Grease the Skids, It's Looking Stormy

It's a now familiar pattern for the Trump brigade. At first deny everything, no matter how implausible the denial, and hope that whatever it is dies a natural death.

If repetitive denial doesn't work, invent some tall tale, again no matter how implausible, and see if that won't work.

Trump has a problem. He danced the lap tango with a porn queen in Vegas a few years back when his latest wife, Melania, was home with baby Barron.  Some years ago she shopped her story to a few gossip rags. However it became an issue again while Trump was campaigning for the presidency.

Trump continued to claim it never happened but word got out that Stormy's silence was bought for a tidy payment of $130,000.

Then the penny dropped and the Trumpsters had to face the cold, hard truth that the payment could be deemed to be a campaign contribution, an undisclosed campaign contribution, the hush money being in furtherance of Trump's pursuit of the presidency.

Apparently Team Mueller has been looking into that and it seems they've got Trump dead to rights. Time for the Hail Mary pass. Wait for it.

Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, now claims he paid the hush money. He paid the $130,000 out of his own pocket.  He stopped well short, however, of claiming that Trump knew nothing about it.

It's hard to see how Cohen's new tale, even if it was true, could make any difference. He was on Trump's payroll after all. It was hardly some act of charity. Cohen, therefore, can be seen as having made an undisclosed contribution of value for the furtherance of Trump's campaign prospects. It's hard to imagine that, given the campaign disclosure law, Cohen would have placed his own client in jeopardy by concealing the payment from him.

I feel sorry for Melania, sort of, but also for Sarah Huckabee Sanders. She's been working so hard lately lying for Donald Trump that her face is beginning to slide off her head and the first wisps of smoke are coming from her ears.

Pappa Pastor Mike must be thrilled to see his little girl, the mother of his grandbabies, making a living telling outrageous lies about wife beaters, perverts and trysts with porn queens.

Now, I'm thinking the GOP has the solution to this mess right there in its own ranks in Washington - Joni Ernst. Joni campaigned for her Senate seat with ads bragging about how she grew up on a farm castrating pigs. Sounds like there's a hog in the White House who could use a bit of Joni's magic. Just sayin'



UPDATE: The Sydney Morning Herald offers a tidy analysis of just what Michael Cohen actually said and what he didn't exactly say. Worth a read.