Saturday, June 1, 2024

Can We Please Stop Calling it "the Hush Money Trial"?

If Trump had paid Stormy Daniels hundreds of thousands of dollars out of his own pocket to perform intimate acts with him and then not to discuss it publicly, it would have been pathetic and disgusting, like most of the things Trump says and does, but he wouldn't have been put on trial for it, and he wouldn't have been found guilty of 34 felony counts. Non-disclosure agreements are pretty sleazy generally, but they're legal. Let's be clear about it: Trump was put on trial, and was found guilty of all of those felonies, because he paid for the non-disclosure agreement with misappropriated funds.

And let's be even more clear: "misappropriating funds" is one of those white-collar euphemisms for "stealing money." Trump stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from his 2016 Presidential campaign fund and used that money to pay for the non-disclosure agreement. 

I don't know whether I would have understood what Trump's recently-concluded criminal trial in New York City was about, if I hadn't seen a cartoon years ago, showing Mitch McConnell on Fox News, saying, while Paul Ryan stood next to him, nodding his head with tears in his eyes, something to the effect of "What two consenting adults do behind closed doors with big bags of campaign donations is nobody's business!" I can't find that cartoon now. I apologize to the cartoonist for not being able to give them proper credit.

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