No question that Wilson has a way with words, especially of the derogatory kind. But in between the quips, is a serious examination of how Trump has moved the traditional GOP completely off its conservative philosophy roots. He has little respect for the new GOP, a sycophantic oleaginous breed (to quote George Will) that thinks of nothing but collecting as much money for themselves and getting reelected.
They have apparently bought into the Trump way of doing business: borrow as much money as possible then stiff the contractors and workers, default on the loans, skim as much as possible, repeat infinitely. He thought he could do that in office. We have now learned from Rex Tillerson that the legality of a policy was irrelevant. Trump would just fire and replace with someone with fewer scruples. And then call the former names. Tillerson remarked about Trump, "It was challenging for me, coming from the disciplined, highly process-oriented Exxon Mobil Corporation, to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn't like to read, doesn't read briefing reports, doesn't like to get into the details of a lot things." Trump bragged about being a non-reader and being undisciplined.
Some of the more juicy quotes:
“Everything about Trump’s opening speech was moral poison to anyone who believed in any part of the American dream. Everything about his nationalist hucksterism smelled like … a knock on the door of authoritarian statism.”
The right is “merrily on board with a lunatic with delusions of godhood”.
“There’s an odds-on chance that our grandchildren will hear this tale while hunched over guttering fires in the ruins of a radioactive Mad Max-style hellscape.”
One can only hope Wilson is not prescient.
“All the things evangelicals had said for generations that made a candidate anathema were suddenly just fine … Being a goddamned degenerate pussy-grabber with a lifetime of adultery, venality, and dishonesty is not, to my knowledge, one of the core tenets of the Christian faith … Trump has opened entirely new theological avenues … There is literally not one aspect of Trump’s behavior as a citizen, a husband, and as a man that shows the slightest scintilla of repentance for anything, ever.”
The tax bill was a masterwork of “gigantic government giveaways, unfunded spending, massive debt and deficits, and a catalogue of crony capitalist freebies”.
Trump's far-flung empire of bullshit makes the Teapot Dome scandal look like a warm-up act in the Corruption Olympics. Trump has surrounded himself with Wall Street alumni “who have behaved with weapons-grade venality … and Master of the Dick affects. They were there … only for the tax bill. Nothing else ever mattered to any of them.”
The Trump administration has been “a hotbed of remarkably obvious pay-to-play and crony capitalist game-playing. How obvious? Think 1970s Times Square hooker on the corner obvious … The degree to which this president has monetized the presidency for the direct benefit of himself, his soft-jawed offspring, and his far-flung empire of bullshit makes the Teapot Dome scandal look like a warm-up act in the Corruption Olympics.”
The presidency “hasn’t been an endless exercise in self-fellation, until now”.
Wilson is sure the reason why Trump is so reluctant to release his taxes is that it will reveal numerous instances of "loans" that were really income received from Russian oligarchs through shell companies with no expectation they would ever be paid back. Paul Manafort got in serious trouble for the same shenanigans. It has a name: tax fraud.
The question now (read just after the Capitol insurrection) is whether the thing that dies will be the GOP.
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