Trump: The Trust-Fund Gambler

So, the bleach thing is hilarious and dumb and buffoonish and dangerous, and since “hilariously dumb and buffoonishly dangerous “ is Trump’s wheelhouse, it is also emblematic of the man himself. But inside the momentary diversion before today’s insanity, there are lessons about Donald’s entire mindset.

Trump has always been rich. He’s been rich from his privileged childhood, to the $400 million swindle he conducted on his old man, to the steaks, to the casinos, to the branding empire, to the television show, to the crazy loans from criminal banks with Russian guarantors. He has never not had the capital reserves to make stupid, high-risk gambles with the security of having more treasure in the pile if he got burned.

I used to play poker with a guy like that. He wasn’t rich by Trump standards, but he was by our $25 buy-in, with an unlimited re-buy — which was only occasionally used as we all needed to pay rent. At the table were a bunch of people who liked the game. Some of us had more money than the others, some of us had less, but we liked the hustle and camaraderie of it — so, for a few years, once or twice a week we’d get together to drink, smoke, and redistribute our income to one another, as friends have done for literally thousands of years. Then someone invited the new guy.

We’d been talking about wanting “new blood” at the table, and we boasted about how we’d gut the new kid easily, convinced as we were that our skills had tuned us all up for bigger leagues than we were in. But the kid was rich, amoral, and simply always had the reserves to bet big and knock around the other players like me. He was not a good card player. He was, in fact, a pretty bad card player, skill wise. But over the course of a few months, he sucked pretty much all the money out of us every week — and, importantly — sucked all the joy out of the game as he did. He could always go into his pocket for a another $25, or $50, or $100 — and in a game of chance, that’s all you need. You don’t have to be good if you have the ability to buy more chances than the other players. You don’t even have to be lucky. You can take the stupid bet over and over and over again. You can go All-In on gut-shot straight after gut-shot straight, knowing that you’re really not risking anything in the end, because — for you, there never really is an “all-in.”

And every week, week-after-week, the rich kid walked away from the table even more convinced of his genius as a player. And he gained more influence with our peers, because we are stupid monkeys in the end who like “a winner” no matter how they win.

That’s all Trump is. That’s all he’s ever been. That’s all he’ll ever be. He’s a rich kid who gets to pretend to be smart and brave and crafty and ingenious and “a disruptor” — and people play along because his wealth itself is a distorting reality. He CAN crush you out of a game on a whim, and then flex his muscles and show off his supposed skill.

Back when we played that game, after a few months of really growing to dislike those nights that once were a blast, we started trying to plot and plan to take the new player down. There were several schemes, where we’d try to cover for the others, provide them with a rebuy at a crucial time when they had the cards but not the money. But in the end, that was only a temporary fix. The new guy still had more. Then we tried to find some “ringer” we could bring in to take the money-guy out, but that just introduced another shark to the table and the whole thing fell apart. A beautiful, naturally functioning market economy of friends, ruined by acquisitive, amoral capital. History of the world around a felt-covered table.

To understand Trump, consider him in that way, both in his rise to power — and now in the time of the virus. All his life, he’s bought his way through table after table after table, and through his own bumbling ignorance. Every step of the way, he’s never actually had to risk a thing. He’s only had to pretend to gamble. There has never been anything but a soft landing for that weak child of privilege, and all the pussy-grabbing bluster is just that: Self-delusion and image-projection.

But now?

Now there’s a new shark at the table, and it’s only about 200 nanometers wide. It holds all the cards and Trump is finally exposed. So what does he do?

He goes back to the only playbook he has EVER known. He takes the long-shot bet, thinking, “What do ya got to lose?”

- When every other serious player at the table sees this thing is a monster in January and February, Trump goes all-in on “the weather will kill it in April.” Pretty soon it will be gone, “like a miracle.”

Then the virus takes his stack, and ten-thousand American lives.

- In March, after getting his clock cleaned once, and while New York City is actually digging mass-graves for its sons and daughters, Trump figures he’s got it this time: “What do you have to lose? Everybody take Hydroxychloroquine! It’s a miracle cure! A Lazarus drug!”

Then the virus takes his stack again, and tens-of-thousands more Americans go into the ground.

- In early April, he thinks that maybe he can just suspend the laws of cause and effect, and starts toying with the notion of “Just opening up the country again! It will be like this never happened! Like a miracle!”

But this time, he was a little gun-shy. Fauci whispered in his ear that if he made that bet, he would be going into political principal if the virus again took the hand. So he folds for the first time in decades. He’s scared.

- Then, like an gambling addict who just KNOWS his luck is about to change, he hits it again. He hears that Light and Heat and Disinfectant can kill this virus, so he floats the idea of Irradiating, Cooking, or Poisoning the American people.

“I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute,” Mr Trump said on Thursday. “One minute! And is there a way we can do something by an injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs . . . so it’d be interesting to check that.”

Meanwhile, the virus sits across the table, waiting for this idiot’s next play. It doesn’t care how deep his pockets are. It doesn’t care how many times he wants to lay down a crazy-ass, long-shot bet. It isn’t impressed by his delusions, or his past record of skating on any and all responsibility in this life.

The virus knows that it has the nut. It knows this game is a lock. It knows it has aces in the hole. It knows that it has us ALL beat, and that the only sensible play is to accept that and walk away, leaving the bully exposed as a fool, and the table empty for a time.

All the way until November, expect Trump to offer crack-pot gamble after crack-pot gamble. Doing so is literally the only strategy he has ever used. He doesn’t know what he is doing. He doesn’t know how to play. He doesn’t have a serious plan. He doesn’t even understand that a plan is needed. He never has. He never will. He’s just a dumb, dangerous buffoon with a trust fund. That’s all he’ll ever be.

If you need me, I’ll be home playing solitaire.

Love to you all.