Trump’s announcement of an announcement demonstrates that nothing has changed, and that he’s still running the world’s biggest con. 

Almost amazingly, Donald Trump has finally come under heat for the massive, sprawling corruption that lay beating in the heart of his campaign. We’ve had many news stories about the potential “conflict of interest” he might be facing, as if turning the nation into another branch of his gaudy empire wasn’t his primary interest. Why would there be a conflict?

Trump has been so nakedly unconcerned with this that he’s made the loathsome Jared Kushner one of his top advisors while his in-no-way involved daughter Ivanka sits in on meetings with world leaders. His business interests in India and Argentina bloom. And all the while, as he insists, the President “can’t have a conflict of interest” (which he takes to mean that legally he can do anything he wants, rather than the way it was intended, which is: shouldn’t.).

Ah, but there comes a point where corruption gets so brazen that even the biggest conman has to assure people he isn’t conning them. After all, that’s the whole point: to lie and reassure people. It’s how he’s run his whole business career, and it was the way he ran his entire campaign.

So Trump this morning released a SERIES OF TWEETS that he would be holding a conference in December that would clear this all up and leave us free and clear of any of our stupid doubts and unworthy worries. It is a masterpiece of Trumpism: complete garbage that pushes back the payment so we forget about the bill of goods we’ve been sold. It’s buying time to talk about something else, hoping that we’ll forget about it. It’s also cheap patter meant to distract from its essential worthlessness. Let’s take a look!

“I will be holding a major news conference in New York City with my children on December 15 to discuss the fact that I will be leaving my great business in total in order to fully focus on running the country in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

1. You’re the President-elect, dummy. Of course it’s a major news conference. You don’t have to say it. Christ, what an insecure phony. Even more than the insecurity, though, is that he still feels the need to speak in barker patois. Artifice and self-importance is all he knows, and that’s how he’ll govern.
2. Having it with your children is not reassuring. They are actually the #1 cause for concern, remember?
3. “leaving my great business”. Seriously, shut up
4. “in order to fully focus on running the country in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN”  I’ll ignore that he said “in order” twice, but not ignore that the President-elect still feels the need to blast his campaign slogan in all caps, because that’s the mark of his still-running con. It’s all glitz and fake authority. Real power hasn’t tempered that, but it is mutating it to something horrible. Also, shouldn’t you have been doing that already?
5. Also, I know that it takes a while to divest, but the announcement of an announcement is classic Trump. It’s meant to distract, to give us something else to talk about, to speculate on how he is doing the right thing. Meanwhile, he keeps on lying, but says “it’ll all be taken care of in December.” Then we’re expected to forget about it entirely. It’s how he’s always run his life, because the essence of his life has been telling lies in order to mask his combination of failure and artifice. That he sees fit to handle the nation’s business in the same way is…concerning, right?

“While I am not mandated to do this under the law, I feel it is visually important, as president, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses.”

1. The noblesse oblige here is sickening, as is his assumption that he should, in fact, still be running his businesses, and that it is sort of silly he isn’t, because of course he’s not corrupt, because the President can’t be corrupt.
2. You shouldn’t tell us this is entirely about optics.
3. Remember what he told the Times: ” “And I understand why the president can’t have a conflict of interest now because everything a president does in some ways is like a conflict of interest.” To any normal human, that means avoiding them. To Trump, that means getting away with it.

“Hence, legal documents are being crafted which take me completely out of business operations. The presidency is a far more important task!”

1. Yeah, no shit it is. But thanks for reassuring us.
2. It’s the exclamation mark which sells it, literally. Because to Trump, that means he’s being serious and that you should take him very seriously. It’s how he sells.

It’s obvious that nothing will change. He’ll have extremely carefully-worded legal documents that still give him financial concerns in his business, but transfer titles to his kids, who of course will still be involved in the affairs of the state. It’ll be obfuscation masked as charity, as he’ll rant about how he doesn’t have to do this, but he is, ok, because the Presidency is, like, more important. And then he’ll ask us to thank him.

It is how he’s fooled people his entire life. Glitz and cheap patter and the assurance that of course everything will be fine, and people believe him, because he’s rich and famous and why would he lie and because we want to believe. The alternative, that we’ve elected a total conman, is too terrible. That’s why people believe cons even past the point of any rationality: because we can’t believe we let ourselves get suckered, and so we stay in, willfully blind.

Trump knows this in his evil heart and otherwise mostly-empty mind (there are golden mirrors and grudges in there as well, but that’s it). He knows how to play us. This is just another way con. He’s trying to push its collapse down the road, down to the future, where he’s sitting in the Oval Office. Where his con is our mutual destiny.