'Miserly' Trump made a 'stupid bet' that has come back to haunt him: reporter

Trump's criminal trial in Manhattan has revealed a stark pattern, wrote Daily Beast reporter Jose Pagliery on X Tuesday — the former president has landed himself in trouble again and again and again, by his unwillingness to part with his money.

The trial opened this week with testimony from Trump's former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen. That testimony, which left Trump enraged and is set to continue when court reopens, sought to reinforce prosecutors' argument that Trump arranged the whole hush payment scheme to adult film star Stormy Daniels as an illegal means of concealing information from voters in 2016.

To illustrate his point, Pagliery accompanied his thread with pages from Dr. Seuss' "Because a Little Bug went Ka-CHOO!" which details how one little insignificant thing leads to progressively bigger and bigger problems.

"If you listened closely yesterday, there was an ironic storyline to follow about how—at every turn—Trump's own miserly attitude kept pushing him toward this inevitable end," wrote Pagliery. "For example: First, Trump refused to repay media exec David Pecker after the media executive dished out $150,000 to silence Karen McDougal. That meant Pecker wouldn't front the cash when Stormy Daniels came knocking a few months later."

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"Then, instead of just paying Stormy $130,000 right away, Trump tried to play a delay game (as always) by making a stupid bet that he could hold off on payment until after the 2016 election, rendering her 'story' worthless," wrote Pagliery. "That, in turn, meant that put Cohen in the awkward position of having to front the $130,000 himself. (He lied to a bank to draw from his home equity line of credit then lied again on the wire transfer, planting the seed for the eventual federal case that landed him in prison.)"

"But check this out: When it came time for Cohen to get his Christmas bonus, Trump's greed strikes again! The business tycoon/president-elect basically became Scrooge himself, allegedly cutting Cohen's bonus by two-thirds. May I go on?" wrote Pagliery. "It's January 2017. Cohen is fuming. He wants money, and he wants it now. Well, that's why he's happy to get handsomely reimbursed on any terms — even corporate docs that credit the payments for ongoing legal work he didn't actually do."

"And just when you think Trump's greed is satisfied, no. He must have more. He must always have more. Trump won't pay him all at once. Instead, he breaks apart the $420,000 into monthly installments. Delay. Pay nothing. Pay less. Pay later. That's his art of the deal," wrote Pagliery — which ultimately led to Trump facing felony indictment, because he had to falsify business records to accomplish this convoluted scheme.

"If Trump repaid Pecker... if he paid Stormy right away... if he'd simply reimbursed Cohen... none of this would've happened," he concluded.