5/4-5/18: Various members of the Liars’
Club start the weekend off by trying to explain which lies currently are official lies.
Rudy was
out of feet.
Did the President of the United States know about the
$130,000 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels or not? In February, Trump’s
personal attorney told the American people his client did not. Michael Cohen claimed he paid the settlement out of the goodness of
his bottomless lawyer’s heart.
Pressed by the free press to explain, Cohen claimed next that he used a home equity loan to raise
the cash.
Don’t worry, though, he was not reimbursed. (You had to be more than a little bit
dense to swallow that.)
Eventually, reporters forced Press Secretary Pinocchio to
answer questions regarding the hush money payment (see: 3/8/18). Oh, no, Sanders swore, the president never knew about the payment. The president would never
have sex with a porn lady! Trump always kept his weenie in his pants.
Now, two months later, Pinocchio looked like she was
swallowing castor oil while dealing with fresh questions. And you knew. Sanders
had to go home, and sit up late at night, hating her job, knowing every day she
was standing in front of reporters and the American people and trying to
convince us a pile of hippo doo was a beautiful sculpture.
Reporters kept poking around for the truth. Eventually,
representatives of the free press cornered the head of the Liars’ Club on Air
Force One. Did Trump know anything about the payment to Daniels?
“No,” he said.
Then why did Cohen make the payment, a reporter inquired?
“You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen,” the president replied.
“Michael Cohen is my attorney and you’ll have to ask Michael Cohen.”
At this point, you had to imagine only fools could be falling
for this shtick. Still, ardent Trump fans believed every word he said. He could
have stood and drooled for five minutes. They wouldn’t have cared or noticed.
Unfortunately, for the Liars’ Club, the story continued to
unravel. Had Cohen worked in any capacity for the Trump Organization during the
2016 campaign? This could lead to questions about campaign finance violations
if the answer were yes. “No!” all the members of the Club cried in unison. No
one at the Trump Organization could believe anyone would ask such a dastardly
question! Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, pointed out that at least
one email sent by Cohen, related to the hush money payment, came from his
address at the Trump Organization.
Another legal filing related to the Daniels case was signed by Jill A.
Martin, a different lawyer for the Trump Organization. Hey, no big deal, all
the liars who worked at Fox News said.
Martin was merely filling out legal papers on her free
time.
It was soon reported by The
New York Times that a bunch of lawyers working for Trump were about to
quit. In a pair of tweets in March the president howled about more “Fake News.”
Goddam! He and his supporters hated “Fake News.” Eleven days later John Dowd,
his top defender, resigned. Ty Cobb lasted longer, stepping down at the end of last month. As for the
“Failing New York Times” and it’s “purposely…false story,” the reporter behind
the article was soon shown to be approximately 103% right. Maggie Haberman had predicted that Emmet T. Flood would be added to Trump’s
team.
On May 2 he was.
Rudy
joins the Liars’ Club.
The Liars’ Club had no choice but to add another big name to
the ever-changing list of paid prevaricators. Trump would go with Rudy
Giuliani. Lawyer Rudy immediately began assuring everyone that, no, the
President of the United States would not sit down for an interview with Special
Counsel Robert Mueller. In his first full day on the job Rudy let slip on Sean Hannity’s show that Trump did know about
the payment to Daniels. But don’t worry! Trump paid Cohen back.
Hannity (a founding member of the Liars’ Club) seemed
stunned. This was going to require a creative new round of lying, to replace
all the lies Giuliani had just blown to bits. Hannity was happy to lie for
Trump, so long as ratings remained high. But even his ill-informed and
ill-served viewers might start to notice that the president was lying – at the
very least, to his third wife.
Rudy added helpfully that Trump paid Cohen back by putting
him on a $35,000 monthly retainer, “with a little profit and a little extra
margin for paying taxes.” So, what were we talking? Four months? Five? Five
would make for a solid payday of $175,000, $130,000 for Stormy, $45,000 for
Cohen.
The president “didn’t know about the specifics of [the
payment], as far as I know,” Rudy assured Sean, “but he did know about the
general arrangement that Michael would take care of things like this. Like I
take care of things like this for my clients. I don’t burden them with every
single thing that comes along.”
In another interview later that day, Rudy stuck his other foot in his
mouth. Okay. Cohen had been paid a total of $460,000 for his pains. Or
it might have been $470,000. Giuliani wasn’t sure.
If heads in MAGA hats were spinning, the next morning Rudy
showed up on Fox & Friends and
gave them another twirl. Giuliani tried to stick a third foot in his mouth, but
he was out of feet. This time he offered up the nugget that Cohen might have
gotten a great deal in the hush money settlement with Daniels. “My God, this is
cheap,” Rudy said Cohen must have felt. “Let me get this signed up and signed
off.” This was “pocket change” for a man like Trump. As Rudy saw it, $130,000
was nothing to worry about when it came to keeping a porn lady from spilling
the beans. Just imagine, he said to the horrified hosts, “if that came out on
October 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton.”
Yes, imagine. The Big Orange Buffoon might not be president.
That wasn’t Trump’s real motivation. Oh, no. According to
Rudy, he only wanted to spare his wife’s feelings.
(And
that would be why he was boinking the porn queen in the first place?)
Could the story get any more bizarre? It could. Thursday
morning the Big Orange Buffoon had to do some tweet-lying. First, Trump claimed that any hush money
paid “had nothing to do with the campaign.” Then he admitted his personal
attorney had received a monthly retainer, as Rudy had said:
…from which he entered into,
through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a
non-disclosure agreement, or NDA. These agreements are.....
...very common among celebrities
and people of wealth. In this case it is in full force and effect and will be
used in Arbitration for damages against Ms. Clifford (Daniels). The agreement
was used to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an
affair,.....
...despite already having signed
a detailed letter admitting that there was no affair. Prior to its violation by
Ms. Clifford and her attorney, this was a private agreement. Money from the
campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll in this transaction.”
The questions only multiplied.
The First Lady had to be wondering how much Cohen was paid, and
why, and how many women he hushed up by stuffing mouths with cash. We already
know two Playboy Bunnies have accused Trump of conducting affairs. One of those
affairs was before he married Melania, but at the time he was engaged to Marla
Maples. The second took place during the period Trump was boinking Stormy, and
when he was definitely married to Melania, his third wife.
“The best
information I had at the time.”
The next day, Press Secretary Pinocchio tried to clean up
Rudy’s first mess. According to The Hill, she was telling colleagues behind the scenes Giuliani’s
comments left her in an “untenable position.”
Now she had to go out in front of the press and admit this
was the first time she had heard that her boss had reimbursed Cohen. It
probably made her choke on her words to know she was standing at the podium, a
pillar of Christian righteousness, and dissembling about payoffs to porn stars.
Sanders soldiered on, saying six times during one press
briefing that she had not been misleading the public. Not at all! Not at
all! She was providing “the best information I had at the time.”
(In
other words, Trump was letting her lie.)
By Saturday morning a fresh layer of possible lies had been
added to an already impressive pile. According to The New York Times, Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer of
the Trump Organization had:
…known since last year the
details of how Mr. Cohen was being reimbursed, which was mainly through
payments of $35,000 per month from the trust that contains the president’s
personal fortune, according to two people with knowledge of the arrangement.
For those who care about the U.S. Constitution and believe
absolutely in the rule of law, if even half of this were true, the questions
were far more important than who did what, when and where, in matters of sleazy
sex. If Trump would lie about this and
lie without restraint, why would anyone, no matter what size MAGA hat
they screwed to their cranium, not be coming to the realization that they
had been sold a bill of goods in voting for the Big Lying Orange Buffoon.
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How can you tell Sarah Sanders is lying? She's standing at the podium.
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