Every morning lately, I get up and look to see what the latest self-inflicted damage is to Donald Trump. The other night, he did an interview on Fox News with Bret Baier that had to have Jack Smith thinking, "Wow…this guy's making my job so much easier." Analysts are saying that Trump is saying what he's saying — that the documents are his and he willfully and lawfully retained them — as the result of bad legal advice from the non-lawyer Tom Fitton.
I read this and I can't help but think of a couple of folks I've known who made very bad mistakes with their careers…and all of these mistakes were made by not accepting what to me is an obvious fact of life: If you ask enough people for advice, you can eventually find someone who'll tell you what you want to hear.
If I asked everyone I know, "Hey, should I liquidate everything I own — sell the house, sell the stocks, auction off my autographed photo of Marty Allen — and turn it all into cash and send it to this Nigerian Prince who e-mailed me?," it might take a while but I'd find someone who would tell me, "Brilliant idea, Evanier!"
They might say that just to get rid of me. They might say it because they wanted to see me destroy my life. They might even say that because they too were dumb as a bucket of glass shards. But someone would say it.
The world has always had no shortage of Bad Advice and it's gotten worse since the invention of The Internet. It makes it so easy to connect with people who don't know what the hell they're talking about. Recently, I came across this image on said Internet…
I want to get one of these for my doctor. He's not right 100% of the time but he's right way more often than I am…and even righter than I am when I think I've found a great answer on some website. We go to doctors because doing that has a much better success rate than going to YouTube.
I'm not saying there are no correct answers out there. There are plenty of them. What I'm saying is that the correct answer may not be what you wish it was.
And now we have the former President of the United States accused of willfully retaining documents it's illegal for him to have and he's out there, making it easier for the prosecutors to prove the "willful" part of that. He didn't get it off a crackpot website but he might as well have. If you didn't know by now this man was in no way qualified for elected office, he's making it frightfully obvious.