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Item one: Who’s going to pay Trump’s legal penalty?

Donald Trump is attempting to appeal and delay having to pay that whopping fine that New York Judge Arthur Engoron laid on him earlier this month in the Trump Organization fraud suit brought by state Attorney General Letitia James. As we’ve all heard, to do so, he has to secure a bond.

NBC News did some cipherin’ Wednesday and reported that he’ll need a bond of about $540 million. It is widely assumed he doesn’t have the liquid cash. He has some buildings, notably 40 Wall Street, but many experts are saying that the government doesn’t like to take real estate as collateral. "Whoever is going to bond [Trump] is committing that they’re going to make good on that judgment," New York business attorney David Slarskey told NBC. "Who’s going to do that?"

Indeed. That is the question. And the possible answer is chilling, if we imagine Trump back in the White House next year.

In sum: He could borrow this money from just about anybody. Or not even borrow it. Someone might just give it to him. Incredibly, as Neal Katyal said on MSNBC Wednesday night, there is apparently no law that prohibits someone in Trump’s position from securing the collateral from anyone. It’s another one of those laws that I suppose no one ever even thought to write because the system has never encountered a Donald Trump before. But now it has.

"There are potential sanctions prohibitions and campaign finance prohibitions. And of course potential tax issues," MSNBC analyst Andrew Weissmann told me via email Thursday. "But apart from those, a third party can give a gift or loan to post the federal or state bonds." 

Ponder with me the possible dangers here. Let’s imagine a roster of actors who might have the resources and motive to stake Trump to half a billion dollars, either as a loan or a gift. There’s Russia, first of all. Russia—and Vladimir Putin personally, because he’s apparently stolen so much over the years that he might be the world’s richest man—may be out of the question because of the sanctions. But of course, that’s just the law, which Trump spits at.

Imagine a President Trump in hock to Russia or Putin to the tune of a half-billion dollars. Sure, Trump is inclined to give Putin half of Eastern Europe anyway. But money like that would turn a mere ideological sentiment into ironclad fealty, since money means a lot more to Trump than ideas. Well, Poland, you didn’t exist from 1795 to 1918; you can get used to it again.

Or let’s say it came from Saudi Arabia. Remember, it was during this very trial that Trump bragged that the Saudis, or at least some individual Saudi, would willingly pay inflated prices for Trump properties. This was a justification he used for inflating the prices in the first place. Engoron wrote in his ruling: "He also seems to imply that the numbers cannot be inflated because he could find a ‘buyer from Saudi Arabia’ to pay any price he suggests."

So imagine now that a "buyer" or buyers from the kingdom secretly put up Trump’s collateral. And then Trump won the election. The United States would do whatever Mohammed bin Salman wanted it to do. On the surface, Saudi Arabia is committed to its Vision 2030 plan that proclaims a desire to normalize relations with Iran (this has started) and move away from the current reliance on oil revenues and toward a knowledge economy. That’s all very nice. But conflict will arise in that region, as it always does, and when it does, Trump will serve the master who bailed him out of legal hot water.

Or suppose the Netanyahu government put up the dough. People are plenty critical of Joe Biden now, and rightly so, over the money we’re giving to Israel and the absence of conditions imposed on that money so that Israel can commit atrocities on a massive scale. But if you think it can’t get worse, think again. Trust hard-right Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who said earlier this month: "Instead of giving us his full backing, Biden is busy with giving humanitarian aid and fuel, which goes to Hamas. If Trump was in power, the U.S. conduct would be completely different."

Of course, Trump’s benefactor need not be a foreign nation. What if, as Weissmann posited to Lawrence O’Donnell Thursday night, it was Elon Musk who ponied up the dough? Or Peter Thiel? Or a consortium of Texas oilmen? Or the Mafia? Obviously, Trump would willingly accept the money from any and all of those sources. How nice would that be, to have a president who hardly made a move without anticipating their reaction?

Lara Trump argues that rank-and-file Republicans will be perfectly happy for their donations to the Republican National Committee to go to paying Trump’s legal bills, and the Trump-era Republican Party is such a warped, freakish imitation of a normal political party, so smothered in cult-worship, that she’s probably right. But even so, rank-and-file Republicans can’t begin to cover more than a fraction of this.

The other hypothetical to consider here is of course that it’s entirely possible that Trump won’t pay at all. After all, as we know all too well, if there’s a law or rule to flout, Trump is there to flout it and dare the system to catch up with him. So this all might be moot, which speaks only to how brazenly lawless the man is.

But if he decides to post the bond, and if all this reporting is correct that he doesn’t have the money himself, he’s going to have to get it from someone. And whoever that someone is will claim a mighty stake on what remains of the mind of the man who might be the president of the United States.

Item two: The two stooges and the Kremlin

What we learned this week about James Comer and Jim Jordan, meanwhile, would have been absolutely shocking in any other time in recent American history. Two prominent House committee chairmen have been knowingly taking Russian disinformation about nonexistent bribes "paid" to Joe Biden in order to try to build an impeachment case against the president. 

I guess there’s some dispute over that "knowingly" above. But a House Republican basically said as much this week. Colorado’s Ken Buck told CNN, referring to Comer and Jordan informant Alexander Smirnov: "Obviously, this witness—and we were warned at the time that we received the document outlining this witness’s testimony—we were warned that the credibility of this statement was not known." 

It’s just staggering to step back and think that prominent leaders in a major American political party are doing this. Thirty, forty years ago, they would have resigned this week. Instead, they doubled down. Comer said the Democrats are playing "the Russia card" against him (well … yes, they are, and rightly so!). Jordan insisted that the allegation that Smirnov made up everything in that famous FBI 1023 form "doesn’t change the fundamental facts." And they will go home this weekend to rapturous town hall audiences, patting them on the back, begging them to continue to do God’s work against the corrupt Marxists. 

Join TNR at these upcoming events:

Item three: Mike Johnson and the anniversary of Putin’s invasion

Saturday marks two years from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The recent Russian capture of Avdiivka is a potential sign that Russia may be starting to wear its much smaller foe down—at exactly the time when Ukraine is running out of ammunition and the United States may be about to abandon Ukraine.

The White House is still trying to pressure House Speaker Mike Johnson to switch his "dead on arrival" position and allow a Ukraine aid vote, which would probably pass, with virtually all Democrats and a critical mass of Republicans. But it’s hard to imagine Johnson responding to White House pressure. It’s very much the opposite, right? The more White House pressure, the more Johnson is likely to stick with pleasing the Freedom Caucus.

So put these last two items in context. The Republican Party on the one hand willingly accepts disinformation from Russian sources and on the other green-light’s Putin’s aggression against a sovereign democratic state. If we quit this fight, Kyiv may, or probably will, fall someday. That will be a truly historic day, and obviously I mean it in a bad way; not quite Nazis-take-Paris bad, but in that general moral ballpark. That’s today’s America right in a nutshell.

Quiz time!

Last week’s quiz: "I am a lineman for the county…": About the counties of the United States. Cuz I look at maps a lot.

1. How many counties are there in the United States?

A. 1,783

B. 2,662

C. 3,143

D. 4,380

Answer: C, 3,143. That’s counties and county equivalents, which means parishes in Louisiana, boroughs and census areas in Alaska, and independent cities that aren’t in counties, which are mostly in Virginia, which you ought to know if you watch the state’s election returns closely. All these would have been good questions too. By the way, you sometimes see slightly different numbers: 3,243; 3,234, etc. But C is the answer, the low 3,000s, whatever exact number you settle on.

2. Which state has the highest number of counties, and which state the lowest?

A. Alaska, Hawaii

B. California, Rhode Island

C. Texas, Delaware

D. Minnesota, New Hampshire

Answer: C, Texas and Delaware have 254 and three counties, respectively. Hawaii has five counties, one of which, Kalawao, is this tiny little five-square-mile patch of land on Molokai Island.

3. Match the major American city to the county in which it sits.

Answer: Seattle = King, Detroit = Wayne, Minneapolis = Hennepin, and Las Vegas = Clark. A few more that I know off the top of my head: Pittsburgh (Alleghany), Fort Worth (Tarrant), Phoenix (Maricopa), and Cincinnati (Hamilton). 

4. What is the only county in the U.S. that borders four other states?

A. Ballard County, Kentucky

B. Cimarron County, Oklahoma

C. New Castle County, Delaware

D. New Madrid County, Missouri

Answer: B, Cimarron County, Oklahoma. Very cool little factoid here. It’s the westernmost county in the state’s Panhandle and thus clearly borders Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. And if you zoom in closely enough, you’ll see that for literally about two-thirds of a mile, it borders Kansas. 

5. Of the top 10 richest counties in the U.S., fully half, five, surround one city. What city is this?

A. Washington, D.C.

B. San Francisco

C. Los Angeles

D. Denver

Answer: A, Washington. The counties are mostly in Virginia (Loudoun, Fairfax, and Arlington) but also in Maryland (Montgomery, Howard). Different lists have only three or four of these in the top 10, and the broad Bay Area is catching up as San Jose has become its own real city, but Washington still leads.

6. Nine states have counties that are wholly or predominantly islands. Which one of the below states does not belong in this category?

A. New York

B. Massachusetts

C. Michigan

D. Virginia

Answer: D, Virginia. But I kinda screwed this one up. Explanation: Virginia does have one little teeny tiny island, Tangier Island, which is part of Accomack County. Michigan has a county, Charlevoix, that wholly contains a larger island; but Charlevoix County also consists of a sizable patch of land on the lower peninsula, so "predominantly" isn’t really right with respect to Michigan. New York and Massachusetts are clear-cut, of course. Nantucket and Dukes counties are made up of islands (the latter consists chiefly, though not wholly, of Martha’s Vineyard) in Massachusetts. And in New York? Somewhere upstate, near Lake Erie? No! Remember, Manhattan, which is New York County, is an island.

This week’s quiz: Ebony and ivory: a brief history of the keyboard. Because I was just thinking about a trip I made to a museum in Williamsburg, Virginia, that had an amazing collection of historic keyboard instruments.

1. Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, dissatisfied with the lack of volume control the player had over the harpsichord, invented the hammering mechanism that characterizes the modern piano and produced his first instrument using it in what year?

A. 1588

B. 1616

C. 1670

D. 1700

2. What does the word piano mean, anyway?

A. Pretty

B. Soft

C. Loud

D. Lush

3. Most people know that a piano has 88 keys. Oddly, 88 keys do not make up a round number of octaves. How many keys are in an octave?

A. Eight

B. 10

C. 11

D. 12

4. It’s the most famous organ in popular music history, heard for example on "Green Onions," "Whiter Shade of Pale," and countless other hits; a vintage one today can go for more than $20,000.

A. Yamaha 360

B. Moog 200X

C. Hammond B-3

D. Roland Persephone 

5. Match the keyboard player to the artist or band he is most associated with.

6. According to PianoNote.com, what is the most difficult piano piece of all time?

A. Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No. 3

B. Ravel, "Gaspard de la nuit"

C. Scriabin, Sonata No. 5

D. John Coltrane, "Giant Steps"

I once resolved to learn "Rhapsody in Blue." It was 17 pages. I learned two, glanced ahead, and noticed all the key changes and all those daunting sharps, and surrendered, but for a while, I had a lot of fun playing those first two pages over and over and over. Answers next week. Feedback to fightingwords@tnr.com.

—Michael Tomasky, editor 

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