Donald Trump’s New Game Show.

Know that joke about what do you have with 50,000 lawyers under the sea? A good start.

So, here’s a new version. Know what you get with 100,000 lawyers? You get the same lie that Trump told in 2020 when he said he had an ‘army’ of 50,000 who were going to make sure that every polling place operated to guarantee he would win again.

In fact, he had nobody then and he has nobody now. My sister was a poll-watcher for Biden at one of the polling stations in Pennsylvania and the GOP person who was supposed to be working the polling station with her never showed up. She ended up doing double duty at a poll in the state where Trump claimed all the votes were stolen from him.

I actually can’t blame Trump for lying like hell. After all, his fundraising has been for shit and in particular, first-time donors have disappeared. Elections in this country are all about turnout and since this is the only country which does not declare election days to be paid holidays, you really have to want to vote, or you don’t bother to vote.

Elections are all about turnout, and even though Trump keeps bragging about how he got more votes in 2020 than any previous incumbent running for a second term, somehow the fact that Joe pulled 7 million votes more than Trump somehow never gets said.

On the other hand, much as I hate to say it, the next four years beginning in 2025 would be a lot more interesting if Trump stole enough votes come this November to pull the race out.

Let’s just say for the sake of argument that the jury which has just been empaneled in the hush-money trial just can’t agree on a verdict and Trump gets off in New York. In fact, it appears that of the other three trials Trump is facing, none of them will happen before sometime next year. And if Trump gets re-elected, there won’t be any more trials because a sitting President can only face charges through an impeachment, not in some courtroom because he allegedly broke some law.

So, not only will we have a Chief Executive who is a felon, convicted or not, but Trump will make a point of surrounding himself with all the guys he pardoned the last time around. The senior staff sitting with him in the Oval Office will consist of Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, and Roger Stone; actually he pardoned Manafort twice!

And this time not only will Trump issue pre-emptive pardons of those guys even before they’re convicted of any crimes, but he’ll announce a ‘pay for pardon’ program which will sell Presidential pardons for payments to him with the price based on the severity of the crime — ten thousand for tax evasion, twenty thou for conspiracy, and so forth.

You see, the Constitution gives the President the authority to issue pardons to individuals convicted of committing a federal offense, but it doesn’t prohibit the President from charging a fee.

I can see it now. Every weekday evening at 7 P.M. you can choose whether you want to watch ‘Jeopardy’ on NBC or ‘Buy a Pardon’ on Fox. The format will have three people sitting in their respective jail cells in Leavenworth, Butner, and Otisville and as the bids for a pardon start going up, the winner is the one who hits the number that Trump has previously decided will be how much that particular pardon is worth.

Think I’m kidding? I’m really not. For all the talk about how Trump is a Fascist and will change American democracy into an authoritarian state, the truth is that what Trump really represents in word and deed is any way that someone can earn a buck.

Which is what MAGA is really all about: making America a country where everyone can earn more and pay less taxes rather than what the Communists-Socialists-liberals want, which is to earn less and pay more taxes all the time.