Episode description

Friends,

This was not exactly Trump’s best week.

New York Justice Arthur F. Engoron found Trump liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth and ordered him to pay a penalty that will exceed $450 million — which, along with the $83 million judgment against him in the defamation suit brought by E. Jean Carroll — could wipe out his entire stockpile of cash.

Meanwhile, a date was set for the hush money trial, in which Trump is alleged to have paid off a porn star to keep her quiet before the election but somehow failed to report it as an election expense.

Oh, and a former FBI informant was found to have fabricated the Hunter Biden story — the allegation that President Biden and his son sought bribes from a Ukrainian energy company. The informant has been arrested.

Meanwhile, Trump’s favorite murderous dictator, Vladimir Putin, seems to have knocked off his major opponent, Aleksei A. Navalny — an anticorruption activist who for more than a decade led the political opposition to Putin while enduring arrests, assaults, and a near-fatal poisoning — under mysterious circumstances. Navalny was 47. The apparent murder complicates Trump’s efforts to prevent Republicans from giving more aid to Ukraine.

Heather and I try to make some sense out of Trump’s week from hell. Please grab a cuppa, pull up a chair, and join us. (And take our klatch poll, if you wish.)