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Playboy Undercover: The Almost 40-Year-Old Virgin "I am 38 and I still haven’t had my first kiss yet—which means yes.… I am a virgin too."
Hear that soul-crushing sound? It’s Donald Trump choking on election results he still can’t seem to swallow.
Trump has filed scores of court challenges, yet all six states where he contested the election and demanded recounts have certified Joe Biden as the winner.
Attorney General William Barr, one of President Trump’s chief enabling sycophants, said Tuesday the Justice Department has so far uncovered no evidence that would change Biden’s win, despite having followed up on specific complaints. “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the AP.
In mid-November, Trump fired cybersecurity director Chris Krebs after Krebs’s agency released a statement characterizing the election as the “most secure in American history.” This Monday, Trump campaign lawyer and former U.S. attorney Joe DiGenova said Krebs should be executed. “Anybody who thinks that this election went well, like that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity—that guy is a class-A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot,” DiGenova said on Newsmax TV.
Who knows what Trump supporters have planned for Barr. But that’s the attitude of his loyalists in a nutshell: Disagree with me, and you deserve death.
Trump and his campaign, apparently unhappy with merely losing, are paying millions to assure the world he lost.
Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani is apparently hustling for a preemptive presidential pardon for any crimes he has committed outside of using horrible hair dye. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, told me Tuesday for an upcoming episode of my podcast Just Ask the Question that he thinks Giuliani is trash and that Trump will gladly “burn it all to the ground,” even sacrificing his children to prison. Trump can issue federal pardons, but the state of New York will be a little more discriminating.
Trump and his campaign, apparently unhappy with merely losing, are paying millions to assure the world he lost. “It’s death by a thousand cuts. I love it,” Cohen told me. And Trump is apparently such a masochist that he loves being pilloried in the press and on social media every day since losing the election.
In fewer than 50 days Trump will be irrelevant. Wealthy, callow, unaware of his white privilege and filled with the angst of a perpetual teenager, Donald Trump is the dark side’s Holden Caulfield. He’s the Con Man in the Rye.
In the wake of Biden’s win and two days before Thanksgiving, the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke the 30,000 mark, prompting Trump to make a celebratory one-minute press statement in the White House briefing room. Naturally Trump referred to the record-breaking number as “sacred,” for money is his religion. The soaring markets are one more reason, according to Trump, that justifies overthrowing the election results so he can have a second term.
Truth be told, poor Americans—no matter their color, religion or political taste—care little about the Dow; they aren’t invested in the market. Lack of adequate health coverage and unemployment are more pressing concerns for them, with many looking toward the future with increased trepidation.
Many working poor are barely holding on thanks to the pandemic. They’re one or two lean weeks away from living in the street, scrambling daily to make sure they don’t end up there. Above them on the income ladder is the shrinking middle class, where people lead lives of cutthroat conformity designed to numb them into inaction and acceptance. The ability to sell the idea that this is something to aspire to goes a long way toward explaining the appeal of Donald Trump.
In the meantime, the United States is still dealing with record numbers of coronavirus infections. The development of vaccines is praiseworthy—though many Trump supporters think either vaccines are a hoax or the pandemic is a hoax. Some believe both.
With every day that passes the world moves slowly forward, away from the wreck created by the wailing crybaby con man in control of the ship of state.
Dealing with this wreckage is the single largest problem facing President-elect Biden—larger even than tackling the pandemic. Trump’s divisiveness has threatened the very existence of the United States. It’s the main takeaway of his administration.
Those who have a vested interest in this conflict will continue to fight. That’s why the Trump campaign is still asking supporters to “join the Election Defense Team” by donating money that will “benefit [the] Trump Make America Great Again Committee.” The contributions probably won’t even be used to fight the election; instead, they likely will go toward fattening Trump’s wallet.
Trump will continue to stimulate his base by encouraging the worst in people. Cohen told me he confronted Trump after his inauguration speech in 2016, asking why he hadn’t said anything to bind the nation’s wounds or to reach out to constituents who hadn’t voted for him. “Fuck ’em,” Trump replied, according to Cohen.
Trump uses all his surrogates, including propaganda minister Kayleigh McEnany, to promote divisiveness and ignore facts. On Tuesday, McEnany complained on Fox about her treatment from the press, specifically accusing me of asking misogynistic questions. Both McEnany and the president (an actual misogynist) have avoided answering certain questions since closing the briefing room to all but the small “protective pool” of reporters, relegating the rest of us to the back of the room. I’ve been among those pushed to the back, save for three occasions in recent months when I was either in the Rose Garden (where more reporters can assemble) or I took a seat in the briefing room because someone in the pool didn’t show up. I thought I’d review the questions I’ve asked since just before the pandemic began.
On March 4 Vice President Mike Pence appeared in the Brady Briefing Room and said, “The risk of the coronavirus to the average American remains low.” He walked off the stage without answering me when I asked, “Can the uninsured get tested?” Stephen Colbert thought the question important enough to include in his show; the Trump administration couldn’t bother to answer it.
On April 27 in the Rose Garden I asked Trump if he would take any responsibility for people using disinfectant to combat the coronavirus after he “sarcastically” encouraged such behavior. “No. I can’t imagine. I can’t imagine,” he said.
Trump wants to skip out of D.C., having stretched the fabric of our nation to the breaking point while padding his wallet in the process.
On August 19 I asked McEnany about Russia allegedly placing a price on the heads of American troops in Afghanistan. “When will the president do something about bounties on American soldiers?” She didn’t answer.
On September 9 I asked about Trump’s response to the pandemic. “If he’s not lying, then why did he call it a hoax?” She didn’t answer.
On September 16 I asked, “Kayleigh, if he’s a law-and-order president, why does he keep breaking the law?” She didn’t answer.
On September 23, while seated in the briefing room, I asked the president if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power. We’re still living through his nightmare answer that if you don’t count all the votes, there’d be no transfer.
On November 13 in the Rose Garden I asked Trump, “Mr. President, you lost the election. When will you admit you lost the election? When will you admit you lost the election, sir?” He didn’t answer.
On November 20 I asked McEnany, “Do you understand the definition of sedition? Do you understand he lost?” She didn’t answer.
Trump and his minions have never been able to answer these crucial questions. But Trump doesn’t want you to know that. He wants to skip out of D.C., having stretched the fabric of our nation to the breaking point while padding his wallet in the process (and, he hopes, avoiding jail time).
Trump’s fans will cast about for someone new to follow, a better version of the Donald, even if they have to resort to, say, Ted Cruz. But the truth is that America simply couldn’t take another four years of the boil on its butt that is Trump. Many hope Trump will soon be forgotten, downgraded to crossword clues and trivia answers in the same vein as Benedict Arnold. “Why insult Arnold?” Cohen asked me with a laugh.
We have just seven weeks left of “Captain Chaos,” as Cohen calls him, and yet relatively few Republican politicians have acknowledged Biden’s win. California congressman and former Democratic presidential candidate Eric Swalwell, who challenged Joe Biden to pass the baton to a new generation, says he is encouraging Republicans to forego partisanship in favor of common sense and put country before party. But why do so many in the GOP continue to back Trump and his unsubstantiated claims of election fraud?
“They fear for their job,” Swalwell told me yesterday. “But I would hope if I weren’t doing this job, I could find an honorable way to make a living and wouldn’t have to sell my soul to Donald Trump to feed my family.”
Trump has indicated he will give up his fight when he loses the electoral college vote on December 14. But he will never surrender. He will never concede. He will continue to grift his supporters and claim to be planning a 2024 run, even as he creeps out of the White House.
He will never run again. But he will continue to choke on his loss. Just listen for the soul crushing moan.