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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
- Thread starter CdnGuy
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Trumpeachment ...
Trump, Sessions and America’s looming constitutional crisis.
The deeper that special counsel Robert Mueller digs, the more the president panics.
The guns of August are cocked and ready. Donald Trump is wondering aloud whether to fire his attorney-general, Jeffrey Sessions. Coming from the top, such speculation can only end in Mr Sessions’ departure. The US president is also musing about who will rid him of the troublesome special counsel, Robert Mueller. That, too, must eventually end in Mr Mueller’s exit. Both are a question of timing. My hunch is August. But it could be months away. Or tomorrow.
The point is that Mr Trump will do what he must to block the investigation. His latest escalation was triggered by Mr Mueller’s decision to broaden his probe to include the Trump Organisation’s financial dealings with Russia. Washington gossips have speculated that Vladimir Putin possesses lurid tapes of Mr Trump. The idea of such “kompromat” might ignite our prurience. But it always seemed far-fetched. In contrast, there is ample cause to scrutinise Mr Trump’s history of business dealings with Russian counterparts.
It can only result in a collision. The question is whether the US republic can walk away unscathed. Comparisons with Watergate are often facile. But Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre” in October 1973 is too pressing a parallel to ignore. Elliot Richardson, his attorney-general, resigned after he had refused to dismiss the special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. Then the deputy attorney-general, William Ruckelshaus, stepped down for the same reason. Only on the third try could Nixon find an official pliable enough to do his bidding. That man was Robert Bork.
Mr Trump faces the same problem. Having recused himself from anything related to the Russia investigations, Mr Sessions does not have the authority to fire Mr Mueller. But his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, is unlikely to do so either. It was he who appointed Mr Mueller after having fired James Comey, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in May. Mr Trump is thus busy smearing both Mr Sessions and Mr Rosenstein. He is preparing his base for the purge to come. Say what you like about Mr Trump, but he is easier to read than a traffic light.
It is at this point a constitutional crisis would erupt. America’s founding fathers created a system based on laws, not men. But it is down to people to uphold the system. In theory, there is nothing stopping Mr Trump from doing whatever he likes. Most constitutional lawyers say you cannot indict a sitting president — even if he has repeatedly obstructed justice. If Mr Mueller were sacked, in other words, no court would reinstate him. The same applies to Mr Sessions, and as far down the chain as Mr Trump cared to go.
The US republic’s ultimate safety net is public opinion. So far https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/17/most-americans-think-trump-jr-s-meeting-was-inappropriate-but-few-were-newly-convinced-of-collusion/?amp;utm_term=.d784a4e962c2&hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_poll-trumpjr-820am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.3a22abadc74d (most Americans) are not inflamed by the Russia investigations. It is hard to blame them. People in Washington are obsessed by the day-by-day dramatic twists. But most ordinary Americans lack the time to absorb the endless waves of detail. Who cares if Mr Sessions held undeclared meetings with the Russian ambassador during the campaign? Politics is a dirty game and the people who throw mud are usually covered in it themselves.
The other safety net is impeachment. Unless public opinion turns sharply against Mr Trump, a Republican-controlled Congress is unlikely to act. Nixon had no place to hide after it was revealed he had taped his Oval Office conversations. The Saturday Night Massacre was his last-ditch attempt to stop the tapes from falling into public hands. It was only after they were released that a critical number of Republicans turned against Nixon. That was during a far less partisan era than today.
Ironically, one thing protecting Mr Sessions is that he is more Trumpian than Mr Trump. In the past few months he has been busy putting “America First” into practice by stepping up deportations of illegal immigrants. This has won him friends in outlets such as Breitbart News. That is why Mr Trump’s attacks focus on Mr Sessions’ failure to prosecute Hillary Clinton. Mr Trump needs the base to demand Mr Sessions’ head because of his supposed softness towards “crooked Hillary”. As I say, you can read Mr Trump through a blindfold.
The further Mr Mueller progresses, the more Mr Trump panics. His reactions betray his motives. No reasonable observer could conclude that Mr Trump is willing to open his books. Having refused to release his tax returns, he risks a constitutional crisis to stop US law enforcement officers from looking into his business dealings. The two are obviously connected. Sooner or later, serious investigators end up following the money. Mr Mueller is nothing if not thorough. Mr Trump is nothing if not ruthless.
Donald Trump likes to present himself as a neophyte and political outsider, but that’s not even remotely true. He fantasized about a run for president as early as 1987. Now with the help of the Republican Party and, it seems, the Russians, he’s finally in. Debunking the “new guy” myth:
Donald Trump's campaign to cajole Attorney General Jeff Sessions into quitting continued into the afternoon yesterday, as he said during a press conference in the Rose Garden: "I am disappointed in the Attorney General. He should not have recused himself [from the Russia probe] almost immediately after he took office. And if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me prior to taking office, and I would have, quite simply, picked somebody else. So I think that's a bad thing not for the president, but for the presidency. I think it's unfair to the presidency. And that's the way I feel."
Which was a reiteration of what he told the New York Times last week. And it's just as alarming now as it was before.
Sessions reportedly has no plans to quit, especially because "more than any other member of Trump's Cabinet, Sessions has been an uncompromising advocate for Trump's agenda. The attorney general has worked methodically to dismantle Obama's legacy at the Justice Department" — and Sessions knows how beloved that has made him among conservatives. He has his own base of loyalty, so he's prepared to "call Trump's bluff."
If he hangs on, that will eventually result in his regaining Trump's loyalty and support, because Trump is a coward who fears looking weak, so he won't risk defeat in a major showdown. Instead, he'll re-embrace Sessions — and Sessions is giving him good reason to do so by reportedly planning to "make an announcement about several criminal leak investigations within days."
"The investigations will be centered around news reports containing sensitive material about intelligence," which has been an era of Trump's obsessive focus for months.
How all of this is unfolding is incredibly informative, illuminating just how resolutely Trump is running his administration like a classic authoritarian. He demands personal loyalty, which very specifically entails committing to abet and replicate his contempt for the rule of law and lack of ethics, and when he doesn't get it, he immediately begins the process of alienation.
Weak characters will simply leave (e.g. Sean Spicer). Strong characters will call his bluff, and he will spin to look like he's the one in control of their collective fates. They'll throw him a bone to stay in his good graces. But with every interpersonal battle lost, he will become weaker, and thus more dangerous, as he responds to feeling weak with displays of the abuse he substitutes for actual strength.
None of this is good, at all. And beware the political press minimizing it as "drama" or "palace intrigue." It is serious, scary business — and we should all understand exactly what we're seeing.
Donald Trump’s campaign against his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, in which he is seemingly attempting to insult and humiliate and tweet-shame Sessions into resignation, is an insanely stupid exercise. It is a multitiered tower of political idiocy, a sublime monument to the moronic, a gaudy, gleaming, Ozymandian folly that leaves many of the president’s prior efforts in its shade.
Let us walk through the levels of stupidity one by one. First there is the policy level — generally the lowest, least important in Trumpworld, but still worth exploring.
To the extent that any figure in the Trump administration both embodies “Trumpism” and seems capable of executing its policy ambitions, it is Sessions, who is using his office to strictly enforce immigration laws and pursue an old-school law-and-order agenda.
You may hate his agenda (as most liberals do) or dislike parts of it (as I do), but it is clearly the agenda that Trump ran on, and the attorney general’s office is one of the few places where it is being effectively pursued. So cashiering Sessions would be a remarkable statement (though hardly the first) that the president cares almost nothing for his own alleged platform and governing philosophy.
Next in our tower of folly is the institutional level. Trump has had difficulty staffing his administration, his secretary of state is muttering about leaving, and his White House is riven by factionalism and paranoia. Meanwhile, he is both under investigation by Senate Republicans and dependent on their good will to keep the investigations contained to just the Russia business.
Trying to defenestrate Sessions, the lone Republican senator in Trump’s corner during the primary campaign and a popular figure among his former Senate colleagues, will make things worse for the president on both fronts. It demonstrates a level of disloyalty that should send sane people running from Trump’s service, it tells other cabinet members to get out while the getting’s good (and to leak and undermine like crazy on their way), and it further alienates Republican senators whom Trump needs to confirm appointees (including any Sessions replacement) and to go easy on his scandals.
Next on our tour is the level of mass politics, where Trump’s war on Sessions is one of the few things short of a recession that could hurt him with his base — which he needs to hold, since he isn’t doing anything to persuade anyone outside it.
Of course many Trump supporters will side with him no matter what and lots don’t care about Sessions one way or another. But the Trumpian core also includes conservatives who like Sessions for ideological reasons, who trust Trump in part because Sessions vouched for him, and who don’t like or trust very many other people (the family, the New Yorkers, the ex-Democrats) in Trump’s inner circle. Which is why Trump’s campaign against Sessions has already brought him negative coverage from Breitbart, Tucker Carlson and various pro-Trump or anti-anti-Trump pundits — making it an extraordinary act of political malpractice from a White House that lacks a cushion for such follies.
Next there is the legal level. By his own admission, Trump’s beef with Sessions centers on the attorney general’s recusal from the Russia investigation, which from Trump’s perspective led to the appointment of a special counsel he now obviously yearns to fire.
This blame-Sessions perspective is warped, since it was Trump’s decision to fire James Comey (an earlier monumental folly) that was actually decisive in putting Robert Mueller on the case. But regardless of whether he has his facts straight, Trump’s logic is a straightforward admission that he wants to eject his attorney general because Sessions has not adequately protected him from legal scrutiny — an argument that at once reveals Trump’s usual contempt for laws and norms and also suggests (not for the first time) that he has something so substantial to hide that only omerta-style loyalty will do.
Which, of course — now we’ve reached the peak of the tower of folly — he probably will not get if Sessions goes, because no hatchet man will win easy confirmation, and until Sessions is replaced the acting attorney general will be Rod Rosenstein, the man who appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel in the first place!
So it’s basically madness all the way to the top: bad policy, bad strategy, bad politics, bad legal maneuvering, bad optics, a self-defeating venture carried out via deranged-as-usual tweets and public insults.
And if it were any other president behaving like this — well, rather than repeat arguments I’ve made before, I’ll quote Bloomberg View’s Megan McArdle, writing a few months ago in response to my admittedly extreme suggestion that Trump’s behavior might justify removal under the 25th Amendment: ...
You got to love the ego. You can't work for Trump without saying he has the most incredible political instincts ever.
Sorry but anybody voted for that c********** megalomaniac is a stupid piece of s***
Sorry but anybody voted for that c********** megalomaniac is a stupid piece of s***
The only problem now is that the Democratic Party is even f***** up worse. I have almost no doubt in my mind that in 2020 the Democratic party will pick the only person to run that can possibly lose to Donald Trump in a national election just like they did with Hillary Clinton that stupid c***.
America is so f***** up. When you have an almost incompetent voter base you get incompetent or crooked Representatives. I don't give a fuck, as long as people smoke marijuana I'm in business. F*** all the rest of you
