Monkey Business

There's no better gravy for the soul than delusion. -- A.R. Moxon, The Revisionaries

Just when you're ready to write off the Times, they go and surprise you by doing something useful. Obviously, there's nothing new here, no surprises to be found. If you're the sort of credulous sap who ever thought Donald Trump paid his fair share, or has ever even made a truly honest buck, I have several bridges of various sizes to sell you.

Nor will the article change any minds; anyone still claiming to be "undecided" is either a true booger-eating, window-licking dipshit, or is cynically pretending for some reason to not just flat-out confess that they will be voting for the nazi grifter.

But the article is still an interesting read, and it does have use as far as confirming what everyone already knew or at least assumed. Perhaps the only thing mildly surprising is the confirmation of just how singularly bad at "business" Trump really is.

I mean, think about it:  he inherited a portfolio of trust funds and Manhattan real estate worth over $400 million; screwed his siblings out of their cut of the old man's money; made somewhere in the neighborhood of another $400 million from his stupid reality teevee bullshit; chiseled contractors and business partners in every venture he ever undertook; laundered bratva money for years; and after all that he's still broke.

That is truly an epic level of incompetence, folks. That's a Michael Jackson level of incompetence. Trump may not have had to pay off his side pieces as much as Jacko had to pay the kids he fondled, but still -- if you're paying $130k for a piece of ass, you're paying too much, I don't care if sparks shoot out of that ass.

But to blow through nearly a billion dollars of essentially found money, it's just staggering to comprehend, moreso for someone who at the very least could have paid many times over for investment advisors who could have easily helped him cover his nut and still live like a concussed rapper.

Forbes' Dan Alexander has done some terrific writing on Trump's various financial chicanery, and here he does a deep-dive thread into Trump's debt and assets. Fun stuff. It is hard to believe that anyone with real money would get involved with a huckster like Trump.

Certainly Trump is exactly the sort of dickhead Dorothy Parker had in mind when she said, "if you want to know what God thinks of money, look at the people He gives it to." Even by that standard, though, Trump is a special case. Even a dimbulb like Paris Hilton seems to be able to live the life she wants and still remain solvent.

As difficult as it is to get to that "net worth" level for people who aren't born to it, it's very simple to keep it and increase it, frequently by doing absolutely nothing at all. It was shown several years ago how, if Trump had done nothing more than invest his inheritance in a standard money-market fund indexed to the S&P 500, he'd be worth over $10 billion.

But you can't put a number on his pathological need to work on his weird, tragic daddy issues in public.

Job Qualification

If you're not too broken up at or distracted by the invisible perfidies of, ah, cancel culture, here's an interesting thread from the New Yorker's Adam Davidson on the likelihood of King Leer's Scottish golf resort (probably all of them, really) being a useful node in the global bratva money-laundering network.

Martyn McLaughlin has also been doing plenty of work for years on this story on the Scottish side. Natasha Bertrand broke a story last fall about the Air Force having to stop at the base nearby for refueling flights, and staying and playing -- on the taxpayer's dime -- at the golf club instead of at a hotel or on the base.

It's interesting to note how little mention any of this ever gets in the American corporate mediocracy. WaPo's David Fahrenthold has done excellent work for years on how Trump ran his scam charities through his rat-infested resorts, and it eventually got Trump busted and fined $2 million for charity fraud -- which again got precious little mention in the vaunted MSM.

Davidson does note this problematic pattern down in the comments section of the thread. Being the natural-born cynic that I am, I can't help but wonder if, despite the fine efforts by many fine reporters, the editors and publishers who actually own and run the media entities see these "failures" as such. Maybe it's not a bug but a feature that they're always ready, willing, and able to catch the latest volley from the press suckaterry follies, to rub our noses in the daily lies, rather than digging for the truth and pushing that for a change.

As depressing as it must be to be a scrivening journamalist in the corporate 'murkin press corpse, it must be brutal to be a good one, to always know that your heroic efforts are going to be ignored and pushed off the masthead, because Sulzberger doesn't want to anger the powers that really be, or Jeff Zucker's two-decade scam of promoting the worst humanoid in the country makes him and his fucking friends so much precious money.

I know it's not an easy button-push, like the endless stream of sinecured crybabies whining on nationally-disseminated establishment platforms that Twitter invective is squelching their First Amendment rights and repressing them -- EXACTLY LIKE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, YOU GUYS! -- but it's kinda important all the same. There's a steadily accruing amount of circumstantial evidence that the chief executive of this country has been a launderer for the Russian mob for decades, and he's openly and deliberately taken every possible step to avoid producing evidence that would clear it up instantly.

Maybe people should check into all that? I mean, I'm not a professional journamalist, in that I don't get paid lotsa money to read from a teleprompter into a camera, but it seems kinda important and useful to know. Maybe we could set up a ratio to make everyone feel better, say, one story about Dear Leader's almost-out-in-the-open money-laundering for organized crime, for every, I dunno, ten stories on today's COVID count, or today's lies from Kayleigh MagaNinny or today's yellicopter briefing, or all the other completely useless pro forma exercises the Fourth Estate indulge in every day, instead of just once informing us about shit we didn't already know.

The ability of otherwise well-meaning people to continuously deny what is right in front of them the whole time, to fritter away their opportunities with endless nonsense and fabricated claims of systematic free-speech repression -- like, uh, like when was the last time you saw Noam Chomsky on your teevee screen, or in the pages of the New York Times versus, say, Rudy Ghouliani or Newt Gingrich? -- never ceases to amaze me. Anything to avoid picking the fight that is right in front of them, that would actually affect them and their lives.

After a while, it's reasonable to assume that this ongoing lack of focus, this endless paucity of useful thought and analysis and insight, is not accidental, especially when people -- you know, readers -- keep asking them about it.

[Addendum:  Also, too. Read the whole thing. Yes, much of the info in the thread comes from Times articles, which is to their credit. But again, it's interesting how no one really bothered to pick it all back up during, say, the 2016 campaign, and just beat him over the head with it, and make it a non-stop topic of conversation. Seriously, it has everything, it's right out of a night-time soap opera:  sex, drugs, murder, money laundering, mob ties. If you accept the fact that news and entertainment have irretrievably commingled, that should have been all the more reason to investigate and push this narrative. It is reasonable to ask not only why they didn't do that at the time, but much more importantly, why they aren't doing that now?

Same with the Democrats -- if they're not going to open investigations or impeachment proceedings, the least they can do is keep it in the conversation. Bring it up every single time. If someone asks "why aren't you investigating or impeaching," you just respond with the very second the election is over, no matter what the outcome, we will.]

Groundhog Day

Ho-hum, just every single day now, where you have a trial, and not only does the jury foreman openly collude with the defendant on the outcome ahead of time, but the defendant's lawyers openly bribe the jury foreman and key members of the jury.

This is your country now, America. How do you like it?

Strategery

I know it's good sport among the smart-set types to have a laugh at the idea that a seasoned, savvy politician like Nancy Pelosi needn't jump at the beck and call of internet scriveners and opinion weasels, but here's the deal:  impeachment is a necessity now, period. She can figure out the timetable and the rollout and all, but it needs to be done.

After Mueller's public statement yesterday, failure to impeach would be more catastrophic for the Democrats than impeachment, trial, and failure to convict. They were voted back into the House to rein in Grampa Walnuts and his arrogant criminality, not to tsk-tsk and send letters. Any random fool on the street can do that shit. Backing down now would just be a show of total weakness, a clear signal that they can do whatever they please without repercussions. And why not? So far, they can.

It's hard to be patient, but I do believe that Pelosi is slowly working her way toward getting the process in motion. They will impeach, hopefully soon. But there are three things they can do to make this process much more effective:

1. Approach it as a marketing campaign. Seriously. Say what you want about Trump's nonsensical chants of "no collusion," but it's effective on his base. Simple, clear, consistent messaging. Quit stumbling from info tidbit to hastily gathered photo op. This is the product, this is the value proposition, here is the launch and the rollout. Identify your point people (four to six maximum) and flood the fucking zone with them. Have them say the same few catch-phrases over and over and fucking over again as the investigation progresses and more shit comes out, until the rube on the corner knows the tunes by heart. Stop praising your "diversity" and "tolerance," which just boils down to piss-poor attempts to herd cats, and get your shit together. Build your own cult, for fuck's sake.
2. Tell the political consultants to go fuck themselves. It's those rented weasel-faced "centrist" dirtbags that got you in this mess in the first place. Listen to your voters for once, the sentiment is clear. Trump's voters are already "energized." They're all in regardless. You need to start worrying about not demoralizing your own base. We all know this motherfucker's crooked like a three-dollar bill, and if the Democrats are not going to vigorously pursue these matters, per their constitutional and moral obligation, then people will not bother to show up next year. What would be the point? Quit trying to poach these imaginary slivers of assholes who despise you, and start giving the people who want to vote for you a reason to do so.
3. Start identifying vulnerable Republicans in the House and Senate, and work them over. Approach them as colleagues and make one last good-faith effort to (lulz) appeal to what's left of their better angels, and when that inevitably fails, be ready to do town halls in their districts, using that message discipline, and get it all up on YouTube and social media. Fuck the corporate media. They're only talking to each other. Get some polls together that start showing some effect on the incumbent's rating, and then go back to those traitors and give them one last chance to do the right thing before you go scorched-earth on their worthless asses. Justin Amash is an outlier, but you get just a couple more to budge, and you get momentum. The next one of these gutless turds to "express private misgivings," ask them straight-up what it's going to take to get them to grow a conscience. Once they name a price, now you have a negotiation point.

The challenge with Mueller's investigation is that the deeper he dug, the broader the vein of corruption gold became. It's clear that we still probably don't know half of what went on -- hell, Mueller himself probably still doesn't know the half of it. That corrupt piece of shit Barr shut him down, pure and simple. There's a reason for that. The impeachment investigative process will bring more of that corruption to light, and consistent marketing of that steady drip-drip-drip will make a huge dent, and will bring a few remaining "centrist" Republicons around.

Bill Clinton once famously said that people would rather be strong and wrong than weak and right. I think the truth is even simpler and more fundamental:  People want politicians who will fight, even when they're wrong, even when their cause appears lost. And in this case, the cause is clear and right and vital, and if the Democrats can't get it up for this, then again, there is no point in continuing to vote for them. Yes, there is a chance that it will backfire, but refusal to even try will most definitely lead to failure.

Bullshit Detector

Now that we peons have been permitted by His Travesty and his dogsbody to view the "real" report, I don't feel the need to say too much beyond pointing out that everything I said two weeks ago holds. It's impossible for me to comprehend how anyone can look at the evidence, look at everything that's transpired and is still yet to come -- hell, just look at the behavior -- and not see the clear pattern of criminality.

I mean, seriously -- this report prepared by people who are out to get me totally clears me, but I can't show it to you -- how many fucking clues do doubters need to see that those are not the things an innocent person does and says? It's like watching O.J. Simpson in court a quarter-century ago, stretching his hand so that the glove won't go on. It's so obvious, you kind of feel a bit sheepish even pointing it out. Just like the tax returns. It's one thing to hide behind the "make libturd cry" tactic, but how much of a chump do you have to be to believe the guy?

I honestly don't know what sort of drooling moron can't see Trump for what he is. I wish I had more ruthlessness and time on my hands, because I'd have a hell of a bridge to sell them, and apparently they'd give me every dime they had. I thought most people had figured out these things back in fourth grade or so.

But like everything else about this fucking criminal scumbag, this latest episode says more about everyone else -- the worthless minions he attracts to lie for him; the mediots who disgrace their profession by gaslighting the nation, because they're too fucking lazy to actually do their jobs; the Dummycrats who can't get back into their default circular-firing-squad position quickly enough; the dopes who would still worship him and deep-throat his tiny mushroom even if Trump had flat-out confessed to everything -- than it says about Trump.

There's nothing new to learn about Trump. This is what he's always been -- lazy, stupid, deeply corrupt, and contagious in all those things. He makes the people around him worse people, just by association. One of the salient details from the report is how many instances there were of people in Trump's orbit actively ignoring or circumventing his direct orders. And yet none of them had the nerve to step up and say something.

Look at Rod Rosenstein standing behind that fucking pig Barr, like a good German. Fuck them both. Barr is a known quantity, a lifelong fixer of elite political inconveniences. But Rosenstein strikes this pose of integrity, and he has clearly sacrificed it, but it's unclear for what. That's why he looked like a hostage standing behind Barr, because he knows that his silence is a betrayal of everything he thought he stood for, of every pretense he thought he had of working in his country's best interests. Hope that pension's fat enough to make it worthwhile, kid.

You can see both sides of the Democrats' impeachment dilemma, and neither one is good. Rule of thumb when you only have sub-optimal choices:  Fortune favors the bold. If you're going down, go down swinging hard. They really botched their response to the rollout, gutless and diffident per usual. They need to use their Easter recess to get their ducks in a row, and come back ready to drop the hammer. I actually think they will; they have to see that there's really no other choice for them now. I'm not one to ankle-bite my congressional reps over every little thing, but if they pass on this one, I'm done and I have no trouble calling their offices and telling them so. I have a feeling I'm not alone on this.

I don't know how other people go about assessing people and situations and figuring them out, seeing where things aren't as they seem, spotting the bullshit. To give an innocuous example, I recall back in 1998, being on Slate's original Fray chat forum, arguing with the writer David Ehrenstein over whether Ricky Martin and Kevin Spacey were gay. I was sure that they were (not that I give a shit), and yet Ehrenstein, who not only is gay but wrote a very good book about closeted Hollywood actors back in the day (and so knows well how gay performers who are not ready to go public will try to keep that aspect of their lives hidden), didn't think so.

Recall that at that time, neither Spacey nor Martin were the least bit open about their private lives, so it was pure conjecture on my part. But I have a pretty good bullshit detector, and I think the fifteen years of archived posts on the right sidebar attest to that.

(To give a little more context, Ehrenstein was not shy about calling Ace of Spades, another Fray denizen, a "power bottom." Ace is not gay, nor even homophobic, but Ehrenstein correctly understood this as one way to push Ace's buttons. So there was a lot of back-and-forth on that particular subject, most of it pretty good-natured, certainly none of it hurtful or judgmental. I guess the point is that sometimes things that seem pretty obvious to you, are just no there for someone else. They don't see it. Like that stupid dress where no one could decide what colors it was, or the Laurel/Yanni thing.)

A more recent example would be the Jussie Smollett hoax. I mean, Jesus, right out of the gate, the first few details you heard about it sounded way too on-the-nose. A couple of randos beat him down in a heavily CCTV area of Chicago, using racial and homophobic slurs the entire time, along with some MAGA slogans for good measure, tie a noose around his neck because they just happened to have one handy, and Smollett crawls back to his hotel room leaving the noose on? Come on.

Anyway, the point is that we are in the midst of a very dangerous trend in American politics, one that actually predates Trump, but that he has been able to take great advantage of. The power of the unitary executive has been ramped up steadily since 9/11, while simultaneously the electorate has become much more polarized and cemented in their respective outlooks.

Trump did not invent this scenario, but he has figured out how to weaponize it, and he understands intrinsically that no one -- not his party, not the media, not anyone -- has the balls to challenge him on it. Everyone still thinks the "institutions will hold" or some shit like that, and that's simply not true, whether or not Trump gets re-elected. This is important to understand. Things are about to get worse either way.

Let's look at it in strictly binary terms -- he gets re-elected or he doesn't. Can you imagine if this asshole wins again? At least two more SCOTUS appointments, probably three (in addition to Ginsburg and Breyer, Thomas is also apparently on the verge of retirement), and an undeniable legitimization of the damage he's already done. He'd be off the fucking chain, with a whole new roster of fresh scumbags to do his bidding, and he'd double or triple down on everything he's already been doing. You think it's a box of turds now, you wait and see what it's like if he wins again.

But even if he gets thrown out of office, it won't mean much if there's not a real landslide at the congressional and even state levels. These people are bad losers, they obviously have no scruples, and the psychotic billionaires who really own this country and all the propaganda networks will shift into overdrive. Without an overwhelming win and majority, it will just be like the last six years of Obama -- gridlock and bullshit and conspiracy theories and legislative inertia, only this time you'll have King Shitposter and his cult of sociopathic halfwits full steam ahead with him, ankle-biting full-tilt all the fucking time. It will be nothing but hate and retribution.

People need to have their bullshit detectors on all the time with everyone. When a career turd like Steny Hoyer gets in front of the cameras and punts on first down, just a couple hours after Bill Barr harrumphs and tells everyone to go fuck themselves, Democratic voters have to call bullshit. Maryland voters need to tell that tired cocksucker to get with it or get gone. Fuck or walk, pops. There is no room for maybe on this train anymore, it left the station two years ago.

That's not to say that ultimately, impeachment might not be a viable option. But only a fucking moron makes that call a couple hours after the report is released, before you've even had time to review the fucking thing. Say what you want about the cultists, they at least know that their boy is going to make a show of fighting. Fucking Steny Hoyer doesn't even want to try. Who wants to break it to him that people don't usually vote for someone they can't even respect?

It's true that the Democrats have to focus on a lot of other issues as well, but one assumes they can multitask. The fact of the matter is that this transcends the Mueller Report that everyone puts their eggs into.

Let's say for the sake of argument that Trump had never fired Comey, that there was no action for which to appoint a special counsel -- in short, that the investigation had never taken place, and Robert Mueller was not a household name, none of it had ever happened. Trump has still shown conclusively, many times and in many ways, that he is manifestly unfit for any office, much less the office he has.

In terms of intelligence, ability, temperament, discretion, all those qualities people across the spectrum tend to value in a chief executive, he has none of those things. His incompetence, laziness, and behavior would have gotten him fired from stocking shelves at Wal-Mart within the first six weeks.

Think about all the various things he promised to fix, from immigration to opioids to foreign policy to trade policy. Every one of them is measurably worse:  trade deficits are at record highs; the immigration crisis has been exacerbated by his actions toward the "three Mexican countries"; infrastructure still decaying; wages still stagnant despite very low unemployment levels; North Korea is right where it's always been; our allies are sick of our shit and are not going to be there when we need another favor from them; and the worst problems facing this country -- wealth inequality and climate change -- are completely ignored and have gotten steadily worse.

Forget the Mueller report, and what you think you know or think about it:  this guy sucks, and he's a fucking asshole to boot. Bring that into the mix with all the lying and corruption, and you have a had enough? argument that should win.

And if not? Well, again, whichever way this shakes out, we will get the government we deserve.

Here's How You Get the Tax Returns

Scene from a plausible near-future:

[INT.:  Set of Sunday morning circle-jerk Meet the Press.]

CHUCK TODD:  Good morning, I'm Chuck Todd, and welcome to Meet the Press. Our first guest this morning is Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Welcome, Madam Speaker.

NANCY PELOSI:  Good morning, Chuck, thanks for having me on the show.

TODD:  The Democratic House has demanded that the Internal Revenue Service release the last six years of Donald Trump's tax returns. Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney recently indicated that that would quote "never" end-quote happen.

PELOSI:  Well, that's his job, isn't it, Chuck? [Pauses a beat] Such as it is.

TODD:  Trump has indicated that since he is still under audit, it would be impractical for him to release the returns.

PELOSI [smiles]:  Yes, he's indicated that.

TODD:  Richard Nixon released his tax returns while under audit. What would you ascribe Trump's reluctance to?

PELOSI:  First of all, Chuck, he's not under audit.

TODD:  How do you know that, Madam Speaker?

PELOSI: Well, I could give you the old "how do you know a lawyer is lying" joke, Chuck, but the obvious fact is that Trump has literally been clocked at lying an average of roughly twelve times every day he's been in office. This is clearly just another in an impossibly long list.

TODD: Do you have any actual evidence of that?

PELOSI: Look. The IRS rarely audits anyone in the first place, because they're chronically understaffed. And they almost never audit wealthy people, because people who are actually wealthy hire competent professionals and companies with liability insurance to do their taxes. I'm wealthy too, and I've never been audited. Why? Because I hire a CPA/EA to do my taxes for me. If he messes up and gets me audited, his company's reputation takes a serious hit. Donald Trump counts on people to seriously believe he sits there at his Louis the Nineteenth dining-room table on April 14th every year, sorting out his receipts, trying to stay one step ahead of The Man. I mean, Jesus Christ.

Finally, Chuck, Trump has been claiming to be under audit since at least 2014. I seriously doubt anyone has ever been audited for five years straight without either ending up in prison, or having to hock their house and possessions to pay back taxes, like Willie Nelson. So Trump has either done something seriously wrong and illegal, or he's, you know, lying. I'm actually giving him the benefit of the doubt here, and saying it's more likely that he's just lying.

Although there's probably some illegal stuff going on as well.

TODD: Why would he lie for so long about something like that?

PELOSI [smiles again]: Why does any man lie, Chuck? More to the point, what does every man lie about?

TODD [starting to blush]: I don't know what you mean, Madam Speaker.

PELOSI [smirking]: Of course you don't. Let me be more clear -- he's lying because, since he under-reports his taxable income and assets, because he's a chiseling scumbag, the returns will show that he's not worth anything near what he's always claimed. Not only would that be embarrassing for him, but he would then be placed in the position of not being able to amend that embarrassing low total, without then exposing himself to charges of defrauding the federal government. Which is still a crime, even for someone occupying the office of chief executive.

TODD: Oh. I was thinking you were referring to somethi....never mind.

PELOSI: Money, height, sexual prowess -- men always exaggerate, Chuck. Whether it's the size of their wallet or the size of their....equipment, they can't help themselves. But in this case, it's Trump's selling himself as a super-successful gazillionaire for decades that is his main vulnerability. For him to have to publicly admit that he's merely a cash-poor hectomillionaire, with nearly all his assets tied up in the real estate portfolio he inherited from dear ol' dad....well, that would be equivalent to dropping his pants on Fox and Friends and showing his tiny, tiny wiener.

TODD: Madam Speaker, I....

PELOSI: Look, Chuck, we come on these shows, in an endless rotation, and we pretend to say something to the people of America, but we're all just really talking to each other, right? That's how the game has always been played. I don't have an opinion on whether that's "right" or "wrong," it's just how it is. It's part of my job, and as my political career winds down and I have no aspirations to higher office, I want my current tenure as House Speaker to have a more meaningful legacy to it.

Part of that legacy is getting to the truth, and getting some sunlight on the facts. In the 2016 election, both candidates promised to release their tax returns. Hillary Clinton released thirty-three years' worth of returns. Donald Trump dodged and hedged, and ultimately reneged on that promise. He keeps saying "promises made, promises kept," and that's simply not true. The only promise he's actually kept is giving billionaires another tax cut.

Rather than get bogged down into another pedantic panel argument about truth and promises and whether they're really important or not, I think we have a responsibility -- as a co-equal branch of the US government, mind you -- to get to the bottom of why that is. There's a reason he's reneged on that promise, and there's a reason that he lies about why he "can't" release the returns.

Put it this way, Chuck -- he currently seems more concerned about keeping his tax returns from ever seeing the light of day, than he is about hiding the Mueller Report that supposedly exonerates him. Though he won't release that either, after previously promising he would, because it totally clears him.

Why do you suppose that might be, Chuck?

TODD: Well, Madam Speaker, it would be irresponsible of me as a journalist to speculate on the possible....

PELOSI: Oh, please. Cut the Walter Cronkite pose for a second and be honest -- with me, with your audience, with yourself. I didn't ask you for objective empirical fact. I asked you for your opinion, based on the things you do know have transpired these past few years, the things you have observed and mentally collected, and perhaps formed a pattern of informational reference.

Chuck, you're an adult, gainfully employed, you have a wife and kids, right?

TODD [bemused, hesitant]: Riiight....

PELOSI: You have a house or maybe a couple, you have a vehicle or maybe a couple, you had to do some adulting over the years and purchase those things. You've held a job that requires you to talk on a daily basis with people in my line of work.

TODD [still slow on the uptake]: Okay.

PELOSI: Well, we all know that politicians, at best, are a breed of, let's say, truth-stretchers. We tend to BS and finesse things a bit, sometimes things that are important, sometimes not. But someone in your line of work needs to have something of a BS detector to spot us and call us out. Wouldn't you say that's true?

TODD [puffing self-importantly a bit]: Well, yes, we pride ourselves at cutting through the usual Washington-speak and getting to the heart of the matter. I take my job seriously, and I know my colleagues do as well.

PELOSI: Well, okay then. So what does your highly-refined-from-decades-of-experience BS detector tell you, when someone -- anyone, whether it's Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders or some hedge-fund twerp who makes a living robbing banks from the inside -- what does your "journalist's intuition" tell you when some rich guy tells you that he'd love to show you his tax returns, but gee, the IRS has been auditing him for nearly a decade, and gosh, his massive, throbbing portfolio of real estate is just too complex for mere mortals to comprehend? Does that ping your detector just a little bit?

TODD: I suppose, but I --

PELOSI: Chuck, if Donald Trump had been the salesman for your wife's Audi XUV or your Hamptons vacation house, would you have bought from him?

TODD [perplexed]: Uh, no, I guess I wouldn --

PELOSI: No one in their right mind would, Chuck. And that's all Jerry Nadler and Richard Neal and the rest of us are trying to do here, is get an inspection on the house. Unfortunately, we've already bought the house, but there's an opportunity next year to back out of a bad deal, and we feel that if enough people got a look at that inspection report, they might not like what they see. Maybe they see that the house is built on a sinkhole and infested with termites.

Chuck, would you have signed on the line which is dotted if the salesman who sold you that vacation house told you that he couldn't let you and your lovely wife see that home inspection report because....well because reasons? That the house was a hundred kinds of awesome and perfect, but you were just going to have to take his word for all that?

TODD: Ummm....

PELOSI: Look, you asked why Trump would lie about being under audit, and I'll repeat my answer -- because the returns show him to be not nearly as wealthy as he claims. There's also all that undeclared bratva money he's been laundering for years, but the thing we'll see right away is how....small it all really is. So small. Like a frightened baby mouse hiding in an unkempt tuft of grass.

TODD [regaining his composure]: Thank you for your time, Madam Speaker.

PELOSI [smiling like the cat that got the cream]: Pleasure as always, Chuck.

TODD: Up next, we'll have Rudy Giuliani and Kellyanne Conway explain why we should totally believe everything that comes out of the White House. Stay tuned.

{END SCENE]