RICOlaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
[Author's Note: This piece was composed on August 6th in preparation for today's announcement. We will follow up with an additional piece delving into the specific charges]
And Fani makes four.
Congratulations, Donald John Trump! You just became the first ex-president to be indicted on racketeering charges.
This, as the kids say, is a big fucking deal. Let us not forget this is a state charge meaning if found guilty, Trump cannot be pardoned by any future Republican president. This is the main reason why Republicans have been so desperate to try and strip away power and autonomy from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, because they know that should Trump be found guilty there is no way for him to be bailed out should a jury convict him other than through the normal appeals process. Of the Big Four indictments, this one may very well be the one that delivers the knockout blow to the most corrupt president in our nation's history.
Honestly, it's poetic. It's karma and kismet combined that Donald Trump will be taken down on racketeering charges. After all, a mob boss is what he wanted to be his entire life. He got his start as a slumlord, emulating daddy dearest by refusing to rent his apartments to African American tenants. He went on to build an empire mainly by stiffing and bullying small contractors to the point that they were forced to accept well-below-market payments. He hired undocumented workers to exploit them and pay them starvation wages at his Trump properties. He had his fixer Michael Cohen and a team of nameless thugs intimidate those who witnessed Trump's infidelity. And he famously wanted his own personal Roy Cohn, an attorney who was so corrupt and so unethical and yet somehow managed to get his client off scott-free each and every time.
But Trump never had his Roy Cohn. Nor did he rise to the level of John Gotti, the most famous of American mob bosses. For over 50 years Trump surrounded himself with yes men, his own personal subgroup of sniveling sycophants. But unlike Gotti, Trump was dumb. He had no foresight. He was a megalomaniac, obsessed with the next business deal that could net him millions. He was a lifelong adulterer with no ability to keep his affairs discreet. He cooked the books but did so in a way that left an obvious paper trail that opened up the Trump Organization to face upcoming criminal tax fraud charges. He put his sons into positions of power, positions that they were neither capable of nor qualified to handle. He was America's biggest open secret regarding his lifetime of illegal and illicit behavior.
Yet despite all of this, Trump could have gotten away with it all. He could have died a rich man in Trump Tower or Mar-a-Lago decades from now. He would have had his detractors to be sure, but like many of America's richest men, history would have likely whitewashed the bad and highlighted the good in his life. He would have been seen as a modern-day titan, someone who built a real estate empire and someone whose name became synonymous with success. Who knows what would have happened after The Apprentice? Trump had the world at his fingers and his life of corruption along with his open secrets set to be buried with him in an elaborate and ornate grave to be worshipped and revered by future generations.
But, man oh man, that hubris.
Hubris is a tough thing to overcome. And when Barack Obama roasted Donald Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner something inside him broke. How dare this dark-skinned man make a joke of me!?!? Trump's ego couldn't handle the gentle jabber of the country's first Black president. And since he couldn't send his goons after him, Trump had but one option to get back at Barack Obama: he had to win the presidency and undo everything good and kind that Barack Obama had done for the American people. Then, it would be Donald Trump who would get the final laugh and not the uppity negro.
Flash forward eight years from his fateful 2015 escalator ride and Donald Trump is today being charged as if he were the mob boss he always envisioned himself to be. He will have his mugshot taken, a viral image that will likely break whatever is left of Elon Musk's dilapidated social media site. He will not have Roy Cohn by his side but instead, a third-rate, botton-of-the-barrel lawyer who will likely never get paid. His third wife won't be in the courtroom and neither will his five children. He will appear defeated, depressed, and dejected in a way that will be a far cry from the projection of bravado he has spent his entire life manifesting. Because while Donald Trump always wanted to live the life of a mob boss with all the power and threats and intimidation, he never once considered what that life looks like when it finally ends.
Today is one gigantic step closer to that fateful ending.
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