Let’s just pause for a moment in this marvelously chaotic time of ours and ponder the reality that the President* of the United States stipulated in a courtroom on Thursday that he looted a fcking charity for his own political purposes. Think about how unprecedented that is, among presidents anyway. (One of the low-rent grifters Scott Walker hauled along in his wake in Wisconsin went to jail for stealing from a fund meant for Gold Star families to go to, among other places, the zoo.) The agreement is an amazing document. One of the highlights is the final accounting for the Event For Veterans in Iowa for which El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago braggadociously blew off a debate across town. From the settlement documents:

The Iowa Fundraiser raised approximately $5.6 million in donations for veterans groups of which $2.823 million went to the Foundation; the balance was contributed by donors directly to various veterans groups.



The Foundation is the Foundation that the president* used to pump the money donated to his “charitable” ventures into various personal and political purposes. Remember when the New York Times went into business with a professional ratfcker and pumped up his ridiculous charges against The Clinton Foundation, and those charges clung to the 2016 Democratic nominee like gum on her shoe for a flat year? Yeah, that was cool. This little bit of business already has sunk in the never-ending maelstrom of a news cycle. But the President* of the United States has stipulated in an official legal document that he used money meant for veterans to pump up his presidential campaign. So, of course, there’s no way he’d shake down a sovereign government for the same reason.

God, we’re in the sunken place.

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io