answer is normal business people are honest, Trump isn't. She doesn't delineate at all what constitutes honest versus dishonest investment. She doesn't like Trump, so Trump's dishonest. Pray she never gets to the point where she doesn't like you. My guess is this little gem will be included in the package sent to the appellate court by Trump's legal team.
As for as the political impact of Democratic lawfare against Trump goes, it's only galvanizing his supporters. Even people previously reticent to vote for him recognize that he is being screwed by the Marxist left, and since he's got the most skin in the game, he's probably the best person right now to go back in and fight it out. Let's take the swing state of Michigan, which will be the likely indicator for how 2024 will go. In 2016, Trump beat a stunned Hillary Clinton in the Wolverine State, and with it came Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Trump lost all three in 2020. Our friends at 538 have ten different polls in Michigan taken since the first of the year that feature Trump versus some Democratic iteration - Biden, Newsom, Whitmer. Of the ten polls, Trump wins 8 of those matchups for the last two months, some of them well outside of the margin of error. I'm hearing from Democrats inside the state that internal polling is devastating right now for Joe Biden.
If you want to see some anecdotal evidence that the anxiety level is rising amongst Democratic elites, here are two examples of two different Democrats absolutely losing it. And the expression losing it has multiple definitions. Here's Stephen Colbert, allegedly a comedian hosting a late night comedy show on CBS from Friday night.
The crowd was nervously waiting for a punchline that never came. Colbert has a look of terror in his eyes that Trump could actually win again. So what does he do? He's ranting at a dwindling viewing audience that already will never vote for Trump. He thinks perhaps there are some conservatives out there who might be watching him, and he's breaking comedic character to appeal to their senses to not vote for Trump. Here's the fly in that ointment. There isn't one conservative watching him. There hasn't been for years. Colbert made the conscious decision taking over for David Letterman that he was going to be an entertainment show by a leftist for leftists. Now that he's got the audience he wants, he's terrified he has no impact on the audience he never desired to have, so he's getting desperate. That's losing it.
Another form of losing it is when the fog of senility continues creep in and thicken to the point that you need to slow down to a crawl. I give you Joe Biden on vacation, again, in Delaware Sunday.
Congress needs to get back and pass the funding bill for NATO? Is Ukraine a NATO country? No. Is Israel a member state of NATO? No. Is Taiwan a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? No. So Joe Biden is 0-3. Three pitches, three swings, three misses. Major League Baseball hall of famer Reggie Jackson used to hit the ball a long, long way. He also used to strike out a lot. Some days, he struck out three times in a game. He used to refer to that feat as the Triple Crown. On days he got a fourth at-bat and struck out yet again, that was designated as achieving the Golden Sombrero. You know, those big hats they wear in Mexico, which is that state that elected Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on the southern border of Gaza, that Biden is chastising for not doing more to deal with the refugees fleeing the conflict Israel is currently engaged with that, um, opposition there.
Joe Biden is losing it in a very different way than Colbert is. They're both pitiable instances, but it would be much easier to pity both of them if they were no longer in positions of power and influence.
As for the Democrats' Trump problem, they're caught in their own self-made Catch-22. By attempting to bleed Trump and the Republican Party dry of resources, indicting him, trying him, convicting and incarcerating him, even removing him from the ballot in some states, they think it will help Joe Biden win the election. Real world analytics are starting to suggest the reverse may be true. But the left are committed to the bit, because they have no other plan. Their candidate is totally out of gas, it's getting too late to replace him at the convention without absolute chaos, so they're trying to make up for Biden's polling deficits by increasing the intensity of the legal fights. They're losing, but trying to make it up on volume.
Standard disclaimer being that we're nine months out, which is a lifetime in American politics, but if Democrats truly wanted to make Trump unelectable with the middle of the country, perhaps a good place to start would be to not make him a believable and sympathetic character by becoming the very embodiment of the boogeyman he's been warning about for years.
