How to Be Corrupt and Get a Free Pass

Why the GOP and Manchin always get away with it

BREAKING: Joe Manchin ruins everything. This post was going to be solely about Republican hypocrisy, but then Senator Manchin, an alleged Democrat who did Republican’s bidding more often than not, just announced his retirement right before I hit “publish”. It’s a reminder that in the world of the GOP, as long as you play ball and let them lie, cheat, and steal their way into destroying the country, they’ve got your back . . . which is why they always had his.

Case in point, what the corrupt James Comer is doing to Pres. Biden right now, while Joe Manchin is doing his best to hand MAGA the Senate in 2024.

Here’s why Comer, Manchin, and Donald get a free pass, while people doing the right thing on the left do not. 👇

While Republicans in the House are busy doing the serious business of governing—holding votes to reduce the salaries of Vice President Kamala Harris and White House Press Secretary Karine Jeanne-Pierre to $1 (I can’t for the life of me think why they singled out these two public servants. s/), James Comer (R-KY), Chair of the House Oversight Committee, has been desperately trying to dig up dirt on both President Biden and his son, Hunter Not-a-Government-Official Biden.

Currently at issue is the fact that in 2018, then-private citizen Joe Biden transferred $200,000 to his brother, James. Two months later, James and his wife, Sarah, sent Joe Biden a check for $200,000 with the notation “loan repayment” written on the front.

Sounds terribly nefarious, doesn’t it?

Well, not if you’re interested in the truth. But Comer clearly is not. He has called this transaction “troubling,” and “believes” that Joe Biden is lying about it. In order to make these claims, Comer is overlooking the ample evidence at his disposal that proves the loan was exactly as it seems.

I, personally, can’t see the crime in extending a short-term, interest-free loan to a family member who then pays back said loan in a timely fashion, but then I’m not the powerful chair of the Oversight Committee on a mission to undermine Pres. Biden at every turn—even if that means making shit up about him and his son.

In a bizarre twist, the Daily Beast has reported that Comer loaned his own brother the exact same amount of money. The difference is that the Comer transaction was not nearly as straight-forward as the Bidens’ and, very possibly, not nearly as above-board.

But perhaps it’s not the Biden loan that’s controversial for Republicans—it’s the paying the loan back that’s problematic.

After all, Donald Trump, the party’s standard bearer, in addition to bragging about not paying taxes, is deeply averse to paying back money he’s borrowed. My hypothesis is that this is, in part, because vast portions of Donald’s wealth were essentially built upon unpaid loans.

For example, over the course of my grandfather, Fred’s life, he and my grandmother transferred hundreds of millions of dollars to their children. While my grandfather was alive, Donald alone received the equivalent of $413 million, much of it through loans that he were never repaid and investments in properties that never matured—essentially untaxed gifts.

According to the stunning investigative report by Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner published in The New York Times on October 2, 2018:

“Fred Trump and his companies also began extending large loans and lines of credit to Donald Trump. Those loans dwarfed what the other Trumps got, the flow so constant at times that it was as if Donald Trump had his own Money Store. Consider 1979, when he borrowed $1.5 million in January, $65,000 in February, $122,000 in March, $150,000 in April, $192,000 in May, $226,000 in June, $2.4 million in July and $40,000 in August, according to records filed with New Jersey casino regulators.”

This was a long-standing pattern. Eleven years later, in 1990, my grandfather sent his chauffeur with more than $3 million in cash to purchase chips at the Donald’s casino, Trump’s Castle. In other words, Fred bought chips head had no intention of gambling with; his driver simply put them in a briefcase and left the casino. The next day, my grandfather wired another $150,000 to the Castle, presumably for more chips. These maneuvers resulted in my grandfather’s having to pay a $30,000 fine for violating a gaming commission rule prohibiting unauthorized financial sources from lending money to casinos. But the loans still didn’t get paid.

Republican hypocrisy and projection have been part of the Party’s DNA since at least 1992, when Newt Gingrich was cheating on his wife while he was, at the same time, the driving force behind the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

This is why the GOP loves Manchin so much. He and his family have made millions from his position in the senate, mostly from the coal industry. He is willing to hurt the country at expense of the health and environment of his own state. In other words, he’s a model Republican.

Manchin. Donald. Comer. They’re all simply acting in the finest tradition of a Party that has no interest in policy or governance.

The hypocrisy is just a bonus.

Manchin’s gone. Comer should be next. As for Donald . . . I’ll spend every waking minute trying to keep him from getting back into power.