Why Trump’s patsies keep taking the fall for him | Politics

As Lee Harvey Oswald inched through a throng of cops and reporters in the hallway of a Dallas police station hours after his arrest for the murder of President John F Kennedy on November 22, 1963, he said something that resonates today in connection with another president.

“I’m just a patsy,” the small, dishevelled and bruised accused assassin shouted above the din.

Oswald never got to explain what his cryptic message meant since he would soon be dead, shot by a local nightclub owner as he was being paraded before the press like an impish trophy in an underground parking lot.

Was it a curious way of declaring his innocence? Was he suggesting that the police needed a “fall guy” and he, conveniently, was it? Or was Oswald saying that while he indeed was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, he was the sacrificial “patsy” who would allow other, more powerful co-conspirators, to escape justice?

For what it’s worth, I believe Oswald shot Kennedy and he did it alone.

Still, Republican and Democratic presidents know that in order to protect the commander-in-chief from fatal political jeopardy, a White House stocked with loyal patsies – ready, willing and able to serve the “greater good” – is ideal.

No one rivals Donald Trump’s ability to fashion an assembly line of patsies that has so far allowed him to get him out of stiff jams before, during and after his presidency.

Look, I detest Vladimir Putin’s bestie, but you have to marvel at “Don” Trump’s facility to convince oodles of largely capable people to swear allegiance to him at the risk of losing their job, reputation and freedom.

They include lawyers, accountants, wives, family, paramours, grovelling TV executives, cable news personalities, newspaper editors and reporters, politicians and violent insurrectionists, all prepared to do his sinister bidding – whatever the legal consequences.

In Trump’s “patsy” calculus, gender, age, income, education, even politics are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is unquestionable fidelity to Donald J Trump.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former go-to consigliere and self-confessed patsy was sentenced to three years in jail for a bunch of crimes, most notably making hush money payments during the 2016 presidential campaign to keep two women from talking publicly about having sex with the married candidate.

In August, Allen Weisselberg, the Trump organisation’s veteran money man, pleaded guilty to 15 felony counts ranging from grand larceny to tax fraud while acting as the taciturn chief financial officer of the family’s byzantine business.

The latest to join that hall of patsies is Christina Bobb – whether she is prepared to admit it or not. The 39-year-old decorated marine turned lawyer leveraged her staunch conservative credentials into a gig as a political commentator on an obscure cable outfit – One America News (OAN) – that treats Trump more like a celestial saviour rather than a terrestrial train-wreck.

While there, she also parroted his lies about an election he lost. So, he hired her to join his “team” in the midst of the Department of Justice (DOJ) probe into why the 45th…