Is TrumpWorld about to tumble down?

Some people might say that the world of Donald J. Trump is about to come tumbling down.  Aside from what that would mean for our country, considering that he is, after all, the president -- there is a lot of evidence that things are coming undone in the scam that Trump has been conducting for his whole adult life.

Although Mitch McConnell has declared "case closed" on the Mueller report, Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats are saying that we are in, or close to, a constitutional crisis.  The White House is refusing to turn over any . . . any . . . documents or obey any subpoenas for officials to testify.

First, there was the news this week that for 10 years, back in the late 80s to early 90s, Trump lost over a billion dollars in failing business ventures   Now I'm still suspicious that he didn't really lose that much money but that the tax forms that were revealed might instead show that he was cheating on his income tax, i.e., paper losses, using legal and, maybe, illegal loopholes.  Just as he either inflated or deflated the value of his property according to whether he was claiming an insurance adjustment or whether he was paying property taxes.

But there is other evidence and other people who say that he really did lose huge sums of money back in those days.    This also means that for eight of those 10 years, he did not pay one dime of federal income taxes.

They also say that casinos are money making machines;   except in Donald Trump's world.   Except for one short span of time, his casinos managed to lose money, big time.    He really has no head for business, doesn't take an interest once the deal has been done.

Then there is matter of the Mueller report details -- not the Barr cover-up summary -- that are beginning to come into the public's awareness, and they're pretty damning again and again for Donald Trump.    Now the Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, has issued a subpoena for Donald Trump, Jr. to come back for further testimony and to clear up some discrepancies where he may have misled them.

Yes, by some measures, the economy is doing swell;   but the majority of voters have gotten very little benefit themselves from the Trump tax cuts.   And there was a long, informative discussion by Chris Hayes and his guests Thursday night about the voters' fatigue with all the chaos and the divisiveness Trump creates.

On top of this, we have rumblings of hostilities between the U.S. and Iran, and Trump has sent one of our largest ships into the region as a show of force.   Iran is about to pull out of some of the provisions in the nuclear agreement (which Trump pulled the U.S. out of a year ago).    And Kim Jung Un has been doing provocative things with missile launches.    And we're in a trade war fight with China that's going to hurt our own farmers.

It makes me awfully uneasy, given that I've always feared that, if Trump's personal world closes in on him, he might start a war to bolster himself as the necessary leader in time of war.   Who would stop him now?   The generals are gone.   His current Chief of Staff doesn't try to rein him in.   He's just appointed as Secretary of Defense a man who has zero experience with military or foreign affairs.  In addition to the fact that his National Security Adviser John Bolton has been itching to attack Iran from the beginning.

So there's a lot of bad news.    But what I really wanted to share is a note of levity.   Chris Hayes just had on as a guest the ghost author of Trump's book sequel to the Art of the Deal.    This one was titled Surviving at the Top, and it was ghost written for Trump by Charles Leehrsen, whose tales of his experience with Trump are ridiculing and amusing to those who do not buy Trump's con game.

The line Leehrsen said about Trump that made me chuckle was this:

   "This is a man who has 'written'
      more books than he has read."