On Water And A Duck's Back

Trump shrugs off lifetime of scandals

For the third straight election, tens of millions of Americans will vote for a candidate who boasts an encyclopedia of scandals — personal, political and criminal — unprecedented in any corner of public life.

Why it matters:

Donald Trump has defied political gravity. He has survived the unsurvivable, normalized the abnormal and bulldozed through every red line drawn by his predecessors. And yet he just might win — again.

Driving the news:

Days before the election, Trump's former chief of staff, retired four-star Gen. John Kelly, went on the record to warn that the former president is a "fascist" who would rule like a dictator.

"He commented more than once that, 'You know, Hitler did some good things, too,' " Kelly alleged to The New York Times, choosing to speak out after Trump floated using the U.S. military against political enemies.

Kelly, who left the White House in December 2018, also told The Atlantic that Trump wanted the kind of military generals Hitler had — generals who he said were "totally loyal to him."
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement that Kelly "has totally beclowned himself with these debunked stories he has fabricated."

What they're saying:

Kelly's comments have landed like virtually every Trump scandal of the past eight years — drawing outrage from Democrats and liberal pundits, shrugs and spin from Republicans.

"It's kind of par for the course. Unfortunately, with a guy like that, it's kind of baked into the vote at this point," New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a moderate Republican who has endorsed Trump, told CNN in response to the Hitler allegations.

Fox News' Brian Kilmeade argued: "I can absolutely see him go, 'It'd be great to have German generals that actually do what we ask them to do,' maybe not fully being cognizant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis."

The big picture:

Pull any one of these 10 Trump scandals out of a hat and apply it to any other politician — or even just a typical American. More likely than not, it would end their career.

1. Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts in New York for paying illegal hush money to a porn star, making him the first former president to be charged, convicted and potentially sentenced to prison.
2. He refused to concede the 2020 election, and spread baseless claims of voter fraud that inspired a violent mob to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He's been indicted twice on charges of trying to overturn the election.
3. He was indicted on federal charges of illegally retaining classified documents that included nuclear secrets, leading to an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. (The case was dismissed but could be reinstated upon appeal.)
4. He was impeached twice — once for his actions on Jan. 6 and once for withholding military aid to pressure Ukraine's government to investigate his political opponents.
5. He has publicly praised dictators and sided with Vladimir Putin over U.S. intelligence agencies that assessed that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election.
6. He was found liable of sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll, and has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 25 other women. He was caught on tape in 2005 bragging about grabbing women by their genitals.
7. He and his company were ordered to pay $350 million in a New York civil fraud trial for artificially inflating his net worth to secure favorable loan terms.
8. He placed full-page ads in The New York Times in 1989 calling for the death penalty for five Black and Latino teenagers who were wrongfully convicted of raping a jogger in Central Park. He has refused to apologize.
9. He promoted the racist conspiracy theory that Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president, wasn't born in the United States.
10. He made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims during his four years in office, according to Washington Post fact-checkers.
11. Zoom in: He hasn't seemed to slow down in the four years since. In recent weeks, Trump has lied about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio, called Jan. 6 "a day of love," and attended a 9/11 memorial with a 9/11 truther.

Between the lines:

At this point in his career, it's hard to envision a scandal that could shake Trump's grip on the Republican Party.

In the eyes of Trump's most loyal supporters, the media has lost all credibility by engaging in yearslong "witch hunts" attempting to take him down.

For the rest of his voters, it boils down to a more practical calculation: Trump's policies, especially in contrast to a Kamala Harris presidency, are worth the price of his character.
The bottom line: Trump "has survived more scandals than any major party presidential candidate, much less president, in the life of the republic. Not only survived but thrived," writes The New York Times' Peter Baker.

"He has turned them on their head, making allegations against him into an argument for him by casting himself as a serial victim rather than a serial violator."