Crazy Like a Fox, Stupid Like a Weasel

      Let's get one thing straight- Donald Trump is not stupid.

      Yeah, yeah,  I know, this is the same guy who wanted to nuke hurricanes, pronounced Nepal and Bhutan "nipple" and "button", told us to ingest chlorine, assumed Finland was part of Russia and thought he could buy Greenland.

      So one could make a case that Trump's about four cans short of a six pack. But Trump is a crazy like a fox and stupid like a weasel. At the very least, we can compare Trump to the least weasel, the smallest in the weasel family.

     Weasels are devious, undulating little predators, like Trump, and are celebrated not for their high intelligence but their cunning. If you own a ferret, for instance, note how they obsessively pile their shit in the same corner. If you stop cleaning their cage, they will just keep shitting in the same corner until they can no longer climb that high. 

     This is what Trump does. Yes, the crimes vary but the motive remains the same- If it benefits or hurts my enemies, I will do it. 

     And like a ferret shitting in the same corner of its cage, Trump keeps shitting on the Constitution, the US Code, anything that tells him, "No, you cannot do this." Remember what that journalist wrote about Trump way back in 1976- Trump cannot do anything "unless there's some moral larceny attached to it."

     And let's keep in mind what and how Trump did what he did at the end of his purloined presidency, if not why: Think of the White House as a jewelry store and Trump a master jewel thief. A master jewel thief will know which pieces of jewelry have the most value. Just like that jewel thief, Trump also knew which documents would fetch the most money or do the most damage.

     This is why, in one haul, the FBI retrieved a cache of documents that contained, among other things, 25 Top Secret documents. The picture released by the DOJ last night shows only a small sample of that haul (67 were marked "confidential" and 92 were marked "secret"). When he was shown these documents and got his PDBs, he may have been disinterested at the time. But when it came time for him to leave and he knew he wouldn't be able to get in the White House even in a tour group, he grabbed while the gettin' was good.

     That's why the Justice Department found not just confidential, secret and top secret documents in the unlikeliest parts of Mar a Lago but also SCI (Special Compartmented Intelligence), Sigint (Signal Intelligence), Humint (Human Intelligence, Special Access Programs. In short, they were the cream of the crop, the most cherished, sensitive and closely-guarded secrets that a modern-day, industrialized nation can possibly possess. Shit that, if it gets out, could get people killed.

     He knew what to take and what to leave behind. 

     So, yes, Trump is often ignorant. He's often illiterate, historically illiterate, scientifically illiterate, legally illiterate. Every time he gets caught committing a criminal act, he loudly professes his innocence then admits to his guilt in other ways.

     One could also make a good case that he's crazy, senile or demented. When he stands, he looks like a statue of the Leaning Tower of Pisa carved out of lard, a sure sign of dementia.

     But don't ever call him crazy or stupid. He knew what he was doing and why, which is why he's in the mess he's in, now.

     He's crazy like a fox and stupid like a weasel.