They Will Come Not to Praise But Bury Him

     One of the most miraculous abilities of Donald John Trump, a man who for the last four years has played a fake president as successfully as he played a fake successful businessman for NBC, is his inexhaustible capacity to find lackeys, especially attorneys, who still believe that Trump will, when the chips are down for them, fix things for them.

     That he'll show a baseline of loyalty that's the domain of the common dog that Trump loathes so much.

     The late Roy Cohn thought he was That Guy. If you know anything about mid 20th century American history, you'll note that Cohn was the legal counsel for Joe McCarthy, a guy whose very name is a common synonym for political witch hunts. Later in life, he'd attached himself to Donald Trump's orbit.

     Trump got the ideas for marital prenups and tax abatements from Cohn, as well as retaliatory nuisance lawsuits to counter those filed against him. Indeed, Cohn had first come into Trump's orbit in 1973 just as the Justice Department was investigating 39 Trump-owned properties that had been engaging in racial discrimination. Cohn got the job as Trump's shyster after the budding mogul asked him what he should do about the pending lawsuit. Cohn shot back, "Tell them to go to hell," then advised they countersue.

     That's exactly what Fred and Donald did, eventually suing the US government for the unheard of sum of $100,000,000. The lawsuit proved as fallacious as the ones Trump's shysters are filing these days and it was thrown out.

     The cold-blooded Fred Trump had laid the plinth for Donald Trump's bizarrely evil psychopathology but it was Roy Cohn who chipped away then polished the rough edges. From Cohn, he learned how to be even more ruthless, including debt-welching, countersuing, character assassination and the fine art of blustering and bluffing. Under Cohn's mentorship, it was all but assured that Donald Trump would turn into the right wing monster that he would become.

     So it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone reading this today that when Cohn was ill with AIDS in the mid-80s, Trump dropped his fixer like a hot rock. On his deathbed, a stunned Cohn said, "Donald pisses ice water." It was probably the only honest thing he ever said in his destructive life.

     It's a pattern that has remained consistent perhaps more than anything in Trump's character (except, perhaps, for the debt-welching). Trump has since gone through a small army of lawyers that  he's eventually discarded and treated as badly as he had Cohn in 1986. Say what you will about him but Cohn knew, understood and returned Trump's loyalty, even if it was one predicated on pure evil and chicanery. And Trump failed to reciprocate it at a time when Cohn had most needed it.

     His other great fixer in the private sector, Michael Cohen, can tell you all about that one-way loyalty of Trump's. Cohen went to prison for lying to Congress and committing campaign finance violations by paying off Trump's mistresses. He, too, had been duped into unswerving loyalty for Trump. Like Cohn before him, Cohen got disbarred by New York.

     Trump responded with a barrage of nasty tweets aimed at Cohen who, unlike Roy Cohn, at least had his Road to Damascus moment. These days for Michael Cohen, every day is a day for atonement.

     In later years and in short order, they entered the government and eventually exited on bad terms. Jeff Sessions, his first Attorney General and another true believer, showed a baseline of respect for the law by recusing himself from the Russia probe. Trump was furious and eventually fired him 17 months later.

     Don McGahn, the Chief White House Counsel, steadfastly supported Trump until Trump floated the idea of firing Robert Mueller while he was still assembling evidence in his probe. McGahn, remembering Watergate and Archibald Cox, threatened to quit if he did.

     Recently, Trump fired Sidney Powell, the former US prosecutor, although it could be said that Powell in her dotage has gotten so spectacularly insane that even Trump couldn't take it, anymore.

     And that brings us to Bill Barr.

     Even as the Electoral College, as expected, certified the election and cast the original 306 for Joe Biden, Trump had Barr over at the White House essentially to give him a pink slip. For those of us who'd been paying attention, the Cold War between Barr and Trump had been simmering for weeks. On December first, Barr was forced to admit that the DOJ had found no evidence of voter fraud, at least not on a scale that would change the outcome of the election.

     Typically, Trump responded that he was disappointed in the outcome of Barr's perfunctory investigation and simply substituted that reality for his own.

     In his own creepy, Peter Lorre-voiced way, Barr had been a loyal foot soldier. In the last couple of weeks before the election, Barr went on TV and cast doubts about the honesty of those who would use mail in ballots. He tried to sabotage the Mueller probe by holding a press conference and lying about the conclusions Mueller's team had made. Barr said Mueller had found no evidence of collusion and that the OLC's guideline supposedly prohibiting a special counsel's ability to indict a sitting president was proof Mueller had found nothing but was not entirely true. Then Barr kept Congress, and the American people, from seeing the unredacted version of the report.

     He tried to fix the Ukraine extortion scheme but couldn't keep Trump from getting impeached. He petitioned for Michael Flynn's conviction to be overturned before Trump finally pardoned him. He meddled in Roger Stone's case before Trump commuted his sentence and then actually interceded on Trump's behalf in the looming rape trial between him and E. Jean Sims. After a brief while, it became abundantly obvious that Barr was less of a public servant safeguarding the American people and more of a bloated ambulance chaser with one client- Donald Trump.

     But Barr also had a legacy and reputation to protect. We learned just last week that Barr had to ban one of Trump's spies from physically entering the Department of Justice building. Just two days before his termination, Barr was overheard calling Trump's complaints about losing the election as "the deposed king ranting."

     Yet he got the job in the first place after basically auditioning for it by arguing in an article that the presidency, especially when it's currently co-opted by people named Donald Trump, is above the law. Barr essentially did his level best to turn the American presidency into a monarchy.

     Then the favors ran out. Knowing the end was near, having no political dreams of his own to protect, Barr finally started acting in a baseline sort of way like an actual Attorney General and not like a bloated version of Roy Cohn. He realized he got all he was gonna get while the gettin' was good and waddled down the mooring rope like the rat that he is before the listing ship of state sank.

     Now he's out. Trump wanted another fixer and now all he has is Rudy Giuliani, a guy who's so palpably insane that even Republican lawyers mock him. He's leaked, farted, drooled, masturbated and spittled his way into post 9/11 infamy, showing us his mental state's deterioration in real time.

     Apparently, that's what Trump's settled for. And aside from a coterie of anonymous, short-term seat warmers, that's what he's left with.