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A regime of idiots: A complete inventory of Trump stooges
They will remain, festering, awaiting the next opportunity for soul-selling.
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While the end point is unclear, Trump’s would-be dictatorship is politically broken. And as Trump’s mental and physical dissipation increases by the day, it’s increasingly important to focus on the network of stooges that have built and sustained his regime.
After all, once Trump departs from the scene, stooges like them will remain, ready and waiting to be activated by another would-be dictator.
Accordingly, we offer for your consideration a complete inventory of the various ideal types of Trump stooges.
The Opportunist Stooge
Opportunism and stoogery are closely related. Whenever a leader offers the promise of a shortcut to wealth or power, opportunists will immediately appear — Todd Blanche being a signal example.
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In April 2023, Trump was desperate to find a lawyer willing to represent him in a criminal fraud case brought by the Manhattan district attorney. He offered the job to Blanche, then a partner at the Wall Street firm Cadwalader, who came recommended by Trump pardoned felon Paul Manafort.
Blanche jumped at the opportunity, apparently attracted by the huge trove of contributions the candidate/defendant was offering to fund his defense, the certain public exposure, and the possibility of becoming a member of Trump’s inner circle. But Blanche’s partners rejected the representation, apparently recoiling at the prospect of being associated with Trump’s ostentatious disdain for the legal system lawyers are charged with upholding.
Blanche responded by resigning his partnership and creating an ad hoc law firm, along with another former federal prosecutor with a checkered past, Emil Bove, to represent Trump in what would soon become a plethora of criminal cases.
Blanche was hardly an effective courtroom advocate, and the Blanche/Bove team lost the New York case, the sole criminal one against Trump to go to trial. But Blanche proved to be an enthusiastic stooge, willing to fully debase himself as he mimicked his client’s utter contempt for anyone who had the temerity to suggest criminal laws might actually apply to Trump. And the Supreme Court, along with the ever Trump-solicitous Judge Aileen Cannon, ultimately effectively immunized Trump from federal prosecution, paving the way for Trump’s further abuses of power.
Trump rewarded Blanche by handing him the “prize” of the position of deputy attorney general, a perch from which he has effectively run, and destroyed, the Department of Justice since the beginning of the second Trump regime.