The Price of Lies
Plus: Nikki leans in
By now it is a hoary cliche that we live in post-truth times. But Truth is not going easily or cheaply, is it?
Let’s try to keep up here:
On Friday, a federal jury ordered the former president to pay $83.3 million (on top of an earlier $5 million verdict) for defaming a woman that he raped. He faces another judgement for as much as $370 million dollars for lying about his finances.
Last year, Infowar’s Alex Jones was ordered to pay nearly $1 billion to the families of the Sandy Hook victims for lying about the massacre.
Just last month, Rudy Giuliani was hit with a $148 million verdict for defaming two Georgia election workers — Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss.
Fox News was forced to pay $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems for lies about the 2020 election. Now, here comes Smartmatic, which is seeking more than $2 billion dollars from Fox for still more lies about the vote.
For Trump and the others, this may simply be the cost of doing business. But, as Bloomberg’s Tim O’Brien notes, a hundred million here, a hundred million there… starts to add up to real money.
What of that nearly $460 million Trump might end up owing? Where will it come from? Trump has spent years wildly inflating the value of everything he owns, while playing hide-and-seek around his debts. Bloomberg News estimates he has a net worth of about $3.1 billion, the lion’s share of which is tied up in urban real estate and golf courses. He can’t simply just sell some of that stuff to raise money — at least not right away. He may also sit atop liquid assets of about $600 million, which is what he’d probably have to dip into if need be.
Should Trump wind up really strapped after running out of other options, he could consider filing for bankruptcy to protect what he has. But although he’s been a serial bankruptcy artist throughout his career, that is probably a path he would never need — or want — to take. Bankruptcy was part of the Trump I and Trump II eras, when he morphed from being an outer borough huckster into a national curiosity and TV oddity gorging on other people’s money. The Trump III era, which began when he rolled down a Trump Tower escalator in 2015 to bid on the White House, is something he’d be less inclined to sully with overt displays of financial ineptitude.
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These things also add up, don’t they?
Happy Monday.
Raw cynicism
Meanwhile, as we face the prospect of a bloodier, wider war in the Mideast after Iranian-backed militants killed three US servicemen, the fiddling continues in Washington.
On Morning Joe today, my friend Jonathan Lemire put it bluntly: the Trump/GOP decision to tank a bipartisan border bill (while holding aid to Ukraine and Israel hostage) is an act of naked political cynicism.
After insisting that the border represented an urgent, imminent, existential crisis, Republicans seem now to have decided to do nothing about it. Maybe worse than nothing. The deal on the table represents almost everything Republicans have claimed they wanted — a much better deal than they’d get even if they return to power this year.
Oklahoma’s James Lankford laid out the GOP wins:
"It increases a number of Border Patrol agents and it increases asylum officers. It increases detention beds so we can quickly detain and then deport individuals. It ends catch-and-release. It focuses on additional deportation flights out. It changes our asylum process so that people can get a fast asylum screening at a higher standard and then get returned back to their home country," Lankford explained.
But Trump wants the issue, not a solution. And the GOP appears ready (once again) to give him the failure he craves. (And the MAGA-fied GOP is targeting any stray problem-solvers: “Oklahoma Republicans Censure Sen. James Lankford Over Border Deal”.)
On Sunday, Lankford called out his colleagues for the obvious hypocrisy:
It is interesting, Republicans, four months ago, would not give funding for Ukraine, for Israel and for our southern border because we demanded changes in policy. So, we actually locked arms together and said, we’re not going to give money for this. We want a change in law.
And now, it’s interesting, a few months later, when we’re finally getting to the end, they’re like, oh, just kidding, I actually don't want a change in law because of presidential election year.
We all have an oath to the Constitution, and we have a commitment to say we’re going to do whatever we can to be able to secure the border.
Or not.
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Politico asks an interesting question: Could this sort of cynicism be so naked that it allows the Democrats to actually flip the script on the border?
“There’s a real opportunity here, where Dems around the country can raise their hand and be like: ‘It turns out they were bluffing. They weren’t serious. It was a sound bite for them,’” one plugged-in Democratic campaign operative told Playbook last night. “They’ve been talking about it, highlighting it and freaking everyone out — then when there’s a bipartisan deal, with a lot of Dem compromises in it, they went running for the hills.”
Edward Luce: Why Big Business Is Caving to Trump
In our weekend podcast: Tax cuts and a gutted regulatory state are a big draw for Wall Street. But under a Trump 2.0, it would be the aspiring monopolists who would be the winners. Democracy isn’t the only thing on the line. FT’s Ed Luce joins me.
You can listen to the whole thing here. Or watch us on YouTube.
Quick Hits
1. Nikki Haley crosses the Rubicon with defense of E. Jean Carroll verdict
Nikki Haley’s campaign against Donald Trump reached a new phase with five crucial words in her “Meet The Press” interview on Sunday: “I absolutely trust the jury.”
Haley’s active defense of the anonymous jurors that awarded E. Jean Carroll $83 million in damages after a previous jury found Trump was liable for sexual assault and defamation marked a point of no return. “I think that they made their decision based on the evidence,” she added, just to make her position crystal clear….
Haley’s remarks on Sunday fit into an emerging message that answers Trump’s New Hampshire riddle more directly and is already forcing a more pointed response.
First, she’s saying more unambiguously that Trump is a loser, which is a relatively recent development. She launched her campaign around an aspiration to win the “popular vote” — a non-issue that sidestepped the topic of his state-based efforts to overturn the last election.
“With Donald Trump, Republicans have lost almost every competitive election,” she said in a Tuesday night speech in New Hampshire that enraged Trump. “We lost the Senate, we lost the House, we lost the White House. We lost in 2018. We lost in 2020, and we lost in 2022.”
Her attacks on his age, honesty, “unhinged” rants, and mental fitness all relate to this as well, because they offer an actual theory of why he loses: He’s a raging incompetent who upsets swing voters that Republicans need to win. The more she can bait him into making especially racist or nasty attacks, the easier it is to illustrate her point.
2. There Are Brave GOP Senators—McConnell Should Be One
A.B. Stoddard, in the Bulwark:
In November, I wrote that McConnell “owes himself a better legacy than being run out of town by J.D. Vance, Ron Johnson, and Donald Trump. He can help the country, and democracy, and himself, by abandoning the needs of his party to do what is right.”
He still can.
All McConnell has to do is retire his ambition to remain leader. Republicans will likely take the majority in the Senate next year with or without Trump. At age 82 (next month), McConnell is already the longest-serving Senate leader. He doesn’t need more time in the job. Allowing more Ukrainians to die, and Russia to win, only for Trump to dethrone him anyway, would be as pitiful as it would be tragic.
3. Never-Trumpers Never Had a Chance
One of the sobering realities of life is that we often don’t understand our true hierarchy of values until they come into conflict. We might say, for example, that we believe that our political leaders should be men or women of high character who broadly agree with our policy positions. But do we believe that at the cost of actually losing a political race? Or is victory the necessity, and character and ideology the luxuries?
I don’t regret my arguments against Trump. I’d make them again, and I will continue making them. I do ask myself how I missed the sheer extent of Republican anger. And I’m deeply, deeply grieved by the thought that I did anything in my life before Trump to contribute to that unrighteous rage. Animosity is the enemy of liberty and unity. Before Republicans can reject Trump or end Trumpism, they’ll have to ease the anger that dominates far too many right-wing hearts.
4. All the Ex-President’s Sycophants
Shapiro, whose first choice for president in 2024 was Ron DeSantis, has now endorsed Trump, saying “It’s time for the party to coalesce around the guy who is going to beat Joe Biden.” No sign of “certain principles,” or any at all.
NONE OF THIS IS EXCEPTIONAL. Trump brings lots of people to their knees, seeking his forgiveness for the bad things they’ve said about him in the past, often after he has ridiculed and humiliated them.
I have sought out explanations for this behavior. Perhaps the best I’ve found is that Trump occasions a kind of Stockholm syndrome, in which those around him come to identify with their abuser. But when it comes to political and media players, there may be an altogether different malady at work, which I’ll call Broken Moral Compass Syndrome.
Cheap Shots
Liz vs. Elise, Round two. TKO.
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Sad. “Kari Lake Booed at Arizona GOP Meeting After Jeff DeWit Tape”
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Apparently not.
Every Republican, Independent, and Democrat should be mad as Hell at the elected representatives in the House and Senate who have betrayed their oath of office in refusing to do the work the American people sent them to do. The GOP is making our country less safe and has diminished our country in the eyes of the world.
One line that sticks out to me from that Chernobyl series on HBO was "every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid." Seems appropriate right now.