Trump’s Aging Before Our Eyes and It’s Killing Him

Team Trump undoubtedly made the decision that the GOP nominee be out there on the construction sites of New York City today, getting out the vote. And Trump did manage to put together a photo op where a construction worker said “Fuck You” to Joe Biden and so of course that was immediately posted to Truth Social and cross-posted to Twitter. But each “achievement” also carries a downside with it and today’s downside was two fold: 1. Trump’s hair, what’s left of it, was blowin’ in the wind and 2. Trump fell asleep again in court. You can’t rage post until the wee hours, grab a little shut eye, be up and in makeup doing a photo op, and then be awake in court. So Trump’s post-court commentary was more obtuse than normal.

Trump: Today was breathtaking in this room. It was breathtaking. Amazing testimony. It really was an incredible uhb incredible day pic.twitter.com/fUlDxkf1tY

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 25, 2024

You notice how he began, “Thank you very much,” as though he was waiting for applause to die down before speaking. There was no applause but maybe he hears it in his head. Or, maybe Team Trump has an earpiece set up for him and they play applause into it. Nothing is out of bounds with this crowd and God knows, nothing would surprise us. Not after what we’ve seen.

I didn’t notice anything “breathtaking” in the court transcript I was able to read but this is interesting. Trump will go batshit when he sees this. Ketchup bottles away!

What is happening with Trump's hair here? pic.twitter.com/UWe9Oxe2Zf

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) April 25, 2024

I can’t remember which comedian said that Trump’s hair looked like “piss-soaked cotton candy,” but here it looks like bleached, piss-soaked cotton candy, just saying. These are the main highlights of the “breathtaking” trial from Meidas Touch.

Pecker said he asked Michael Cohen why he should pay $150,000 for another story out of his pocket when he just paid $30,000 for the story from the Trump Tower doorman and still hadn’t been reimbursed. He said Cohen assured him that Trump would pay him back. He said McDougal also wanted to write an article for one of his magazines about problems she was having with her breast implants as part of the arrangement.

He said that he then signed a contract with McDougal for exclusive rights to her story in August 2016, three months before the election. Pecker said he then consulted with an attorney who specialized in campaign finance law to make sure they weren’t committing a crime by purchasing the story. He said that he wanted to make it clear in his agreement with McDougal that it was being done for “services to AMI,”(his parent company) even though it was not benefitting AMI in any way to kill the story.

Pecker was then asked if this language in the agreement was specifically intended to disguise the fact that it was being done to benefit Trump’s campaign. He said that it was.

Pecker said they then paid McDougal $150,000 for the story, and never had any intention of publishing it because the point was to bury it from the public. Pecker said Cohen then told him to assign the contract he signed with McDougal over to him. He said that Cohen kept calling him saying that Trump wanted all the documents he had compiled up to that point pertaining to embarrassing stories about Trump brought down to Florida. Pecker asked him why that was so important and Cohen told him that Trump was concerned that if anything happened to Pecker then his successor might go ahead and publish the story.

Pecker said he then told Cohen that articles unrelated to Trump that McDougal was going to write for them were worth $25,000 to the company, so he needed Trump to reimburse him for the remaining $125,000 they paid her. Cohen told him that was no problem. Pecker said he directed Cohen to write a check to Daniel Rothstein, who lived in Florida near Mar-a-Lago and had an account that he used to pay paparazzi for photos to run in Pecker’s magazine.

He said that Cohen created ‘Resolution Consultants’ to launder the repayment through him to cover up what it was for. Pecker said that he did not want any record of a direct payment from Trump or Cohen to his company because then the other Editors at the company would find out what he was doing for Trump’s campaign. Then he said he had consulted with an attorney and got cold feet and told Cohen that he didn’t want to go through with the arrangement and wanted to cancel the deal. He said Cohen got very upset and told him that Trump was going to be furious.

Pecker said he first heard about the Stormy Daniels allegations shortly after the Access Hollywood tape became public. He said Howard called him while he was out to dinner and told him that her representative was shopping a story about having sex with Trump. He told Pecker that they wanted $120,000 for the story and that the Daily Mail and GMA were also interested in buying it. He said that Walmart was the biggest distributor of his magazines and he thought if it got out they were doing business with a porn star that could hurt the company.

Pecker said he called Cohen and he wanted them to purchase the Daniels story. He told Cohen that he wasn’t interested because he already paid $30,000 to the doorman and $150,000 to McDougal and he didn’t want to go into business with a porn star for another $120,000 that he might never get reimbursed for. Pecker said Cohen told him that Trump will be “furious” at him for not buying the story and insisted that he go forward. Pecker said that he already regretted going this far with the scheme and that Trump was Cohen’s boss, so if he wanted to keep him happy he should purchase the story himself.

Pecker said he was told that McDougal was about to do an interview with ABC in violation of their agreement, but he checked it out and it wasn’t true. He said Trump called him, was angry, and accused them of leaking the story. Pecker insisted that they had not leaked the story to anyone and the ABC interview was not happening as far as he knew. Pecker said Trump was “very mad” and hung up the phone on him.

Howard then called McDougal’s lawyer to see if there was any truth to the story that she was about to do an ABC interview. Her lawyer said that she was not taking any calls from anyone about this. He then learned that the Wall Street Journal had the story, so at that point he wanted his PR firm to represent McDougal because it was inevitable that the story was coming out and the best they could do was “manage” and “control” it.

It was at this time that Cohen told Pecker that Trump never reimbursed him for the $130,000 he paid to Stormy Daniels. Pecker said he assumed Trump had made the original payment and didn’t realize Cohen paid him with his own money. Pecker said he then had a conversation with Trump where he told him that Cohen was very worried that he wasn’t going to get reimbursed. He said he told Trump that Cohen was “very loyal” and that he would “throw himself under a bus for you.” Trump replied that Cohen was “working very hard.” Trump told Pecker not to worry about it.

“Throw himself under a bus for you.” And Cohen himself said he would “take a bullet” for Trump. Trump’s a cult leader, plain and simple. This just corroborates it. Being loyal to Trump caused Michael Cohen to lose his law license and spend three years in prison. It’s been said that Trump is able to sense which people, lawyers in particular, that he can lure into his web. Why Christina Bobb, Alina Habba and others would think that they are somehow exceptions to the rule that Everything Trump Touches Dies would be interesting to know.