Hoisted by his own Petard

or how King Claudius meets his end

My grandmothers, the German one who adopted by father and the Irish one who bore my mother, were both fond of the phrase “hoisted by their own petard.”

The phrase itself comes from the the closet scene in Hamlet. In the scene the “delusional” Hamlet confuses Polonius for King Claudius (his Uncle and Step-father — insofar as he marries Hamlet’s mother after murdering Hamlet’s father) and kills him).

Claudius has two petards: his obsession with power and lust.

A petard is a small bomb akin to an explosion created by fireworks. The word comes from the French for “a fart”. While the phrase has a definitive meaning in Hamlet, it’s modern usage is basically, :”you’ve screwed yourself by leaving a trail back to your hideout.”

Both of my grandmothers were also fond of the phrase “A fox always smells his own scent first.” Or as comedian George Carlin once put it “Whoever smelt it, dealt it.”

Enter Donald Trump.

Donald’s petard is his penchant for stiffing people (financially).

David Pecker, the publisher of the National Enquirer, testified to two things: that he was part of the “catch and kill” program and that he was not a bank expected to pay the cost of Trump’s sexual scandals as part of the “catch and kill” program.

The reason Stormy Daniels became an issue is that after paying off Trump’s doorman (for a debunked story) and Karen MacDougal, David Pecker balked at fronting any more money to help his friend Donald Trump’s quest for the presidency.

Enter Michael Cohen.

Donald Trump’s personal attorney. His “fixer”.

To cover up Donald’s sexual encounter with Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen took a mortgage out on his NYC home to finance a $130,000 payoff to her.

Then Trump balked at reimbursing Cohen. After he was elected President and it was clear that Donald Trump okayed the payoff.

It’s as if Donald Trump could not admit a) he cheats on his spouses (which was known well before his election), b) that he has used Non-Disclosure Agreements to ensure people’s silence, and c) that he would personally never pay off a porn star even he had had “sex” with her.

Unfortunately the narcissistic and ego-driven realities of the above paragraph don’t really address why Trump didn’t repay Cohen right away. It would have been really easy for Donald Trump to “decide” to pay Michael Cohen more money or increase Cohen’s billable rate or just give Cohen a bonus.

Instead Donald Trump fell into his standard operating procedure:

Delay. Don’t pay. Delay. Slow pay. (For friends and banks only). Go away.

Cohen recognized the stench well before he found himself embroiled in a legal battle that would send him to prison.

And then Michael Cohen experienced Trump’s other petard — throwing people under the bus when he’s hoisted by his first petard.