Your 2023 Political Fixer!

 

Bob Menendez has some problems. He is a senator from New Jersey who has been indicted on a series of criminal charges related to bribery, without those charges exactly being bribery because bribery is so blurry as to be mostly legal in this country. The higher up you go the more legal it tends to get. So basically one has to be so unrelentingly bad, astonishingly greedy, and blatantly obvious at bribery that they simply have to indict you.

Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, along with his accomplice wife, and the country of Egypt, and a few scattered New Jersey businessman are exactly that bad, and then a little worse on top of it, at bribery. The senator had actual gold bars socked away in his house. He had envelopes stuffed full of cash with the return address of the briber written on them!

He is not good at bribery!

Or he is very good? Who am I to say. I don't have any gold bars.

Anyway, he is indicted.

But he does not want to leave the Senate. And while that may seem crazy to the casual passerby, and it might also seem really immoral, consider my earlier statement:

The higher up you go the more legal bribery tends to get.

If Senator Menendez quits the Senate he will no longer be a Senator. And he has to know that being taken out like so much garbage will become a far more likely and simple thing to happen to him as a non senator than it is likely to be as a sitting Senator. At the very least, a senator always outranks a former senator. 

And as to the immoral aspects of any of this? Let's face it, that ship sailed a long time ago. So let us no longer dwell on that ol' dinosaur.

So Bob Menendez naturally wants to stay as a Senator, at least at the time I write this. But this is causing him to draw a lot of fire. Republicans are calling for his resignation. Democrats are calling for his resignation. Since he would be replaced by a Democrat, Republicans are probably pretty happy, though, to have him stick around as an example of Democratic Corruption. It's a mess.

And Menendez is a fool, ill-equipped to finesse this.

But I am here to help him.

I am the patron saint of fools!

I have two, simple words for Senator Menendez: 

Clarence Thomas.

Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice, also accepts bribes! He has received ridiculous vacations, motorhomes, and assorted lower profile alternatives to gold bars (he's not from New Jersey I guess). But he has a better, more powerful position than a Democratic Senator. He has a position as a wildly far right wing Supreme Court Justice. And that job and alignment makes him so secure in his position that he is immune to indictment even if he appears to be just as bad at bribery (or just as good?) as old Bob Menendez. 

But Menendez is politically trapped into the perverse, non confrontational psychology of ruling Democrats. These people are so desperate for everything to be normal in this country, and want so badly to believe that if they are just slightly better than the Republicans then everything will be okay, that he can't see his answer staring him in the face.

So, out of the kindness of my heart, I am going to tell Senator Robert Menendez what to say.

First he must call a press conference. He's pretty hot right now, so it will be well covered by the press. But he can bait it with rumors that he will be resigning if he wants. The more attention the better! And here's the trick about saying he'll resign: He will be, but conditionally, very conditionally.

Here is his statement:

"While I regret the appearance of impropriety in having a house stuffed full of gold and cash, it is simply a reflection of the gifts I have received from friends and my own eccentric investment strategies. Furthermore I have helped constituents from my state and from other places with shared interests and policies, only to the benefit of the people of New Jersey and of the United States of America. However, if what I have done seems inappropriate enough to disqualify me from office, so too, clearly, is what Justice Clarence Thomas has done. Therefore, in a surfeit of caution and propriety, the moment that Supreme Court Justice Thomas steps down from the Supreme Court Bench, I too will step down as the Senator of this great state that it continues to be my privilege to serve.

Obviously these things must apply equally. 

Thank you and God bless America."

I think that should do it.

I mean, for him.

America, of course, is fucked.