Imagine having Don Corleone in charge of the Department of Justice. It wouldn’t be any different than it is now with Don Trump.
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Sometimes, it’s easy to miss a small detail within a salacious story… and sometimes that detail is much more important than the underlying thing.
Case in point is something very revealing that Donald Trump wrote in the midst of his public falling out with Elon Musk — and it stands to reason that most people missed it because the two of them going head-to-head was just too much of a spectacle.
However, in between trading insults and veiled threats with his erstwhile benefactor, the president gave us a glimpse into his mind.
Now, you might say that Trump is not the most subtle person, which is why it does not exactly take a diviner to figure out what’s going on in his head.
Or you might say that you have no interest in visiting his mind, which is probably a pretty bleak place.
Fair points.
However, while Trump isn’t overly difficult to figure out (at least not to people who know the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder), this slip-up was still something special.
Habitually, when he talks about his desire to commit crimes, the president uses projection. For example, when he accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the Department of Justice (DOJ), then one can be pretty sure that this is something he has either done already or wants to do in the future.
Or, when he talks about his predecessor using the office of the presidency to enrich himself, then he is certainly cooking up some new con himself.
The same with claiming that his political opponents are “undermining democracy.” When you hear him say something like that, you know he is plotting another assault on government by and for the people.
As should be apparent, Biden is often the target of his projection because Trump has never gotten over the fact that the Democrat handily defeated him in the 2020 election.
That is what made Wednesday’s self-own so significant.
So, what happened?
While Trump was melting down because Musk is trying to prevent the passage of his big, beautiful tax cuts for the wealthy, he posted something very revealing on Truth Social.
“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump wrote. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
Obviously, the first part of that post is self-explanatory because, as we noted above, Trump is not exactly subtle.
Musk opposes the GOP’s reconciliation package, which basically amounts to a giveaway for the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the poorest, on the grounds that it adds trillions of dollars to the debt.
By pointing out that Musk himself is the beneficiary of the government’s largesse, Trump not only tries to paint him as a hypocrite but he also issues an explicit threat, i.e., that this money could dry up.
This is totally in line with language and tactics the president has used throughout his business and political career.
In short, he is a bully with the mentality of a mobster, and this post is the equivalent of the head of a crime family telling a local businessman that something bad might happen if he forgets to pay his protection money.
“Hey, Elon, those are nice government contracts you have. It would be a shame if something happened to them.”
It’s the second part that caught our eye.
“I was always surprised Biden didn’t do it.”
Trump may not realize it, but by acknowledging that he thought this way, he is inadvertently exposing his twisted view of the presidency.
To him, the power that comes with the office is to be used for personal gain and to punish his enemies.
We have seen this over and over in the first few months of his presidency.
Trump is going after individuals and law firms that played a role in thwarting his coup attempt. Conversely, he is pardoning anybody who did his bidding… first and foremost the January 6 insurrectionists.
This sends a clear message to anybody tempted to take the law into their own hands: Commit crimes for Trump, and he’ll let you walk.
At the same time, Trump’s post also makes it clear that Biden was different because he didn’t abuse his power (although he showed a clear error in judgment with the pardons he issued late in his term).
Yes, he could have gone after Musk.
As the billionaire is about to find out, presidents can make things very uncomfortable… even for the richest man on the planet.
However, that’s not what Biden did, even when Musk’s misinformation misled the American people and his donations helped get Trump elected.
Sure, you can say that Trump was indicted on federal charges three times during the Biden administration… but he is a criminal.
Just read the meticulously documented indictments. Many of these crimes were committed out in the open.
Biden’s DOJ even chose not to indict Trump for the very thing he was later convicted for in New York.
In other words, and we have noted this before, if Biden’s intention was to weaponize DOJ, or other parts of the government, then he did a terrible job.
And Trump’s complaining that he keeps getting indicted is like the local meth dealer lamenting that he gets visited by the cops all the time.
If you don’t want the cops to come by, don’t deal meth. And if you are a former or current president who doesn’t want to get indicted, stop committing crimes!
Of course, Biden’s refusal to prosecute Trump or some of his allies, like former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), is not particularly noble.
Instead, it is how presidents are supposed to act. And, before Trump, they all did, with the notable exception of Richard Nixon, who was forced to leave the office in disgrace.
There is simply no evidence that any other president has (ab)used DOJ as a weapon to go after his political enemies or to make investigations of allies go away.
Every one of them has been able to resist that temptation.
Now, however, DOJ has become fully weaponized (as we explained above, it’s all projection): Trump allies get deals, his “enemies” face prosecutions and investigations, lawyers who worked on the January 6 indictments and convictions are gone, as are much of the civil rights and anti-fraud divisions.
It would now be foolish to assume that anything Attorney General Pam Bondi does is not tainted by partisan politics. And by “tainted,” we mean “soiled.”
Just this week, Trump commissioned an investigation into whether White House aides during the last administration used an autopen to sign things without Biden’s knowledge. We believe it may just be a pretext to invalidate laws he signed or judges he appointed.
And on Friday, DOJ indicted Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was mistakenly sent to El Salvador in what turned into a minor constitutional crisis when the Trump administration refused to have him returned.
Usually, you could look at a federal indictment for human trafficking and assume that it is on the up-and-up, but, when dealing with this lawless president and his loyalists, that would just be plain foolish.
Because, as Trump demonstrated with that social media post, some thuggery is never far from his mind.
