"Trump the Leech"

The Daily Beast published a story yesterday on merely one of the byzantine workings of Trump's legal and political finances. I give the publication much credit, for I have found my own journeys into the labyrinth of Trumpian deception to be futile. The staggering number of his campaign PACs, each with some slight carveout as to its purported purpose, soon floods the mind with indistinctions.

To really get a grasp on his sprawling formation of cash-raking operations one would need a large blackboard on which to tape an organizational chart as we've seen in movies;: the ones with FBI agents or other gangster squads tracking some massive crime ring from the top mob boss to caporegimes to street soldiers. Alas, I haven't the time for this., and so I'm sure I'll never quite understand the full scope of mobster Trump's organized crime family — just the money end of it. 

You can read the Beast's story or you can settle for this, from the Beast: "[The story details] how Donald Trump's presidential campaign and four associated PACs have been using a GOP compliance firm to pay legal fees, obscuring who is the ultimate recipient of millions of dollars in legal payments."

The report led to the watchdog Campaign Legal Center filing a complaint with the FEC Wednesday, charging that "Trump and his associated PACs aren’t just violating federal reporting rules; they’re also violating the ban on corporate contributions. CLC director of federal reform Saurav Ghosh called the arrangement 'unprecedented' in size, arguing that the scheme deprives the public of its right to know exactly who Trump’s political groups are paying with donor funds."

It's good, I suppose, that the campaign watchdog group has submitted "concerns' to the Federal Election Commission. On the other hand, if ever there was a federal agency born to accomplish absolutely nothing on behalf of the public's interest, it's the FEC — deadlocked in partisans numbers, perfectly useless and dead as its lock. 

This news from the Beast and the CLC's notice that Trump's "scheme" obscures our right to know "who Trump’s political groups are paying with donor funds" also points to his clockwork scamming of said donors. Many, nay undoubtedly most and probably damn near all of them believe their money is going to re-enthrone the mob boss in the Oval Office. They're clueless as to the cash's siphoning from campaign to lawyers.

All this news also coincided with personal correspondence relating to — give me a chance to explain before you click off — Quintus Horatius Flaccus, commonly known as Horace, the Roman poet of the Augustan Age. I know, quite the abrupt departure. Or so it seems.

A Montreal poet friend and I had entered a Horacian discussion — long story — that touched on leeches, of all things. Horace had given the little critters some thought, which he put down on papyrus. Consequently his thought coincided with my thoughts about "Trump the Leech," deceptively sucking his donors dry. Here was Quintus Horatius 2,000 years ago; I've changed only one word, "read" to "bleed":  

The leech just clings to your skin and never gives in/until bloated with blood; he’ll never run out of breath/but will bleed you and bleed you and bleed you and bleed you/to death.

Comments

[VoiceOfReason]

OK, but why stick a picture of Octavian on a meme quote by Horace?

[PM]

Granted, a trifle obscured. But Trump = emperor and his drinking = leeches.

[VoiceOfReason]

I'd probably have gone with Nero...