Donald Trump announced his latest indictment last night in front of a painting of a guy literally twirling his moustache. “I am an innocent man,” the former president insisted, next to this cartoon shorthand for villainy. The oil painting in question is not so much an artwork as a lift-music version of an artwork, and seems to hang at Trump’s Bedminster golf club in New Jersey – which is the same place he buried his former wife Ivana, as all admirers of both exquisite taste and private-cemetery tax breaks may already know. Either way, Ivana’s there, right near the first tee. It’s what she would have wanted.
As for her surviving ex-husband, it’s fashionable to say that anything that would represent a catastrophic setback for any other human being is exactly what Trump would have wanted. By this metric, his indictment on federal charges for the first time, including under the Espionage Act, is an absolute gift and a triumph. He’ll use it to pull in fundraising, it’ll rally his base, it’ll make every Republican beta – which is to say, every Republican – feel they have to swear loyalty to him. Furthermore, it’s already got him right where he most loves to be: with everyone talking about him. And these are all reasonable points – or at least reasonable in a through-the-looking-glass way, given that to many outside observers the United States passed reason two or three election cycles ago. If only they could invade themselves to bring democracy.
