Today he asked the court for permission to post only $100 million rather than the full amount in the New York case

This was hilarious, btw. The Pawn Stars, Art of the Deal treatment of the justice system.

Trump does not have the money he has claimed punctures the image at the heart of his political success: that of a billionaire businessman.

Nah. Sorry, but no. I doubt anybody's mind was changed by this, mostly because they'll never hear about it, and because... this is the thing that'd be a deal breaker for anyone? Nah. Anything court-case-related has done nothing but help him, when the dust settles.

The Hunter Biden informant being a Russian operative? Nothing could be less surprising. We've known that this is the dynamic since Lev Parnas and Giuliani were doing the same fuckin' thing in 2019. We knew in 2017 that a Russian operative met with Don Jr. in Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign to dangle dirt on Hillary (real or no) explicitly as a show of Russia's support for Trump's campaign. It's reason number billion to ignore anyone who says "well the Russia collusion thing did turn out to be a big conspiracy". It did not. We even see the overlap in propaganda content and pro-Russian foreign policies in MAGA, these days. Some may try to make the argument that Trump isn't directly coordinating with Russia, that all of this is being given to him without solicitation. If people can't see the tit-for-tat exchange that's long since been established between Trump and Putin, it's because they don't want to, and I'm not going to waste my time talking to them about it.

Good article. I could use some optimistic takes, but my ideological immune cells start ramping up, sorry. Learned response.