Everyone knows that a vague accusation is worse, in most cases, than a direct accusation. If you're a mealy-mouthed evil bitch (gender neutral) and you want to ruin someone who didn't actually do anything wrong, what do you say? Do you say the specific thing they did that bothered you? No, you do not. Because usually that is stupid. You say "I don't know, it's like ... I can't put my finger on it, they just bother me/give me the creeps/give off a bad vibe" or "They're just like, a really bad person. I don't wanna say why because I'm a good person, but just trust me on this."

That's how you ruin someone. When people know what someone did, as long as it's not in the realm of sexual assault, animal abuse or killing a man just to watch him die, they usually get over it pretty quickly. But when it's vague, or when it's "just a feeling I have," that puts the person under a cloud of permanent suspicion that they can't really do anything about. It's human nature to fill a void, and, usually, to fill that void with the worst thing imaginable. Thus, monsters in closets and under beds.

If you are the victim of such a smear campaign and are fully sure you didn't do anything terrible, the best way to deal with it is to demand that the mealy-mouthed evil bitch (gender neutral) say exactly what it was they think you did.

This is why it's rather odd that Donald Trump's reaction to his niece's upcoming tell all is not "She's a lying liar," but rather more along the lines of "She can't talk about anything I did because it's all so bad I made her sign an NDA."

Last week, Mary Trump announced she had written a book, Too Much And Not Enough, to be released later this summer, and also that she was the primary source for an enormous New York Times article about the Trump family's financial crimes — which she knows a lot about because of a court case she was involved in after Trump's father died and he pulled the money meant to be used for his nephew's medical care for cerebral palsy. Nice guy!

In an interview about the upcoming tell-all, Trump told Axios:

"She's not allowed to write a book," Trump told me. "You know, when we settled with her and her brother, who I do have a good relationship with — she's got a brother, Fred, who I do have a good relationship with, but when we settled, she has a total ... signed a nondisclosure."

He also noted that several of his family members are still willing to talk to him, saying:

"I have a brother, Robert, very good guy, and he's — he's very angry about it," the president said. "But she signed a nondisclosure agreement and she's obviously not honoring it if she writes a book. It's too bad."

And:

"I have a good relationship with [Mary Trump's] brother. I actually had him — he was in here. He was sitting right in the seat where you are last week, unrelated to that. I didn't even know — maybe two weeks ago. I didn't even know about a book coming out until just the other day."

Huh. The only thing he directly said was a lie was that he was shitty to his dad when he had Alzheimer's:

"It's totally false; the opposite," Trump said. "Actually, the opposite. I always had a great relationship. I didn't know that she said that. That's a disgraceful thing to say."

Except, you know, that's probably a matter of perspective. Trump tends to not realize that many of the horrid things he says are in fact horrid. Or, at least, he pretends to know they're not horrid.

But it's like with the tax returns, you know? If you're an honest person, you throw all your shit on the table because you know that what people insinuate and infer will almost always be worse than the actual truth. Except when it's not, and then you know it's really bad.

[Axios]

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