Friends, I’m not saying there are any criminals among us, but if you were planning on committing a crime at any point in the near future, I’d like to remind you that a great way to get caught is to talk about your crimes openly. Apparently Donald Trump, the former president with the most federal charges against him ever, never learned this lesson. That’s good for democracy and the United States but very bad for him personally. Ha ha!
In case you missed it, CNN released audio of Trump bragging about the contents of classified documents to a writer working on a memoir for Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. At one point in the recording, he did say that it was all off the record, but apparently the United States Government doesn’t honor that request and is proceeding with a criminal trial against Trump via the Espionage Act. I repeat: ha ha!
Here’s an embed of the audio if you want to laugh at just how well and f*cked Trump is and marvel at his sheer hubris and stupidity. Not since Icarus has a fall been so delicious and ironic:
If you can’t listen, HuffPost has a transcript of the most damning part of the recording:
“Look. This was him. They presented me this ― this is off the record, but ― they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him,” Trump said of the papers he was showing. “All sorts of stuff, pages long. Let’s see here… Isn’t that amazing. This totally wins my case, you know, except that it is like highly confidential, secret, this is secret information.”
[…]
“See, as president I could have declassified it,” Trump said in the clip. “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
It’s 2023, and we’ve all been around long enough to know that Trump is, of course, being a lying liar who is incapable of telling the truth. Naturally, he’s saying these recordings are not proof of his guilt but rather his innocence, and he took to Truth Social to tell the world. (Side note: today is not opposite day, in case you were wondering.) Per The Hill:
“The Deranged Special Prosecutor, Jack Smith, working in conjunction with the DOJ & FBI, illegally leaked and ‘spun’ a tape and transcript of me which is actually an exoneration, rather than what they would have you believe,” he said in a post on Truth Social.
“This continuing Witch Hunt is another ELECTION INTERFERENCE Scam,” Trump added. “They are cheaters and thugs!”
So, if I get out my tinfoil hat translator here, I think Trump is saying that the recording is doctored, and the doctoring proves that the U.S. Government is out to get him because they want to keep him out of the next presidential election. I’m only explaining this so you’re prepared for the talking points of the QAnon contingent in your family if you’re getting together for a July 4th BBQ, but really, you should make other plans because any BBQ with QAnon people is going to have unseasoned, poorly cooked meat and some terrible people. That’s just a fact.
Obviously, Trump is full of shit, and the only people who will believe his deranged lies are already drinking his Kool-Aid. He’s not swaying hearts and minds here, especially when you can listen to the tape yourself. Just last week, Trump denied that he had any classified documents. Per The Hill:
Trump has provided various responses to the allegations against him, including claiming in an interview with Fox News last week that there was “no document.”
“That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things,” he said in that interview. “And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document, per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”
Now that the leak is out, he’s saying he was bragging, although that contradicts his claim that the recording is a DOJ plant to tamper with the election, but when has Trump ever tried to keep his lies straight?! Per HuffPost:
“I would say it was bravado, if you want to know the truth, it was bravado,” Trump told Semafor and ABC News. “I was talking and just holding up papers and talking about them, but I had no documents. I didn’t have any documents.”
“I just held up a whole pile of — my desk is loaded up with papers,” he added. “I have papers from 25 different things.”
At what point is this guy just going to point and shout, “Hey, look over there?!” as he tries to sneak out of the country because he feels the walls closing in on him? I’m no attorney, but this feels like a slam-dunk case for the prosecution. You have this knucklehead on tape admitting the files are top secret. They found the files in his private home. No amount of lies can help you dig your way out of that one. At least, I hope not. But this is Teflon Don we’re talking about.
(featured image: Drew Angerer, Getty Images)
