Friends,

This was not exactly Trump’s best week.

New York Justice Arthur F. Engoron found Trump liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth and ordered him to pay a penalty that will exceed $450 million — which, along with the $83 million judgment against him in the defamation suit brought by E. Jean Carroll — could wipe out his entire stockpile of cash.

Meanwhile, a date was set for the hush money trial, in which Trump is alleged to have paid off a porn star to keep her quiet before the election but somehow failed to report it as an election expense.

Oh, and a former FBI informant was found to have fabricated the Hunter Biden story — the allegation that President Biden and his son sought bribes from a Ukrainian energy company. The informant has been arrested.

Meanwhile, Trump’s favorite murderous dictator, Vladimir Putin, seems to have knocked off his major opponent, Aleksei A. Navalny — an anticorruption activist who for more than a decade led the political opposition to Putin while enduring arrests, assaults, and a near-fatal poisoning — under mysterious circumstances. Navalny was 47. The apparent murder complicates Trump’s efforts to prevent Republicans from giving more aid to Ukraine.

Heather and I try to make some sense out of Trump’s week from hell. Please grab a cuppa, pull up a chair, and join us. (And take our klatch poll, if you wish.)

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