IN HIS OWN WORDS

So what's this latest Trump audio tape about?

A while back, General Mark Milley (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff) said he worked to keep Donald Trump from making bad decisions in the final days of his presidency. Kept him from invading Iran, for instance.

Trump was recorded at his golf club in Bedminster, NJ, disputing this outrageous notion. He does so by whipping out the classified war plan for Iran and pointing out he didn't actually write it himself. Milley and his boys did!

The very existence of this secret document, which he is clearly leafing through during the recording (as he points out how it goes on for pages), exonerates Trump completely in the "Milley Case."

Or so Trump thinks.

The fact is, Trump's interest in attacking Iran put General Milley in the position of having to prepare such a plan. That's his job. But the existence of that plan does not contradict Milley when he says he worked to keep Trump from implementing the plan.

Only Trump, and his coterie of sycophants, could possibly think so.

Donald Trump always looks for any ragged edge to peel back someone's largely accurate account of reality. If he were accused of shooting some guy ten times, he would claim that proof he didn't shoot the guy more than six or seven times completely exonerates him.

That the poor fellow is dead, perforated by a great many bullet holes, is a detail that can safely be ignored. You need to focus on what's important here! Shooting a guy ten times is monstrous, and saying Trump did such a thing is a disgrace! Shooting the guy no more than eight or nine times, tops, is an entirely different matter.

And look, look: Trump has proof! Listen to the tape, okay? Count the rounds as they're fired. No way is that ten whole gunshots! It's beyond belief that folks could try to get away with such a despicable lie!

(Those guys have got to be politically motivated, right?)

Trump's reaction to the Bedminster tape is that it was leaked by the prosecution and is played out of context. I'm surprised he doesn't claim it's a deep fake created by AI, perhaps by the same gang of cyber-thugs who generated a porn star named "Stormy Daniels" (obviously a made-up name).

Saying that something was leaked seems to be an attempt to invalidate the actual contents. See, it's the leaking that's the real crime! A crime committed just to throw dirt on a former president. And, to be technical, not really even a former president, since Trump to this day maintains he won the election "by a lot."

Should he happen to win in 2024, Trump will see that as more proof the election of 2020 was rigged. Plus he now gets to crow about how he defeated their obvious attempts to rig 2024 as well!

Next, he can seek righteous vengeance for all those political atrocities!

And then, like a sports arena, he can re-brand the country. In future the US shall be called "Donald J. Trump's Nazi America Forever."

(Quick, print that on the money! And rest assured, every denomination will have the emperor's grinning mug on it!)

The good news out of this bizarre but possible development: Europe might send armies to liberate us, the way we sent antifa armies to defeat the Axis powers.

(I wonder if Trump considers the actions of this country in WWII to be a hate crime?)

In his latest statement about the tape, Trump seems to imply he was lying about the Iran Attack document. Or exaggerating out of bravado. But it's hard to understand what his audience was cooing over during the recording. Someone present suggested the item was the sort of thing Hillary Clinton would print out all the time. You know, something tasty from her vast and treasonous store of classified emails.

Sorry, Trump, but the Iran Attack doc was on the table. Nothing else tracks.

(Reminds me of the would/wouldn't "fix" following the Trump-Putin news conference in Helsinki. Total freakin' nonsense, man!)

All this is just a truncated preview of the nonsense he's likely to spew if the Bedminster incident ever gets charged.

I can hardly wait.

In the meantime, the fellow is going to run out of lawyers willing to put up with his incessant blathering while awaiting trial for this or that crime.

DJT: "It's not fair! They won't stop using my own words against me!"

Judge: "Why don't you try keeping your mouth shut?"

DJT: "Are you kidding? Have you met me?"

CAUTION: LOW CLEARANCE

Say you're a Company Commander in the Army. On your desk is a Top Secret document. Into your office comes a young troop you happen to know has a Top Secret clearance. Can you slide that document across the desk, ask him to read it?

No.

Or, at least, not necessarily.

Look, I don't know everything there is to know about such matters, but in the Army I held a Top Secret clearance, which I needed to authenticate the presidential release of nuclear weapons. (I never had to actually do it. Far as I know, nukes haven't been authorized since the bombing of Nagasaki.)

Don't know everything, like I said, but I did learn the basics.

In the world of classified documents you need two things to get access to the good stuff: 1) a security clearance high enough to cover the rating on the document, and 2) a need to know.

Just having a clearance doesn't cut it. Reading that classified document has to be necessary for you to perform your assigned duties. A guy with a Top Secret clearance can't just romp through a room full of Top Secret docs and sample at will.

Now, let's say you're the President of the United States with a Top Secret document on your desk. Into the Oval Office waltzes a man without any security clearance whatsoever. But this guy is known to be an expert on some esoteric subject or other.  (That's why you sent for him, right?) Let's say you (as President) need this man's opinion on the material covered in the Top Secret document sitting atop the Resolute desk. Can you hand that guy the document and let him read?

Yes, you can.

You, as Commander in Chief, can make the determination that you have an overwhelming need to know what this guy will say after perusing that document. You can declassify the doc for this guy at this time in that room, just to get his input.

Note that the document is still classified Top Secret. That hasn't changed. You're just saying that in order for you to perform your duties as President, you need to let this guy, who has no security clearance, have the opportunity to read it.

It appears Donald Trump has misunderstood this process, that he has forgotten the very particular circumstances that have to prevail for him to summarily declassify highly sensitive materials.

He seems to have latched onto the perverse notion he can wrinkle his nose and declassify a room full of documents just so he can play with them at his leisure when he is no longer in office.

Now, it's easy to see how he may have made this mistake. His enormous ego tells him stories and he has no choice but to believe them. Why? Because all those stories enhance his delusion of what a great and powerful man he is.

For instance, his ego tells him he's a genius, and the fellow is so stupid he must agree. His defective brain is naturally positioned to believe this bizarrely unlikely cognitive assessment.

Trump has now been federally indicted for being the idiot he cannot avoid being.

(Is helpless idiocy a legal defense?)

As a result, Trump has to tell a new story, the one about how Biden's Department of inJustice is out to destroy him for political reasons. He has to say those people are deranged maniacs performing the greatest evil ever seen in the history of this country.

Trump either knows this to be true, or has come to realize he needs to pretend to know it. Either way, his supporters believe him.

And they can't help it, either. They are, after all, human beings, creatures who are stupid and crazy and unaware of it. Their heads are full of crap they know to be true, because everywhere they look they see what their idiot brains tell them is proof.

In this case, they can also enjoy a phalanx of prominent Republicans who go on TV to repeat Trump's dangerous lies.

Failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake says the corrupt Deep State will have to go through her and 75 million Trump followers to get at their beloved ex-president. (And she reminds us that most of these patriots are members of the NRA and therefore heavily armed.)

Unfortunately for her, Special Counsel Jack Smith has already gone through her like she was the ghost of a rancid fart.

It remains to be seen how many of the 75 million armed Trumpists will show up to bust their guy out of prison when the time comes (and perhaps kill him by accident in the process).

But maybe that bloody scenario won't be necessary. It's possible Donald Trump could cut a deal to avoid a trial altogether. What would that look like?

One big hot mess, that's what.

Not only would Trump have to admit (under oath) he's not the godlike being his ego insists he is, but any reasonable deal would need to include his agreeing to never seek public office again. Unfortunately, that would fit beautifully into the false narrative of political persecution he can't stop promulgating.

To avoid that hassle, maybe Trump's favorite judge could take it upon herself to dismiss the charges against him.

No problem with that, right?

I mean, it's not like the man faces any other legal jeopardy.

(Speaking of which: What of Trump's Bedminster Golf Club and the possibility of additional charges? The damning stuff mentioned in Jack Smith's Florida indictment has yet to rise to the level of actual charges. Such charges would have to be voted by a grand jury impaneled in New Jersey.)

To be fair, Judge Cannon might take this opportunity to cut ties with Trump, to demonstrate to one and all she has learned her lesson.

Or, even weirder, she might go out of her way to suck up to the prosecution, even run the risk of getting a conviction overturned in appeal because of bad decisions from the bench.

But not on purpose, right? Right? Because that would be diabolical....

THE EQUALIZER

Everybody on this planet, it seems, wants to be an American. And I understand: It's a pretty nice country, with substantial (if not universal) opportunity for economic advancement. What's not to like?

(Plenty, but that's for another time.)

We're the Shining City On A Hill. Come on in, the water's fine!

You want a better life, come to America.

You wanna get rich, come to America.

You wanna be President, hold up, Bubbles. You gotta be born here.

(But Moms, you want your kids to be President, haul your bloated carcass over the line and unload your progeny here in America. But be advised, that loophole might close in the future...)

In any case, for practical purposes, it's generally not enough to say you seek the economic opportunities of this country. You'll probably need a better reason.

Oh, I know: Apply for asylum!

Just say your home country is trying to kill you. Listen, it's not fool-proof, but this method definitely has legs.

And drawbacks. Like massive competition.

Seems like everybody's country is trying to kill all but a handful of its favorite people. (Lots of oppressive countries offer better lives to selected citizens than the average American gets. It's good to be the King [or a close friend].)

We could just print up citizenship papers for every person on the planet, subject to their arrival on our borders. (Wet foot/dry foot, people: You gotta plant at least one tootsie on American soil!)

Or we could change the basic model.

End all asylum. Instead, fix the root problem.

In effect, we become the Equalizer, worldwide.

Got a problem in your home country, let us know. We'll work to fix it.

(I've said this before: The best way to keep Mexicans from crossing the border into the US is to make Mexico a paradise nobody in their right minds would want to leave.)

So, the new model: Don't come live in our house. We'll fix your house, so you can stay there.

Would that cost more money to implement? Probably. But this policy would almost certainly catch less political flack than the solution we're currently trying to operate.

(Not to mention, Donald Trump rode into the White House largely on the illegal immigration path. And the bills for that event are still piling up, threatening to drag us under.)

On the downside, expect a lot of push-back from the designated "problem" countries. But what the hell, America is already seen as a bully in much of the world.

Another, rather tricky problem: This country needs a substantial number of foreign workers to raise our crops and perform other jobs Americans mostly reject as beneath them. As a consequence, we may need "apprentice Americans," folks on a path to citizenship. When those people get fully vested, a new batch comes aboard, and so on. Let the economy sort it out.

(Hits on the economy are not the only problem, of course. A lot of closed-minded Americans simply don't like foreigners of any stripe.)

Still, the Equalizer model has its good points. With American help, many people might be willing to fight the system in their home country, rather than admit defeat and travel a dangerous road only to grovel in makeshift border camps, begging Tio Gringo for favors.

Might it not be better for your mental health to stay home and work on existential problems at the source? The way it is now, America only offers hope of a better life if you come here. Maybe it's time to try changing that.