Until Don­ald Trump squeezed out of Amer­i­ca’s lit­tle brown eye last Novem­ber, I had no idea there were so many grue­some, half-wit bil­lion­aires in this coun­try. I’m not talk­ing about Trump – pri­mar­i­ly because I don’t buy for a sec­ond that guy is worth any­thing close to a bil­lion dol­lars. I’m sure he’s got some pret­ty Appren­tice coin, but I’m also sure he’s in debt up to his gill-slits to bankers, oli­garchs, oil princes, and who­ev­er else he can get to float a cov­er loan to pay off all his oth­er loans.

You can see how he oper­ates when you think about his wall. First he pro­pos­es a tacky, unnec­es­sary, and almost cer­tain­ly unfea­si­ble south­ern bor­der wall to make Amer­i­ca safe, keep out the rapists. Plus, it will be a huge piece of art : “It’ll be a beau­ti­ful wall, a real beau­ty,” he said repeat­ed­ly on the stump. But walls are nev­er beau­ti­ful ; a wall is always an eye­sore, albeit some­times a nec­es­sary eye­sore. (Speak­ing of which, I won­der if any­body on the trumptrain has con­sid­ered that as soon as a wall is built, it will become the largest can­vas for anti-trump art and pro­pa­gan­da in the world.) Over and over he made the same unre­al­is­tic promise : “Mex­i­co will pay for it.” Sure, what­ev­er, but now he’s Pres­i­dent, and he changes his tune : he wants to build the wall first and make Mex­i­co pay for it lat­er. It’s too impor­tant to wait because ter­ror­ism­rape­mur­der. So now we’re pay­ing for the wall up front and we’ll get reim­bursed down the road. But what does reim­bursed mean ?

It can mean any­thing. It can mean a bal­ance of trade deal with Mex­i­co where time or inter­est rates are shift­ed slight­ly. It can mean a tar­iff or an import tax. It def­i­nite­ly won’t mean actu­al cash, because Mex­i­co nev­er was going to pay for the wall. I’m also pret­ty sure the wall will nev­er be built — not as Trump sold it — and what will be built will almost cer­tain­ly be tied up in court. That’s how Trump makes mon­ey — false promis­es, bull­shit account­ing, bad financ­ing, and lit­i­ga­tion. So if he says he’s got (laugh-choke) 10 bil­lion in assets, he’s got to owe 9.4 bil­lion, minimum.

But there are all these oth­er bil­lion­aires com­ing up like cicadas. Bet­sy DeVos, Wilbur Ross, Lin­da McMa­hon — all of them unre­mark­able in any way except for their ridicu­lous for­tunes. And they’re all in Trump’s cab­i­net. That’s excit­ing. Now I read about anoth­er cou­ple more bil­lion­aires — Robert Mer­cer and his daugh­ter Rebekah Mer­cer. Robert appears to be a math savant who made a lot of mon­ey run­ning a hedge fund. Rebekah seems like a woman who is per­fect­ly capa­ble of run­ning an online bak­ery, which is what she did before invest­ing in Bre­it­bart and Steve Ban­non and decid­ing her mon­ey meant she gets to make the rules. And thanks to Cit­i­zens Unit­ed and the flat­line-induc­ing lev­el of cor­rup­tion in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, she does. She and her father have despi­ca­ble ideas about human val­ue and they’re racists, of course. But I have to admit I real­ly liked some­thing Robert is quot­ed as say­ing. He’s talk­ing to Shel­don Adel­son, bil­lion­aire (yawn) casi­no mogul and Zion­ist cock­suck­er, and the quote is meant to illus­trate Robert’s extreme mis­trust of the élite polit­i­cal class. But I don’t care about any of that. I just like his turn of phrase.

“I don’t know any of your fan­cy friends,” Robert told Adel­son, “and I haven’t got any inter­est in know­ing them.”

I like how he says “haven’t got” instead of “don’t have.” I’m total­ly going to do that now.