Let's not forget Lady Justice holds the scales in one hand and a sharp sword in the other

 

By Hal Brown

Former Rep. David Jolly (R-FL) said "Lady Justice is showing us she has an understanding of karma and a sense of humor" (Reference) but she's never shown as smiling. She does hold a sworn and at times she can be seen as a purveyor of karma.

As shown in my illustration above, Trump has two overlapping mouths. This represents the conundrum of trying to understand Trump. He says things that are demonstrable lies, but we never know whether he believes what he says.

Here's what I think David Jolly is describing in interview with Nicole Wallace dwhen he said the following from the article in Raw Story.

"You could not write the projection that Donald Trump was engaged in, then Secretary Clinton, to now be facing his own loss of liberty about what exactly he accused her of. I think Donald Trump knows that and understands that. I think Donald Trump knows that his wisest strategy is not to win this case in the southern district of Florida but to win the presidency. And that is why you're seeing this two-tiered strategy. Attorneys are left with a client who continues to lie to himself and misrepresent. But it's a political strategy that he sees as working."

There are contradictions here. 

Psychological projection is an unconscious process. While Trump is accusing Hillary Clinton of doing what he did (and of course he's comparing an arsonist to an overripe apple considering that what Hillary did with the email server is nothing like what he did). This is projection in the colloquial sense, i.e. to accuse someone of doing something wrong to deflect from the fact you did something wrong, often worse, that what they did.

We just don't know what Trump believes. 

Therefore, when Jolly goes on saying that Trump knows that his wisest strategy is not to win the Florida case but to win the presidency again, it is just speculation to say what he knows. From what I hear Trump saying about the documents case it seems that he very much cares about winning that case.

I don't see the two tiered strategy Jolly describes.

Then Jolly goes on to say that Trump continues to lie to himself, which of course entails misrepresentation. But if this is due to his lying to himself, then it isn't deliberate misrepresentation even though it is a misrepresentation of the truth.

Finally, how can all that we observe coming from Trump be a political strategy that he sees as working if he is lying to himself? If he is lying to himself to this degree then he is delusional. If he is delusional he is not mentally capable of devising a rational strategy.

If there is such a thing as karma it works in mysterious and erratic way. If Lady Justice is about to wield the sword of karma and strike Trump down, or  to put it another way, give him his just deserts, I don't think she'll be chuckling to herself finding it the least but amusing. 

If you don't see the Disquis comment section below click here.

My other blogs today:

HUFFPOST title editorializes in title, but gets it wrong, The Rolling Stones got it right.

Sorry, Jennifer Rubin, Bill Barr can't play a vital role in helping Republicans accept that Trump is unfit for office

The Documents cases: When taking your work home for good reasons can be a bad thing

 The main blog story today is here:

 ...While we wait for justice to catch up to Trump, let's see that Bill Barr gets his just rewards...

The Documents cases: When taking your work home for good reasons can be a bad thing

By Hal Brown

In learning about the FBI was searching yet another Biden residence (update: none were found) it occurred to me that another huge difference between the reasons Trump took confidential documents home and why Biden and Pence did hasn't been reported on, at least not that I've seen.

This is that both Biden and Pence, I am quite sure, took documents home to work on them. As public servants working overtime, whether from home or at the office, this is frequently considered part of the job. Except for Trump who probably never worked a 40 hour week unless you consider golfing and frittering his time away watching TV and tweeting as work, public servants often work in excess of the time they are getting paid for.

Most people, with the possible exception of the spouses of those who feel their husbands or wives are workaholics and are both taking time away from family activities and/or jeordailzing their mental or physical health, consider this to be an admirable example of dedication to their job.

Some people do this for money. I visited a high school friend in New York who was a top executive at a major investment company who not only worked from the office but was up in the wee hours of the night working from his home office following stock market exchanges around the world. This earned him a Park Avenue apartment but I don't know what it did to his personal life.

Others do it as a public service.

Biden and Pence took documents home as a public service. There was just not enough time spent physically in the office to do their job. There's no time clock for senators, vice presidents, and presidents to log in and out on.

Nobody know why Trump took documents home, secret or otherwise. What we can be sure of with a high degree of confidence is that the notoriously lazy, ill-informed, and reading adverse president didn't take documents to any of his residents to actually work on them.

I believe that the motivations for Biden and Pence taking secret documents home to work on were laudable, but to put it bluntly were worse than ill-considered. They were, to use a three letter word, bad.