Be Careful What You Ask For
This latest installment in my Batman parody lands us at the midpoint of Cobblepot’s second term. The grift, remarkably, is still running — though the paint job is chipping and you can see the rust underneath.
Back in April 2019, when the Mueller Report finally dropped and PBS NewsHour/Frontline gave it the full hour-long treatment, this blog started calling Trump “President Cobblepot.” The resemblance to Batman’s nemesis, Penguin, was too good to pass up: a crook who gets himself popularly elected Mayor of Gotham, then uses City Hall as a chop shop for eliminating rivals and expanding the family business.
As it turned out, Cobblepot’s short game — propped up by an alliance of crime syndicates — proved every bit as durable as Mueller’s long game was slow. Two impeachments. Thirty-four felony counts for falsifying business records. A $450 million fraud verdict against his real estate empire. The Georgia RICO conspiracy. Two multimillion-dollar rape and defamation judgments. Forty felony counts in Florida and four in D.C., courtesy of Jack Smith. He shrugged off the lot of it like a man swatting gnats, then went back to the White House anyway — this time with a vengeance and, apparently, a mandate — more, much more.
