"I've Learned Nothing"

The latest in the Donald Trump saga

On Friday a New York judge found former president Donald J. Trump liable for conspiracy to manipulate his net worth in an effort to avoid paying taxes. Trump is being ordered to pay upwards of 355 million dollars.

“Nothing,” the former president replied in court when the judge asked what he’d learned from this exercise. “I’ll just appeal it to a higher court.”

Trump’s lawyers indicated in an interview after the ruling Friday evening that they were considering some more unusual legal strategies to aid with the president’s defense. “Libel,” Nolan Howe, the lead of Trump’s newest legal team—who expects to graduate from Fordham law in May of 2025—explained. “We’re going to sue the judge for libel. He isn’t allowed to say bad things about the president. That’s unkind.”

When questioned further by this reporter as to the legitimacy of such a strategy, Howe stated, “look—we don’t have to actually do anything. That’s the trick with this legal stuff. If you keep complaining, and appealing, and infusing your client with baboon blood, you can just outlast the prosecution. In his case, we don’t even have to wait until they die or retire or sexually harass their secretaries. Just until January 2025. When Mr Trump is president again, he can fire all the judges and do that thing to himself that he does with the turkeys on Thanksgiving.”

“That’s been our main concern too,” New York prosecutor Dalton Beade confided in a phone interview. “There’s really no actual penalties for guys like this. They have so much money, and if he’d just give me some of it, I’d be happy to retire to Aruba and drop this whole thing.”

In text messages after the interview, Beade insisted the part about the bribery was a joke, and stated that his real goal is to get justice for the American people. In another text later that day, Beade invited this reporter to a fundraiser. He’s running for congress in the seat recently vacated by George Santos. 

“They’re not getting my money,” Trump explained to a murder of reporters waiting for him outside the courthouse after Friday’s ruling, “because I don’t have any.”

It’s true that Mr Trump’s wealth is primarily tied up in assets: bingo cards, season tickets to the Mets, as well as several scrapyards, and a facility in Florida researching the long-term effects of exposure to the legionnaire’s bacterium. But he’s also not exactly on the brink of homelessness. 

“He’s rich-poor,” economist Celia Cornn explained through direct message on Instagram last night. “New York has to pretend that he doesn’t own any of that because he’s doing that rich-guy voodoo. His company, Big Hair LLC, owns it. And he is not a company, he is a people. American laws do a lot more to protect companies than people.”

“Oh, also, the properties are mostly in Florida,” Cornn added. Florida governor Ron DeSantis has made it clear he won’t help New York prosecutors get at Mr Trump’s properties, “until everyone stops making fun of me for secretly wearing high heels.”

Three Cadillac Escalades picked up the former president outside the courthouse. They took him to his secret helipad atop Trump tower, from which a helicopter airlifted him to La Guardia—an airport which, it’s often forgotten, Trump tried to change the legal name of to President Donald J Trump Memorial Airport during his presidency—where his Cessna Citation XLS flew him to Florida, stopping at a Carl’s Jr in North Carolina along the way.

“I just want everyone to remember,” he said upon landing, “that this is a witch hunt.”

“Hey,” Cornn added later that same day, as this reporter got on the subway to get to Dalton Beade’s fundraiser, “at least all his Florida properties will be underwater by 2030.”