The Next Donald Trump

The Next Donald Trump

No, I am not going to go off on Don Junior…though I easily could. And no, I am not going to wave the warning flag of autocracy by describing the dangers of not convicting him in this new Impeachment Trial such that another despot-in-waiting will rise to new atrocities…though I easily could and should. I want to talk a little about what is next for Donald J. Trump. I believe this discussion in no way changes between an acquittal and a conviction in his current Impeachment trial. That seems strange since it would seem to be a significant mark on his record, one which solidly and irrefutably establishes him as by far the worst president in our 245 history as a nation. But my view on the irrelevance (just for purposes of this one question of what’s next) is based on the notion that Trump’s guilt of the charges levied against him of incitement to sedition and insurrection of his mob on January 6th are also irrefutable and indefensible regardless of the outcome of this Uber-politically-charged trial. 56% of the U.S. electorate believes he deserves to be convicted and that was based on a poll before the Impeachment Managers made their compelling and articulate advocacy for Trump’s guilt. In the words of Rep. Plaskett today, ‘truth is truth, whether denied or not”. Some like these words especially since they reflect song lyrics from several famous rappers including the Notorious B.I.G.

Mr. Pop Culture Trump should like this reference since he likens himself to an O.G. (Original Gangsta) as much as a ponce with a blue suit, extra-long tie (made in Vietnam) and an orange hair sprayed bouffant can be. It is almost a moot point (like a cow’s opinion as Joey on Friends would say) about his election prospects in 2024, a year when he will turn 78 years old. Between now and then, regardless of his conviction or acquittal, he will be absorbed completely in defending his prior reckless actions. These will include his over-leveraged lifestyle, his reliance on a fading brand that has become totally tarnished during the four years of his overexposure to the world, his overuse of hyperbole such that no reality TV show can compete with what we saw every night on the news (after all, what stage is bigger than the American presidency?) and countless acts of wanton privilege that he will be tested on in various courts of law across the country. What used to be the lunatic reactionary fringe of society that always had a strong antiestablishment bent has now grown and put itself on the line for him and he has finally and decidedly abandoned them like he did Mike Pence at their moment of greatest loyalty. There will be 250 or so jailed revolutionary leaders and countless others who were in the Capitol on January 6th or just outside that have been and will be anxiously deleting all social media connection with their involvement as well as disposing of identifying clothing and videos on their cell phones (as though any of that effort would protect them if the authorities deemed it worthwhile to pursue them and indict them). Anyone and everyone who has followed, worked for or sided with Trump for the last four years is and will continue to be pariahs of an escalating sort. The man will ultimately stand alone without even his children to accompany him. We have all suspected that Melania is gone any day now. I suspect that Ivanka (who is clearly smarter than the rest) will cut and run with the admonition of Jared and for the sake of their children, who will have a hard life no matter what. Jared’s family will sit him down soon if they have not done so already and say that they played it for all it was worth and got the pardon that dear old Dad wanted, so that now its time to cut their losses and put some distance between them and Trump.

His bankers have already taken another beating from their association with him and in the Private Banking World, a world I know well from running a global private bank for six years, he will be a permanent “red file” client, which means too hot to handle and with too much sordid baggage to be worth associating with. We have already seen that his lawyers are quick to realize the liability of representing him. That liability ranges from reputational risk to potential loss of license to failure to be paid (a very hard risk not be see from the start with this man whose playbook is now so well understood by all). The cost of his legal woes will be monumental and foisted upon the back of his weakening financial backbone. Soon we will see people tiring of his stories of glory at the dinner table of Mar-A-Lago. This will lead to quickly declining membership at his various clubs, all of which are hurting already by virtue of their connection and branding by him. And here’s the thing, when the fall begins, the momentum builds and the walls start crumbling all around him. You can almost hear it starting to happen as he sits in Palm Beach and is virtually silent due to his blockage from Twitter and other social media outlets. He is the caged panther described by Robert DeNiro in Awakenings. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote his poem The Panther in German in 1902. How appropriate that it fits Donald Trump with his Germanic heritage so very well.

His gaze against the sweeping of the bars

has grown so weary, it can hold no more.

To him, there seem to be a thousand bars

and back behind those thousand bars no world.

Donald Trump has a long history of bouncing back from adversity. In some ways he is the stuff of mythology as he is so very unbelievable, a Forrest Gump of the real world. I first became familiar with Trump in the late 1980’s as he was a client of my bank, Bankers Trust, and was is deep creditor shit all those thirty-five years ago. Of course, then he still had Fred to bail him out and his lavish lifestyle created an intriguing and perceived monetizable brand. He bounced from that set of financial debacles to his reality TV life, which truly did monetize his brand to the tune of some $400+ million. Sometimes that’s all it takes to get back in the good graces of the bankers, especially when they have been acquired by a big German bank like Deutsche Bank that hasn’t completely caught up with the history of the man and only sees the superficial image and perhaps the German heritage as substantial. I fully expect that they feel differently now, just as the reality TV audiences have moved on.

I predict with great self assurance that the next Donald Trump will be a tragic figure of epic proportions. Even he is subject to some degree of aging despite his phonied up medical reports, and age tends to bring with it the wrinkling and pruning of all things. This happens to ripe fruit, but it happens even faster to rotten fruit and I ask you rhetorically, is there any fruit more rotten at this moment than Donald Trump? I have said for a long time that when the time for funeral pyres comes, Joe Biden will be carried out of the Coliseum on the shoulders of the Praetorians and Donald Trump will lie shriveled in the dust like the body of Emperor Commodus. The mob is fickle and soon forgets past glory, no matter how delusional or real it may have been.