Liar's Poker

Ever since Donald Trump’s election, I’ve been trying to figure out what happened and - more recently - what is still happening in Washington.

It’s harder than it looks. Heck, all the commentators on all the networks and all the talk radio stations have been explaining it to me, and I still don’t get it. Correction - I still didn’t get it. Now I do.

We have all been in a bar, taking part in a monster game of Liar’s Poker.

For readers who don’t hang around in bars enough (ah, my wasted youth), Liar’s Poker is a game of bluff. For the eggheads, it is also a game of statistical analysis.

Someone goes to the bartender and gets a batch of singles from the register. Etiquette says that you give her a $10 and smile when she gives you the eight singles you asked for.

Then, all the players look at the single dollar handed to them and take turns bidding on who has the best hand. 

If the first player bids three fives, they are betting that there are three fives among all the dollar bills handed out. The next bid has to be higher, so the next player has to bid at least three sixes or four twos. Why? Three sixes beat three fives, and four of a kind beats three of a kind. The bidding goes up each turn until all the players get a chance to challenge or make a higher bid.

When everyone challenges, the players turn over all the bills and see if the winning bid made - are there really five nines among the bills?

Just clarify before the game. One is an ace, 0 is a 10.

 Fast, simple. Bluffing is encouraged. If there is a big winner at the end of the night, they buy the next round of drinks. That is a losing proposition financially, but it is considered a great honor.

And so, we come to the Trump campaign and all those election promises. No one challenged, and he won. New York’s governor said people in the state could deal with the fact that state taxes are no longer deductible by changing the tax from real estate to a payroll tax, or by letting people simply write a check to the state for their taxes, but use it as a charitable deduction.

The IRS challenged the idea. He lost.

See how easy it all becomes when you look at it as a game of bluff?

Just say “I have a memo that proves this whole investigation of the President and Russia is illegal, because it is all the fruit of a poisonous tree” - Congressmen talk that way - and it doesn’t matter that you didn’t really write the memo (which you claimed) or even read it. A bluff is a bluff.

Then you get challenged on it, and you lose. Unless you keep up the bluff and threaten to release another memo about the State Department. The jury is still out on this one.

Pretend you are Paul Ryan and you have to deal with an all-out attack on the integrity of the Federal Bureau of Investigation by the man you named to head the House intelligence committee. Just say the memo that attacks the leadership of the FBI isn’t actually attacking the FBI.

Well, he’s learning. Not learning much, it seems, but learning that once you jump on a tiger’s back, you better stay there. I believe his exit plan is to exit Congress, letting the rest of the Republicans decide who they want to follow him as their leader. (Majority or minority as the case may be.)

And now, we have the president saying that this now-infamous and one-sided memo - which is so full of flaws that counting them would be meaningless - has totally cleared him of any involvement in the Russia probe, and so it is time to end it.

But wait, wasn’t the Russia probe started to see if Russia influenced our last election and to come up with ways to keep it from happening again? And you can’t spend your entire life in Congress railing against crooked lawyers and people who escape justice because of a legal technicality. “Well, your honor, I know the jury convicted my client of murder, but the DA parked illegally on the way to get his search warrant - here’s the ticket - and so you have to find my client not guilty. Fruit of the poison tree, you know.”

So, what to do here?

Well, you can just finish your drink, turn the dollar bill in your hand over, and read the inscription “In God We Trust.” And listen carefully. You can almost hear all those elected men and women who make up the congressional majority adding “all others pay cash.”