Trump can’t let go

Shouted Question from reporter: Why did you keep the documents?

Trump: This is a witch-hunt.

There is no shortage of song lyrics I could use to headline a blog post on Trump and his documents. 

Cake left in the rain

Much popular music is about loss and heartache.  Sometimes it is heartache felt by others, because by the time the lover gets to Phoenix she'll be rising, finding the note on the door, then she will call and he won't answer, and by that evening she will cry. How delicious for him to imagine. There is loss one feels oneself, like a ruined cake in the rain in McArthur Park, and he will never have that recipe again, oh no.

My career as a Financial Advisor taught me that clients feel remorse from loss far beyond the joy they feel when investments gain value. It is asymmetric. Money -- or value on an account statement -- whatever the high water mark, is theirs, in hand. Getting something equivalent -- money or a new lover -- have a one-fifth, not one-for-one, emotional impact. 

There is a lot of speculation right now about Trump's motives. Why did he take documents with him when he left the White House? At first it might have been honest muddle in the rush of leaving, mixing clearly personal stuff --  newspaper clippings, a passport, and Trump business documents -- with public records. Sloppiness, distraction, and ignorance are easy explanations. The papers of Joe Biden and Mike Pence are in that category.  Each promptly gave up public records when they were discovered.

But not Trump. Even with his history of having hammered Hillary Clinton on her emails and classified documents, he hung onto public documents in the face of increasing demand including letters, subpoenas, and searches. How strange. Trump persisted when it made no sense. He couldn't display what he had. They were now "hot." His possessing them was proof of a crime. He had to pay lawyers to help him try to hang on. He had to communicate instructions in code to tell confidantes to remove top secret documents, which is why he made the "plucking" face and gesture we learned about in the indictment. 

Trump did not want to answer the question of why. Some pundits suggest espionage or a money grift with the Russians or Saudis. Trump is a deal-maker. Jared Kushner had already cashed in with Qatar having overpaid to bail out his impending disaster on the 666 5th Avenue building, and then the $2 billion Saudi investment in his new hedge fund. Trump believed that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden surely cashed in themselves. Trump's documents might be valuable future currency for the Trump family. That would be a motivation.

I don't know Trump's motivation, but I suggest a simpler answer, consistent with Occam's Razor. Air Supply sang it:

I want you always to remember. . . 
I can't let go
I can't let go
I can't let go
You're a part of me, don't you know?

There is no need to over-complicate this. Trump has the simple human emotion of wanting to hold on to stuff. It is irrational and powerful. Trump, like Louis XIV of France, mixed the personal with the title. I am the state, the King said. Trump said he alone could fix things. Trump held in his hands the fruits of his domaine, including its prized documents. It is the hoarding instinct. Below is my favorite cartoon from The New Yorker.

A great many people aged in their 70s and beyond bury themselves in stuff. They live as empty nesters in huge homes so they can keep the objects in their lives. They don't want to lose stuff that they held in their hands. I watched clients make self-destructive, expensive, and irrational decisions about their living arrangements based around the fact that they simply could not bear to discard books they won't re-read, clothes they cannot fit, wedding gifts from decades prior they do not use, rooms they do not enter, trophies and plaques and certificates from achievements long past, places where their children slept decades prior. 

We don't need to stretch for claims of espionage dead drops to pass nuclear secrets. It is all too simple and common. Trump is no different from the old man holding the walker. He just isn't ready to let go of stuff.

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