Shakedown Street

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

What's the difference between Organized Crime and the Trump administration during a shakedown? Mafia Dons aren't stupid enough to do it in front of cameras and microphones.

    When this administration finally crashes and burns like the Hindenburg, people will wonder why Trump didn't unilaterally sign an Executive Order renaming Pennsylvania Avenue Shakedown Street. Between Trump handing over total control of the largest government in the world to a Nazi South African sociopath to offering a path to citizenship for $5,000,000 to openly bribing oil executives with whatever they wanted for a one billion dollar bribe, the White House has become a mere front organization for a global criminal enterprise.

    Today's spectacle was a case in point. Trump had Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy in the Oval Office and immediately proceeded to verbally give him noogies and Dutch rubs. For good measure, someone finally found Vice President JD Salinger wandering around the Beltway, brushed the pork rind crumbs out of his hobo beard and brought him to attend and contribute to said spectacle.

    Yes, a curiously invertebrate Marco Rubio was also there in barely more than spirit, looking like a dog when asked if he chewed up the toilet paper when Mommy and Daddy were gone. Brian Glenn, most famous for shtupping Marjorie Taylor-Greene, actually asked Zelenskyy why he wasn't wearing a suit. It was like watching an old episode of Romper Room in which the children were part of an LSD trial experiment.

     So there they sat in front of the fireplace, where Trump has fond memories of burning incriminating documents that he couldn't flush down the toilet, to hold a dog and pony show with arguably the most courageous world leader in the world and treated him like an immigrant shopkeeper in a heavily mobbed-up Lower East Side neighborhood.

    Zelenskyy was in Washington to sign a mineral rights deal that would've handed over 50% of Ukraine's rare earth minerals to pay back the money we'd already committed to Ukraine's defense against Russia's invasion over three years ago. In exchange, Trump sorta floated the vague possibility that maybe, perhaps we'll put boots on the ground and protect them Russia. In other words, no guarantee of protection in this protection racket.

    Here's another difference between Don Trump and a mafia Don: At least when you sign over a percentage of your earnings to the mob, the mob actually provides the protection. Your mafia bosses are pragmatic enough to know that if you don't hold up your end of the bargain, the shopkeepers no longer have any incentive to hand over protection money.

      And, as stated, Trump is treating this like any of his disastrous real estate deals in which his only motivation is lining his pockets and committing some moral and/or legal larceny along the way just for shits and giggles. And, in the process, by yelling at and talking over Zelenskyy, Trump and his hirsute appendage JD Vance exposed their geopolitical idiocy for all the world to see.

"Where's My Gratitude?"

To anyone who doesn't paint murals with their fecal matter could see, Trump was acting like a fat and old Scut Farkus, with Vance playing his top toadie, Grover Dill. Those of us on Zelenskyy's side were no doubt hoping he would go all psycho Ralphie on Trump's fat pasty ass. But, to his credit, Zelenskyy kept his composure and acted like a head of state while not giving an inch to Trump and his insane demands. Zelenskyy was actually in Washington today to sign a modified version of the original mineral rights deal in which Trump wouldn't get everything he wanted.

      If you think I'm overstating my case, here's a snippet of what was actually said in the Oval Office in front of cameras and microphones:

 

    The only miracle  was that Elon Musk wasn't there standing behind Zelenskyy, with his vestigial twin Little X on his shoulders, threatening to revoke Ukraine's Starlink access (which he's already done). At the end of this shit show, Trump was yelling about Hunter Biden's laptop. No, really, he was. He was with a world leader who actually stood up to him and, like a typical autocrat unused to opposition, he lost his shit.

     Over the decades, we've seen presidents have over heads of state in the Oval Office. The collegiality, even if it's fake, was always there and decorum was maintained. Because, above all, there was mutual respect for the offices. Because every Chief Executive before Trump understood that they were representing the most powerful nation in the free world and that we had to maintain our moral leadership and authority on the world stage.

    All that changed with Trump, who perpetually acts like the mob bosses with whom he'd done business for decades. That's why it shouldn't have surprised anyone that Trump would act like a bargain bin Tony Soprano in dealing with a world leader. What surprised everyone, even Reagan-era Republicans, was how blatant he was about it.

    While Trump and Vance were berating Zelenskyy for "relitigating" the ongoing war, Trump was busy relitigating his grievances over people having the temerity to notice his obvious collusion with and deference to the Russians, something Zelenskyy called him out for. And, being the semi-functional moron that he is, Trump obviously had the wrong expectations of Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy was there to see to the interests of Ukrainians, not ours or Russia's. He wasn't there to pay tribute to Trump like some vanquished warlord. But all that was lost on him.

 

 

    As proof of this collusion, Trump even tried to let a Russian spy into the Oval Office. That's right. That would be the same state-run, Soviet-era TASS that was the only media outlet allowed in the White House in May 2017 when Trump had two high-ranking Russian officials in that same Oval Office. Luckily, Karoline Leavitt kicked him out. But Zelenskyy wasn't far behind because Trump kicked the Ukrainian delegation out of the White House.

     The (usual) joint press conference was therefore cancelled, and no mineral rights deal was signed. In a curious turn of events, Trump fucked up so badly and so completely that neither the US nor Russia got what they wanted. Afterward, Trump acted like the stereotypical pigeon: Knocking over all the chess pieces, shitting all over the board and strutting around as if he'd won. I imagine he'll be getting a call from the Kremlin soon from a certain person warning him not to stand in front of a window higher than the ground floor.