A new New York Times story speculates on Donald J. Trump's "return" to his business empire and what that might look like, presuming Trump does not instead insist on being walled up in the White House basement rather than venture back outside into a world in which he can once again be prosecuted for whatever crimes he happens to commit.
It's a bit rosy, to be honest. Freed from the pretense of having his adult failsons run his business, the only concession Trump was willing to make to concerns that running a line of for-profit hotels and resorts and what have you while acting as president was an avenue to massive political grift, it is true that Trump could now return to his tacky-tacky office and run things himself. It's less clear how that will work out in practice.
Yes, Trump can now pursue "business deals" around the world after putting them on brief hold. The venues for those deals would seem to be mostly limited to places run by his autocratic friends, however, as the rest of the world thinks so little of him that they launched fireworks when they heard he had lost. It would be akin to Mussolini leaving office to open a line of car dealerships.
And yes, Trump can now freely profit from all the lobbyists and business grifters who had to play things coy in their supplications to Trump while in office. But Trump will leave office with less power than any modern ex-president; the man has reverse coattails. Everyone involved with him is expected to be purged from government posthaste. He will have little to no remaining influence within government. He has nothing, short of long-winded and bile-filled speeches, to offer.
The elephant in the room, however, is that four years of journalism has uncovered a Whole Lot Of Things Trump has done that look somewhat crime-ish, and all of those things are expected to be the subjects of intense federal and state investigations the moment Trump attorney general William Barr walks back out his office door. He is accused of decades of bank fraud and tax fraud. Robert Mueller's report on Russian election tampering signaled that investigators believed Trump lied to them and would have been prosecuted if it weren't for the department's theory that sitting presidents were immune to prosecution, period. Trump "lawyer" Rudy Giuliani's attempts to manufacture election misinformation in Ukraine have attracted attention as well, and Trump was no doubt intimately connected with that.
Mostly, though: The bank stuff. There's a very real chance Donald Trump will be doing time in somebody's pokey. If Trump is going to restart his heavily-in-debt business ventures and persona, he may yet be doing it from a cell block pay phone.
Presuming Trump does escape long-delayed comeuppance for decades of sketchy business deals and even sketchier bank dealings, he still faces huge debts and a brand that is, thanks to himself, considered deplorable through much of the world. He was never one who attracted the best sort of company, and was always and forever either on the leading or trailing edge of some bizarre petty grift. While he benefited immeasurably from being cast as "famous television rich person" on an American reality show, those fictions are largely played out.
Trump peddled himself as a Brand synonymous with wealth and luxury, but nine-tenths of the nation's famous and wealthy find him repulsive. His new brand is likely to be a decidedly more lowbrow effort. There aren't a lot of places that will be itching for a new Trump hotel, either here or abroad—but American racists will continue to buy new hats.
In the end, we know what Trump is going to do next. It’s obvious. He is going to exact vengeance on his enemies in whatever petty ways he can before January. He is going to go on a pardon binge, attempting to immunize himself and his most valuable associates from whatever prosecutions they might soon face. And then he is going to declare that he is running for president, again, in 2024.
Because he needs money. He needs the donations, and he cannot survive without the attention. He will claim he is again running for president, even if he has no actual intention of doing so, in a bid to remain relevant and Important and to sell as many foreign-manufactured hats as America's base of white nationalist sleazeballs can possibly buy. He may be a buffoon, but to a large segment of the American population, he is their buffoon, the one whose supreme blustering incompetence was the ultimate what-for to the nation's irritating experts, professionals, and book-learners.
He won't launch a new television network. That costs money, and he doesn't have it. So he'll do the easy thing, and keep bleeding his existing base for every last penny he can wring from them.
Source: Daily Kos
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