For Once Trump Isn’t Being Paranoid. He Literally Has NO ONE To Trust

Anybody who reads me already knows that Trump is a paranoid personality. And it’s not just me. More than 25 years ago his own niece Mary Trump, a board certified clinical psychologist, nailed him as a Paranoid Narcissist Presonality. Who would know him better than his niece?

And it’s not like it was a well hidden secret. Just look at his lie history. Trump’s penchant for referring to himself in the 3rd person, his willingness to create a nom de plume of John Barron as his own PR flack to use when he called the New York tabloids to brag about his infamous infidelities. And what other business owner have you ever heard of that hired his top level executives as much for their hatred of each other as their qualifications, so that they wouldn’t join forces to oust him?

And insights from former staffers and aides from his White House term told the same tale. Trump not only tearing up protected documents, but either eating them or flushing them down the toilet. His pathetic necessity to surround himself with a series of Wormtongues who soothed his battered ego while pointing fingers at non existent enemies is another example. And his childish need to make himself the smartest person in the room by denigrating the actual experts present as dummies. 

But from here on out, it’s going to be hard to point to Traitor Tot’s paranoia, at least where his blooming legal difficulties are concerned. Just look at what has happened in the last couple of months;

• A California federal district court judge twice found it more likely than not that Trump and his lawyer John Eastman had broken federal laws, making his e-mails available to the prosecution under the crime fraud exception
• Trump’s former Chief of Staff, and all purpose dirty deed machine Mark Meadows appeared before Jack Smith’s DC grand jury, then promptly fell off the edge of the earth. Nobody on Team Trump has the least idea of what he said, or what he may be plotting
• Trump’s former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, and his chief aide, Patrick Philbin both appeared before Smith’s grand jury. Their J6 testimony was bad enough, who knows what they said there
• One of Trump’s Florida lawyers, Evan Corcoran appeared before Smith’s grand jury. The scarifying thing for Trump is that Corcoran testified without immunity, indicating that Corcoran had given sound legal advice, and was in no legal peril as long as he told the truth. But what truth?
• Trump’s own wife, Melania, was spotted at a hair salon getting herself spruced up, rather than sitting in the courtroom while her husband was being arraigned
• Even Jarvanka, his nearest and dearest, since leaving the White House have walled themselves off from Daddums in a way that hasn’t been seen since China built their big one. Trump ruined their precious social standing, and repairing that is far more important than whether or not he ends sporting an orange jumpsuit
• Reporting shows that almost every person that works for Trump at Mar-A-Lago who even might have had exposure to the purloined documents has been interviewed by Smith’s minions
• Trump’s longtime personal attorney, and all around court jester Rudy Giuliani has not only appeared before the DC grand jury, not only appeared before the Georgia criminal grand jury, the New York Times reports that Giuliani has met with Jack Smith’s team under the protection of a proffer agreement. Which is one short step from a cooperation agreement, where Giuliani rolls over on his boss. And any federal agreement like that would carry a requirement that The Ghoul Man agree to cooperate and testify for Fani Willis in Georgia
• Reporting shows that several swing state legislators involved in the fake electors scheme have appeared before Smith’s DC grand jury, likely to try to pin the whole thing on El Pendejo Presidente
• The New York Times has reported that Trump’s 2024 campaign manager Susie Wiles has met several times with Smith’s investigators. Wiles is an odd duck for Trump. Rather than being a faithful MAGAt, she is a deeply entrenched traditional conservative power player, and one who isn’t likely to go to prison for His Lowness.

See what I mean? The worst arrow for Trump is all of the former lawyers that have been rolled over to the grand jury for Jack Smith. Trump holds every lawyer he has up to the prism of Roy Cohn, the disgraced and disbarred lawyer who was an early Trump mentor. Trump has always thought that attorney-client privilege was as sacrosanct as the penitent-priest relationship in confession. It never occurred to him that there were legal ways to break through that shield if crimes were involved. And now he doesn’t know who said what to who.

Good luck to Trump’s criminal legal team. Trump was already an uncontrollable client at best. But now, not knowing which Trump lawyer could be hauled into the grand jury next, Trump is going to turn to the only person he knows he can trust. Himself. This is going to get good as we get closer to trial dates.