Soon-to-be-not-president Donald Trump lost the election.
He is losing every court case he and his Elite Strike Farce of buffoon-American lawyers present.
His claims of massive voter fraud (there wasn't any) and a grand conspiracy (there isn't one) are only slightly less ridiculous than his expressed belief that he won in a landslide (he didn't).
This remarkable streak of failure might leave some asking: "When does this all become just a bit too embarrassing, even for Trump?"
The answer is simple: Never.
Trump isn't capable of feeling embarrassed. In his mind, he has never done anything to merit such an emotion. He has never lost at anything. He has never failed.
More importantly, however, is that for Trump and his children and the many who sold their souls for a spot in Trump's polluted orbit, the grift must go on. Admitting failure, while crucial for democracy in this instance, would be unacceptably bad for grifting. This crowd of faux patriots will gladly run roughshod over the country if there's money to be had.
Need proof? Immediately after the Nov. 3 election, people on Trump mailing lists began getting emails pleading for donations to fund recounts or to help with something called the "Official Election Defense Fund." That fund's website shouts, "We can't allow the Left-wing MOB to undermine our Election."
Of course, the website's fine print shows just how swiftly Trumpian grifters part fools from their money: 75% of each donation, up to $5,000, goes first to a Trump political action committee called "Save America." Only after meeting that $5,000 threshold does a dime from the 75% cut make it to a so-called recount account. The remaining 25% of each donation goes to the Republican National Committee. Put more simply, if you donate $100, no money goes to the election fund while $75 goes to Trump's PAC and $25 goes to the RNC. You would have to donate about $6,667 before any money would go to the election account, and even then it would only be 25 cents.
The New York Times first reported on the "Save America" PAC, quoting Brendan M. Fischer, an attorney at a watchdog group called the Campaign Legal Center: "Small donors who give thinking they're helping to defend the integrity of our election are in fact largely helping to finance Trump's post-presidential political ventures."
Trump can use his PAC to pay for travel, polling and for his own post-presidency political team.
The overarching theory about fraud in the 2020 presidential election, as presented by the Trump campaign's attorneys in a news conference last week, was summarized by The Associated Press like this: "Trump attorney Sidney Powell spun fictional tales of election systems flipping votes, German servers storing U.S. voting information and election software created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez - the late Venezuelan president who died in 2013."
The Trump team has now tried to distance itself from Powell by saying she's not actually on the Trump team, despite the fact that she spoke at the Trump team news conference. Some have referred to these attorneys as "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight," but that's an insult to both gangs and people who can't shoot straight.
We'll likely see evidence of this grand conspiracy around the same time we see a completed border wall paid for by Mexico. We'll see it when we see Trump's taxes, once that now-legendary audit has ended. We'll see it when we see the big, beautiful Trump health care plan, or perhaps when Melania Trump finally holds that news conference, which Trump said in 2016 would happen "in the next couple weeks," to address reports she violated immigration laws when she first came to the United States.
In other words, we'll see proof of a rigged election when one-term President Donald Trump admits he lost to Sleepy Joe Biden: Never.
But we'll see plenty of Trump saying, "Keep donating!" He needs your money to fight the "Left-wing MOB" that stole the election! Give, give, give!
Because the grift, if not the presidency, must go on.
The Chicago Tribune