Christina Bobb had a simple wish: to work for former President Donald Trump. The 39-year-old lawyer spent the aftermath of the 2020 election producing segments in her native Arizona for the far-right OAN network, peddling conspiracy theories about faked ballots on camera while simultaneously working behind the scenes on former President Donald Trump’s ultimately doomed efforts to reverse the election’s outcome.
Serving as a cable news host wasn’t enough, even as she at times worked to aid Trump directly, including raising money for the “forensic audit” she told her viewers would expose Joe Biden’s fraud. What Bobb apparently wanted more than anything else was to work for Trump directly. That wish compelled her to quit OAN and move to Florida, where she took a staff job in March with the Trump-affiliated Save America PAC.
By June, she had been tapped to join Trump’s oft-rotating legal team. It was in that role that she reportedly signed a document attesting to the Justice Department that her client had complied fully with a subpoena requiring all government documents he’d taken with him from the White House be returned. She included a caveat to that statement, The New York Times reported last week: “The above statements are true and correct to the best of my knowledge.”
The FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago in August proved that the statements Bobb had been asked to put her name to were, in fact, lies. NBC News reported last week that Bobb and her attorney spoke to the Justice Department to answer questions about the case, which is still open. She reportedly told the federal investigators that while she did sign the document, another lawyer on Trump’s team drafted it.
Bobb fell into the same pattern that we’ve seen play out time and again with people who have wanted — more than anything else — to be in Trump’s orbit. The reasons for their wishes have varied: access to celebrity, hunger for power, desire for wealth and status, a genuine call to either serve the country or, as in the case of Bobb, to serve a man who has set himself up in the eyes of many as a savior. In the end, the outcome is always the same for all but a fortunate few. Trump leaves their loyalties unrewarded with consequences and regrets strewn in their wake.
There’s no shortage of parables and fables from the world’s cultures whose morals boil down to “be careful what you wish for.” Aesop wrote of an old man who wished for death rather than continue his toiling; when Death himself appeared as requested, the man balked. More recently, W.W. Jacob’s classic short story “The Monkey’s Paw” illustrated to readers the dangers of imprecise wishes taken literally.
There’s no shortage of parables and fables from the world’s cultures whose morals boil down to “be careful what you wish for.”
And in the Broadway musical “Into the Woods,” Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine examined what happens beyond the happily ever after that concludes most fairy tales. The second act actually begins with the cast having had their dreams all come true ahead of intermission. Along the way, lies were told, morals were compromised, and hard truths were learned and/or ignored, but now happiness abounds — on the surface, at least.
I’ve recently been listening to the cast album of this year’s “Into the Woods” revival more or less on repeat since it was released. It leaves me wondering how Bobb feels about the aftermath of her wish’s being granted. Her appearance with the Justice Department doesn’t match the bravado of someone who, days after the FBI search, declared on a conservative podcast: “They are all a bunch of cowards. They don’t have anything.” But any legal risk she faces has apparently not dimmed her enthusiasm for her boss or his movement: Just days before her sit-down with investigators, she appeared at a Trump-led rally in Arizona.
“Wishes may bring problems such that you regret them,” the “Into the Woods” ensemble proclaims in the second act’s opening number. “Better that, though, than to never get them.” It’s a sentiment it seems Bobb would sign on to — though maybe with a caveat.
