“Oh, what a tangled web we weave,

When first we practice to deceive.”

Sir Walter Scott got it right, but sometimes, when the phase of the moon is right, the planets are properly lined up, and luck is with us, even Donald Trump will (if perhaps only by accident) tell the truth.

Such a moment came the other day when he tried to brush off the report in the New York Times on his ten-year flirtations with revealing the truth about his wealth and his evasion of his tax obligations. Some of us consider that a moral duty to observe — perhaps even a privilege to perform if we take our Bibles or our Korans seriously.

Not Donald. Everyone in real estate considers evading taxes just part of the game, he said. Some, like him, he said, are good at it and are rich and successful. He was good at it, he said. He was a winner. Others are not so good at it. They are the losers.

No comment from Donald on the social value of the taxes being dodged — to create pooled funds to help society’s losers avoid wasting their lives — help those who have not been as successful or as greedy as the winners. No comment from him on the various complicated forms of cheating (labeled ‘emoluments’ by the Constitution if you happen to be the president) engineered by suborned legislators who obediently insert at midnight the subtle clauses in spending bills that cannot be amended, and wherein hide the innocent-sounding loopholes involving various exceptions to the laws the rest of us are expected to obey. (Oil depletion allowances, mortgage deductions on penthouse apartments and beach ‘cottages’, tax ‘abatements’ on new construction of luxury buildings, and the like). No comment from him on the newly reviving art of ‘flipping’ (buying foreclosed homes and a bucket of paint and a high-school kid and offering new buyers high-interest loans to ensure that their indebtedness will be never-ending.

The losers lose their stakes, have to steal to feed their children, and wind up in jail (where they have of course no way to make any money to pay off their debts). Trump lost his stake, too, but Deutsche Bank kept him supplied with funds (long after all reputable other banks had stopped doing business with him) so he could maintain the illusion of wealth and keep up his brand’s reputation — traveling by private helicopter or the biggest automobile he could find, building a tower to get his living quarters as high off the ground as possible, so he could sneeringly look down on the losers. The IRS faithfully executed the laws passed by his co-opted congressmen that kept him in a 1% lifestyle while he blew hundreds of millions of dollars (over a billion in the past ten years alone) on failed gambles. This was a game. He was a winner. Everybody in real estate, and a lot of mid-western farmers and blue-collar factory workers, idolized him for that. They thought he could apply the same BS to international relations that he did to the stock market, and Make America Great Again. Both he and they forgot that the strategies that worked with Leona Helmsley’s ‘little people’ were going to be a lot less effective with professionals like Angela Merkel or Xi Jinping or Theresa May.

He, personally, was a winner. That his compatriots had to become losers in order for that to happen was not a factor of any importance to Mr. Trump.

The country had no Daddy Fred to come up with rescue cash when the going got rough. There was no International Bankruptcy Court to bail him out when he was against the wall. But he knew the secret formula : announce a new casino, sell the guaranteed lotto tickets (shares in the ‘greatest, most beautiful future resort ever seen in Florida (Moscow?), wave from the top of the steps of the TRUMP airplane or the golden Trump Tower escalator and add another billion in claimed (but never described) wealth to his CV, and rely on the suckers to fall all over each other pursuing his magic gravy train.

Now he seems at last to have been cornered. That everyone in real estate does the same thing — even if true, which all signs indicate that it is — various Congressional committees, jealous of their prerogatives and given the power to investigate by the Constitution — are not likely to be so easily distracted. So Donald takes refuge where all liars must eventually hide — doubling down; sticking out his chin and telling the truth.

“We all did it.”

Will this make the slightest bit of difference to his chanting MAGA Red Caps? Not likely. They are too enchanted by seeing former winners transformed, at lost for the nonce, into current losers. Will it bring the wrath of the Deep State down on him? It already has, but how much muscle comes with it? Will it make any difference to the country? Only if the voters have the good sense to turn him out. Will they? Your guess is as good as my prayer.