A person contemplates a business deal. The negotiators get very clever, sly — trying to maximize the deal’s value and minimize their taxes. It happens all the time. Some really weird, crazy ideas come out.
“Hey, do you think we can do this? I think we can.”
“Hey, can we declare our business an LLC, a pass-through… whatever that means? I think we can.”
“Hey, can I just incorporate my own self and protect my house that way? I think I can.”
“Hey, can we incorporate in Delaware — better yet, can we incorporate in the Cayman Islands, wherever that is? I think we can.”
“Hey, can we just call her an independent contractor so as to avoid paying employee taxes? I think we can.”
“Hey, can we just make that alteration to the property without seeking a permit? I think we can.”
I think we can. I think I would. I think.
That is how executives in the business world speak and conduct business. They are unbridled, without reins, very daring. They go way outside the box. And then, having gone as far as they can think, they turn to their professionals — the accountants and the attorneys — and they say: “Here is what we came up with, assuming it is legal or that you can figure out some other way to make it legal. Can we do it?”
That is when the attorneys get to work. I have worked at some of the finest law firms in America, where the legal scholarship and incisive creativity of thought is amazing. I know all the jokes and stereotypes about attorneys. Yet I also know first-hand how honest and ethical the vast majority of attorneys are. Yes, the Michael Cohens and Michael Avenattis — and the rest of their ilk — are an appalling embarrassment and feed into the popular stereotype that is exacerbated any time someone has a legal encounter that he or she loses, or that costs a ton of money. I get it. And, yes, the overall system stinks. It moves too slowly. (By contrast, after Lincoln was assassinated April 14, 1865, eight co-conspirators were adjudged guilty on June 30, and four of them were hanged on July 7.) And justice costs too much. But the really great attorneys work their tails off, putting in fifteen- and eighteen-hour days when the need arises in the face of a court-filing or deal-closing deadline or a pending trial, to research every conceivable precedent that may save the day, to confer in teams to generate valuable ideas. And I have met all-too-many people who hated “lawyers” until the day came when their kid was unfairly arrested or when they were wrongfully sued or when someone else cheated them out of their rightful property — and then they found true love… at least for their attorney.
If Donald Trump were a bit more circumspect and understood that sometimes it really is OK to be circumspect, he either:
1. Would not have spent two days openly and casually conversing with a Clinton Communications Director, now a Democrat Hack looking to embarrass and hurt Trump; or
2. Would have answered the question about accepting opposition dirt research from a foreign government by saying “I first would ask my legal team, the finest legal minds in America, whether such activity is lawful, and I would proceed from there.”
But Trump, G-d bless him, shoots from the lip and prefers the unfiltered to the menthol.
Nevertheless, all he said was that he think she would accept that information. He think she would. Listen at 3:23-3:41. Almost no one seems to have picked up on that verb. He think she would. “Think” is a verb that connotes tentativeness, pending more careful analysis later.
Others have made the obvious points, many times over, that the Left Media and Democrats, as always, are so hypocritical. Thus, Crooked Hillary paid for opposition research that her team understood came from Russians close to Putin. Kerry has traveled to Iran to incite the Mullahs to wait out Trump, an initiative that borders somewhere between treason and at least violating the Logan Act. Ted Kennedy did the same with the Russians during Reagan’s day. Pelosi flew to Syria to strengthen Assad when Bush was President. All the usual garbage.
But on top of all that — Trump spoke exactly the way a chief executive would be expected to speak: he shared his sense that, in a hypothetical situation that could offer a potentially huge advantageous pay-off, he think she would go for it, like if Norway offered it. Norway is not our enemy and is pretty irrelevant, give or take a fjord. And that is why Trump hires teams of smart, even brilliant, attorneys and accountants: to guide what he thinks into what he actually ends up doing. (And, for other purposes that have so very little to do with the kind of law that brilliant attorneys find in law books, Trump also will have a Michael “Cash Cab” Cohen on retainer to pass around a few bucks like “Michael Anthony,” the fictional character in the 1950s TV show, “The Millionaire,” to worthy women in need so that they can afford silicone supplements to remain abreast of current affairs.
So Trump said “I think so,” and the Clown Car — 23 and Counting — came honking into town, with the lowest in the polls hoping for oxygen. Impeach him! Stretch him! Hang him! Force him to listen to Rap!
They are such despicable hypocrites, the whole lot of them. Obama’s moles dug up “Oppo Research” on his opponents in Illinois, unsealing confidential court divorce files, revealing that this one beat up his wife and that one forced his divorcing spouse to engage in uncommon trysts. Gillibrand’s moles got her into Congress as a 9-1-1 phone call recording from an abused wife was released to the media. Dirt. A resurfaced tape of a conversation in a trailer. A DUI involving Bush II before he matured. A claim that Romney rough-housed one day in high school. Digging up dirt. Gingrich’s bitter ex-wife looking to get even. Herman Cain’s past. Stephen Moore’s divorce records. Excavating for more and more dirt.
Meanwhile, O’Rourke, who is Scottish and Irish with not a gene of Hispanic-anything, not even in one single ear hair, was involved with hackers and broke into buildings. Sanders flew to give succor to Communists from the Soviet Union, where he honeymooned, to Nicaragua. Obama and Kerry worked covertly with the Israeli Left to try to turn Netanyahu out of office and to corrupt another country’s elections with foreign influence and State Department funding. The Clintons took hundreds of thousands from the Chinese. Indeed, the whole Clinton Foundation funneled foreign money that way. Such liars and phonies, all — even as Biden wielded his Vice Presidential authority to intimidate a foreign government leader, the President of Ukraine, to fire that nation’s prosecutor as the noose was being tightened around the neck of Hunter Biden’s multi-million-dollar sweetheart dealings there.
There is a real meaning to the word “think.”Again: “Think” is a verb that connotes tentativeness, pending more careful analysis later. The corrupt and defamatory Left Media from CNN to MSNBC to ABC to CBS to NBC to PBS to the New York Times to the Washington Post can be associated with many terms. But a verb that connotes tentativeness, pending more careful analysis, is foreign to a contemporary Fourth Estate that repeatedly has proven itself incapable of careful analysis.
