The Daily Fuckup

The Daily Fuckup: April 23, 2021

A backfill edition on the day Trump’s legal insulation kept cracking, his business entanglements stayed radioactive, and the courts kept reminding the post-presidency era was not a get-out-of-jail-free card.

On April 23, 2021, the Trump world had another rough day in the federal courts, with the Second Circuit issuing a mandate that revived the emoluments fight and kept alive the basic question of whether Trump’s business empire had been unconstitutional baggage all along. That date sits in a broader run of Trump-era legal hangovers: the former president was still trying to keep damaging financial records out of investigators’ hands, while opponents kept using his refusal to fully separate from his businesses as proof of a pattern, not an accident. The day did not feature a single earth-shattering new indictment or spectacular collapse, but it did deepen the sense that Trump’s old habit of treating government, business, and personal enrichment as one blurred mess was still generating fresh problems. The strongest story of the day is the appellate court action on the emoluments case, because it landed as a concrete legal setback tied directly to Trump’s refusal to wall off his private financial interests from the presidency.