Trump’s normal response to one of his inner circle being indicted/convicted/named as one of his accomplices is, “I don’t know him, I don’t know what he does, blah, blah, blah.  It’s his trademark Throw Your Friends Under the Bus strategy.  This week, he did it again with Lev Parnas, indicted for campaign finance laws, when he started singing like a canary about his role in trying to frame Joe Biden over fabricated corruption charges.

Trump immediately declared that he didn’t know Parnas.  Sure.  He never heard of him –

President Donald Trump standing with Lev Parnas at the White House in Washington.

Here’s Trump’s normal response to being caught in a lie as applied to Lev Parnas:

Do you think Ted Cruz sounds like a delusional lunatic?  Do you, like me, sit slack jawed while listening to the nonsensical tirades of Screwy Louie Gohmert?  Well, I’ve got a piece that will help you understand how we got here.

This is actually from last year, but I re-read this piece from the Washington Monthly and thought it would be a good reminder of how ultra-conservative ideologues went crazy, destroying politics in the US as we knew it.  Most interesting? They did it by adopting tactics used by the Communists in the 30s, 40s, and 50s.  The result is that they have now vilified you, me, and everyone else with whom they disagree, using ever more desperate tactics as demographics and common decency move more and more against them.

We often focus on the obvious about Trump: Thin-skinned narcissist, cheesy reality television star, criminal, schoolyard bully, prolific liar, lazy spray painted hair-weaved fake, skirt chasing philanderer, welsher, and pretty much all-round shitbag.  But that’s not all.  Except for disassembling our government and packing the courts with incompetent ideologues, Trump really doesn’t do anything.  His trade wars are circular and have only accomplished 3 things – bankrupting US farmers and businesses, costing the American people hundreds of billions of dollars, and finally, handing global trade dominance to the Chinese.

But there is something else he does that almost no one focuses on; he roils the markets with his sudden proclamations.  It goes something like this:

Trump runs a never ending cycle in almost everything he does while never really accomplishing anything.  Without warning, he slaps tariffs on selected imports, crashing the markets, then he starts making off the cuff comments about some kind of “deal” that increases with time.  The market rallies, nothing with trade changes, then he attacks China (or whatever country du jour), crashes the markets again.  Rinse and repeat.  He uses the same tactic with not only trade talks, but in negotiations with allies, foes, and actually dangerous countries like North Korea.  Part of his tactic includes spouting bullshit on national television while standing in front of his helicopter with turbine engines screaming in the background, called by Stephen Colbert “Chopper Talk”.

But it’s more nefarious than that.  Every time Trump shoots off his mouth and moves the markets, somebody makes a lot of money while somebody else loses a lot of money.  I have always believe he does this on purpose, especially when markets are sagging due to his trade wars or other idiocy.  In fact, one of his buddies, aging corporate raider Carl Icahn, saved millions when he dumped $31 million in shares of steel industry stocks just days before Trump announced steep China import tariffs.  But it gets worse – in October, Vanity Fair published an article documenting very suspicious trades in the S&P futures markets timed precisely to make hundreds of millions of dollars when a Trump proclamation moves the markets.  We know Trump intentionally manipulates markets with lies.   One well documented case was last August when Trump blatantly lied at the G7 summit that he was talking to top officials in China when there were no talks occurring.  The markets rallied at the lie, only to trade off when nothing happened – again.

Trump has always gotten away with questionable, if not outright illegal activity.  It’s engrained in his DNA.  He’s not constrained by rules and laws normal people follow, and it would not be in the slightest bit surprising that, in addition to his random lying, he (or someone close to him) was actually signaling to associates when he was going to make some big proclamation so they could get on the right side of a particular trade to rake in cash.  It certainly looks like it.  As one of Vanity Fair’s trading sources said, “There is definitely some hanky panky going on.”

One of the most rare sheep in the world is the Mongolian Argali, which is listed as endangered, was the latest victim of Don Jr.’s apparent obsession with killing rare animals.  Most egregious, he killed it at night with a laser sight mounted to a rifle, and even worse, was granted a permit to kill the animal AFTER HE KILLED IT.  That’s right, folks, this sheep lives only on the high plains and mountains of Mongolia and is so endangered that less than 90 hunting permits are issued a year in the country.  Carrying the privilege gene of Donald Trump, Don Jr. isn’t bound laws like the rest of us.  He uses his dad’s position to do what he wants since so far, like Trump, he’s been above the law his entire life.

In this particular case, after the hunt, which occurred in August, Jr. met with Mongolian president Khaltmaagiin Battulga.  He received the permit, one of only 3 granted in this particular region, AFTER he had left the country, which is highly unusual.  Oh, and this all happened only weeks after Mongolian diplomats had a WH house meeting with US officials.

No privilege here, right?

A federal judge in Manhattan just ordered Trump to turn over 8 years of tax returns to Cyrus Vance, the NY DA.  The judge said that Trump is not immune from criminal investigations while president.  Vance is investigating Trump paying a bribe to Stormy Daniels to silence her during the 2016 election.  Boom.

In a conference call with House Republicans yesterday, Trump characteristically reasserted he’s been “perfect” in all things Ukraine, but then threw Rick Perry, of all Trumpists, under the bus saying that the Zelensky call was HIS idea.  Nevermind that all of the text messages between State Department diplomats about the call and the extortion of Zelensky all point to Rudy Giuliani, Perry is apparently the next victim to be thrown under the Trump bus.  Surely, I’m not the only one to figure out that Perry was set up as the patsy to protect Giuliani, who set the whole thing up.  In May, Mike Pence suddenly couldn’t go to Zelensky’s inauguration, so Perry was tapped to represent the US government for the event.  There was no plausible explanation for this move and no one had tagged Perry with having to do anything with the growing scandal until the last 48 hours, and it’s pretty apparent that Trump has pinned the whole thing on him even though there is zero evidence that Perry even knew what was going on.  Over the last couple of days, word has leaked out that he’ll be stepping down at the end of this year.  Now we know why, and I predict it will come a lot sooner than that.

This is classic gangland style character assassination.  Don’t get me wrong – Rick Perry is a dumbass and a shameless suck up, and he deserves everything he’s going to get here.  He hitched his wagon to Trump, the Reverse King Midas; everything he touches dies, and now it’s Rick Perry’s career.