Christian Schneider

Opinion columnist

"When you're a star, they let you do it."

When audio of Donald Trump uttering these words on a bus in 2005 hit the news last year, much of the American public immediately tried to purge it from its collective memory. The full clip gave us a glimpse into the mind of a delusional old man using his fame to have sex with a married woman whether or not she consented.

Yet the most lurid details of the tape — now ensconced in American history and no longer worth repeating here — threw us all off the scent. It wasn't the wretched clip where Trump brags about "grabbing" women that presaged his unthinkable transgressions as president. It's his core belief that as long as you're an A-lister, there are no rules worth obeying.

When The New York Times first reported the existence of a memo written by former FBI James Comey accusing Trump of privately trying to derail the FBI's investigation into national security advisor Michael Flynn, the reverse engineering suddenly all made sense. Trump is a man who lives in a world governed by negotiation. For the president, there is no right and no wrong: there are only transactions.

And thus, when he allegedly pulled Comey aside on Valentine's Day and said, privately, "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go," Trump almost certainly didn't consider what he was doing to be illegal or even improper. It was just another back-slapping, "do me a solid and I'll look out for you" negotiation that Trump had probably used to dodge trouble an untold number of times in the past.

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Trump is, after all, the presidential candidate who, when stumped by a debate question, would simply promise to make "the best deal" to fix health care, education, or whatever the topic at the time was. When asked in August what the "best deal" he could negotiate would be, Trump characteristically responded, "Peace all over the world would be the best deal. And I think I would know how to do it better than anybody else, but peace all over the world."

And why wouldn't he think he could clear up unrest around the world with a few phone calls? His entire adult life, Trump has been able dodge legal trouble simply by using his bank account as a shield. When Trump Management was sued by the government in 1973 for refusing to rent apartments to people of color, Trump and his father were able to settle without any admission of guilt. When students at Trump University sued him for defrauding them, Trump simply wrote a check for $25 million to make it all go away.

Marriage in the tank? He's got a pre-nup. Casino business going belly-up? He goes to bankruptcy court, walks away, and writes another book praising his own genius.

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Clearly, Trump's hope was that when cornered, Comey would acquiesce like all the young women who have accused Trump of doing corning them in the past. During his years developing properties in New York, Trump undoubtedly saw government regulators as mere road bumps that could be smoothed over with some charm or a payoff. He had no reason to think Comey wouldn't capitulate like so many have before.

In fact, there's no reason Trump wouldn't be emboldened to try to make deals once he was elected. In his own mind, Trump likely doesn't think he won the election in spite of his caustic, vulgar persona, but because of it. For the last two years he has behaved like an ignorant, pompous boor; and his punishment is America granting him its highest office. It was, after all, funny when he fired Meat Loaf on Celebrity Apprentice!

Much has been made of how Trump connected with "regular folks" and "blue collar" voters. But those real Americans toiling in anonymity would need a passport to visit the island of self-delusion Trump inhabits. While his apologists write the Comey flap off to Trump's "inexperience," the exact opposite is true: It's the president's lifetime of experience wriggling out of trouble that has found him in it this time.

Christian Schneider is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and a columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow him on Twitter @Schneider_CM

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