Donald Trump demands loyalty
from all those strolling around his wandering hands,
but he gives out loyalty to no one
except his daughter, Ivanka, his gold-striped leather wallet
and extra-long silk necktie, and the right half
of one of his intelligence-challenged sons.
Trump has done so many terrible things before
and after his election that would have
brought down most people with ordinary anatomies—
admitting on an Access Hollywood tape to groping
women’s genitals without their consent, criticizing
Republicans’ hero, John McCain, for having been captured
in a war that Trump avoided by being a multi-millionaire
and claiming to have a swollen foot, lying uncontrollably
about issues from football field kneeling
to the size of crowds on the Capitol’s inauguration lawn,
profiting off the presidential gift certificate given him
after losing the popular vote,
violating the Constitution’s purple emoluments clause,
making fun of disabled people and making secret Helsinki deals
with Putin that have yet to be revealed,
after clearly unveiling a fatherly-learned love for KKK and neo-Nazi
marchers, and statues honoring Confederate soldiers
that are now all wearing Trump’s election hats,
signing Executive Orders to dump more coal waste
into America’s lakes and rivers, while appointing
extremist judges who enjoy the taste of coal waste
in their drinking water, paying hush money before the election
to at least five women with whom he had
extramarital affairs to avoid losing the hypocritical
right-wing evangelical vote, kidnapping thousands of immigrant children
from their parents and locking them in zoo-like cages
while blocking the public from ever visiting those zoos.
And yet somehow Trump has so far proved to be another
Teflon president, with about a 40% base that seems to let all
sins slide off his slicked-up orange hair and skin.
But now the clock has started ticking on his presidency: tick, tock,
tick, tock, the result of his lack of loyalty to one person
he should have pledged allegiance to, like he suggests
people say a pledge to the flag that he himself can’t remember—
in this case, his old fixer-attorney Michael Cohen, who knows
when and where the U.S. and Russian mob agreements were signed,
and who created the sham companies that paid for women’s silences—
a fixer who once said he would take a bullet for Trump, but who now
has released a tape proving Trump knew about pay-offs
to Karen McDougal that Trump had long denied, and who confirmed
he was in the room when Trump was told beforehand
of an upcoming meeting to conspire with Russia
for the 2016 election, another of Trump’s pathological lies
now uncovered for the history books. The end of Trump’s presidency
may wait until after the 2018 congressional elections are over,
when the special prosecutor, Mueller, will likely release his findings,
but the deed is done, the longtime fixer has become
Trump’s personal demolition man,
and even people living miles away claim to be able to hear
and see the uncontrolled wailing and flames of Trump’s
runaway temper tantrums that match the color of his hair.
Tick tock—only Mueller knows what the timing of Trump’s fall is likely to be,
and what was in the million files his feds collected from Michael Cohen’s
office, computers, and disposable cell phones,
but it is clear to all who are paying attention there is now enough
to bring down a criminally insane president. On Fox News TV,
Trump’s newest lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is already preparing
the grounds for an insanity defense to keep his client and himself
out of jail, and I have to admit the insanity defense seems
to be a compelling one in the case of both Trump and Giuliani,
but jail or no jail, it will take decades for the country to repair
the cracks that Trump’s people have created in the heartland
of America’s mind and body.
Eliot Katz
July 2018