Column By John Young
From the unearthly tint of his reverse mullet to his cowhide smile.
From his claim of obscene wealth – “I’ll finance my own campaign” — to the countless followers he conned out of countless dollars to “Stop the steal.”
From a phony foundation to a fraudulent “university.”
From illegally inflating the values of his properties (loan purposes) to illegally deflating them (tax and insurance purposes).
Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s one-time attorney, told Congress all about that con four years ago. Now a judge has affirmed it: the high-dollar fakery fundamental to the myth of the MAGA king.
New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron has ruled the Trump Organization defrauded the State of New York, lenders, and others with brazen and prolonged accounting tricks.
The judge seeks to bar Trump and his sons Don Jr. and Eric from doing business in the state of their birth. That’s some job recommendations.
It’s also evidence added to what all should know by now: The only thing real about @realdonaldtrump is his singular gift of dishing out baloney.
Baloney, said a jury finding that Trump had lied about sexually assaulting author E. Jean Carroll. The court would find him doubly liable when he doubled down on his defamatory claims.
Baloney, said a judge in shutting down the Trump Foundation, for which charitable deeds were the least of its objectives.
Baloney said another judge in ordering Trump University to deceive no more – i.e. shut its doors.
In her Trump biography, “Confidence Man,” The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman writes of him, “The media writ large was unprepared to cover a political candidate who lied as freely.” Even a seasoned reporter who covered him for years as she did “struggled to handle the gusher of falsehoods that dotted his sentences.”
Lies. Lies. Lies. If the media won’t tame this man, the judicial system will.
The lie last week, and it was sizable and was abetted by the news media, was that Trump would be speaking to striking autoworkers in Detroit while his GOP rivals tore out each other’s bodily organs on a debate stage.
Didn’t happen. Trump spoke at an invitation-only gathering in a non-union plant. Indeed, he wasn’t even in Detroit. This, the day after Joe Biden was there walking in a picket line.
With every word regarding the auto industry, Trump tries to lie his way past the notorious anti-union posture of the Republican Party. He would never deign to repudiate that.
Back to the fundamental deceit about his business prowess, what The New York Times’ Susanne Craig calls “the original lie” of this whole saga:
The Trump organization claimed Trump’s worth to be $7 billion. Forbes magazine deemed that to be far less, closer to $2 billion, thanks to a procession of bankruptcy claims that mark his forested path.
As one analyst pointed out, if Trump simply had held onto the property he inherited from his father, that $7 billion boast might have been close to accurate.
The Trump Organization’s massive loss in civil court is one more marker to show that his “witch hunt” claims are rancid cold cuts.
Yet we’ll hear him say this from a Washington Times interview:
“I see myself as a very honest guy stationed in a very corrupt world.”
More evidence in the case against a man whose self-estimation in life’s firmament couldn’t be more grossly inflated.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email him at jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
