Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was pursued and harassed and tortured by his nation’s government for many years. He was jailed on trumped-up charges, he was the target of assassination attempts, he was poisoned so badly once that he had to be airlifted to Germany for emergency treatment. And then he finally died mysteriously of what the Russians laughably called “sudden death syndrome” in a remote prison colony above the Arctic Circle.
Only one man in the world understands what Navalny suffered, because he has gone through similar long years of persecution and indignity. And naturally, that man is Donald Trump, as he was happy to tell Laura Ingraham during a town hall on Tuesday night that was broadcast live on Fox.
Ingraham had brought up the enormous civil judgement that a New York court leveled against Trump last week, fining him somewhere in the neighborhood of $440 million (with interest) for his decades of fraudulently misrepresenting his net worth and lying about it on bank loan applications. To which the former president, his puffed-up head the approximate size and color of a regulation NBA basketball, responded:
“It is a form of Navalny. It is a form of communism or fascism. The guy’s a nut job. I’ve known this for a long time and I’ve said it openly. No jury, no anything. [Ed. Note – There was no jury because Trump hired a lawyer who was hot but also an idiot.] Letitia James is a horrible attorney general in New York. Campaigned on ‘I will get Trump, I will get Trump.’ We went through a trial. It turned out we were totally innocent on everything, and he fined me $355 million plus interest.”
Oh sure, just like Alexei Navalny, except for the imprisonment, the poisoning with a deadly nerve agent, the attack that left him mostly blind in one eye, and the mysterious death in a Siberian prison. Otherwise the difference between the two is indistinguishable.
Also we keep picturing the Wonder Twins bumping fists and shouting, “Form of … Navalny!” Then we giggle because it keeps the irritation somewhat at bay.
The town hall was about the millionth time in nine years that Fox News turned its airwaves over to Donald Trump so he could spend an hour playing down his unmatched criminality in the company of a friendly host trying to steer him into something resembling a coherent defense. And for the millionth time in nine years, Trump ran roughshod over the sucker designated to be the fresh roadkill splayed out across the potholed dark backcountry blacktop of what passes for his mind.
Ingraham drew the short straw for this assignment, which given the mutual lovefest between those two for the last decade, you would expect to get slapped with an NC-17 rating. And she tried — oh did she try — to keep him from shooting himself in his dick. But being Donald Trump, he kept firing until the entire magazine was empty and his weird-looking penis had been obliterated.
Here was a brief exchange where he returned to the subject of the criminal fraud case:
TRUMP: And even he [Judge Arthur Engoron] in his statement said I did nothing wrong.
INGRAHAM: He said you didn’t have any contrition. But Mr. President, Shandra in the audience has a question.
Ha ha, imagine one of Trump’s aides reading the passage in the decision where Engoron said Trump and his sons still had “a complete lack of contrition and remorse [that] borders on pathological” to him, and Trump saying, That’s good, right? And then his aide nods like one of the adults in “It’s a Good Life” and says Yes, Mr. President, it’s very, very good.
Then Ingraham, who is an asshole but at least knows what the word “contrition” means, had to save him by throwing it to an audience member for some hagiography.
But it wasn’t just the civil law arena where Trump ran right through every caution sign that Ingraham threw him. He also gave his criminal prosecution for stealing classified documents some more ammo:
Ingraham asked Trump why he hadn’t simply returned the material when the government asked him to do so.
“First of all, I didn’t have to hand them over,” Trump said bluntly. “But second of all, I would have done that. We were talking, and then all of a sudden they raided Mar-a-Lago.”
Let’s try to sum up Trump’s defense from the last year and a half: the documents were classified and Trump had the right to take them to Florida when he left office. (He did not have the right.) But also, he had declassified them anyway through the magic of his mind. But also also, the FBI planted the classified documents he had the right to take and had declassified anyway.
At this point, there is more video of Trump admitting to both taking the records and not understanding the Presidential Records Act then there is of the Kennedy assassination. We’d have more confidence in the case if he hadn’t drawn MAGA McGillicuddy as a trial judge.
Ingraham extended Trump one more lifeline, this one on the subject of the nonexistent voter fraud that he has convinced his followers kept him from winning the 2020 election:
INGRAHAM: How are you going to make sure that mail-in ballots and voter fraud, which we heard from a lot of people in line was an issue front and center, they’re very concerned about mail-in voting. So forget the past, what are you going to do about making sure we don’t have problems going forward?
TRUMP: If you have mail-in voting, you automatically have fraud.
INGRAHAM: Okay, but there’s mail-in voting in Florida and you won huge.
TRUMP: If you have it you’re going to have fraud.
INGRAHAM: But you won.
Ha ha, nice try, Laura Ingraham. There is only enough fraud to beat Donald Trump when it’s a state that he lost. If it’s a state he won, there is no fraud, ipso facto, QED, as-salamu alaykum.
There was a lot more about drilling for oil and the new category of “migrant crime” that Trump proudly notes he invented (the category, not crime, but with him we can understand the confusion). The entire mess is here if you crave 45 minutes of LOLsobbing because this guy still has a 50-50 chance of being the next president of the United States.
[YouTube / POLITICO / New Republic / Mediaite]
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