What?

From time to time, I will walk past a student who is immersed in whatever activity it is that his or her class is supposed to be attending. Around that student's feet is a raft of candy wrappers.
"Um, whose are these?" I inquire.
"What?" Their gaze never quite meets mine.
"These candy wrappers."
Heavy sigh. "They were already here."
"Well, actually, no. The room is pretty clear between classes, and so was yours before you sat down."
The sighs escalate into huffing and puffing. "Oh my gawd!" The outrage has set in.
"Do you have any more candy?"
"They're not mine!"
It is at this point that we cross the line from circumstantial to cut out the inference and move directly to guilt. "Can I have the rest of the candy please?" My hand is extended.
"I don't have any!"
And there was a time, many years ago, that I would ride this horse to the ground and then feel the satisfaction of a job well done, candy confiscated and trash picked up. Instead, I ask politely, "Could you do me a favor and pick up those wrappers?"
"They're not mine."
"I'd really appreciate it." And I walk away.
This is kind of how I feel when I confront any of the swirl of corruption that surrounds our "president." The candy wrappers are piled up to their collective necks and yet the denials continue. "They're not mine," as the trash and blue tongues tell a different story. Rudy Giuliani was paid half a million dollars for work he did for a company co-founded by the Ukrainian-American businessman arrested last week on campaign finance charges. The blank look that accompanies any accusation is the same as the one I get from third and fourth graders: "What'd I do?" The burden of proof. The man who once announced to a crowd, "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters," is betting that we will run out of patience before we bother to make him pick up the trash. The trash he dragged in with him.