Donald Trump and the case for obstruction
Ruth Marcus interprets Trump’s attempt to fire Mueller.
The case for seeing the Mueller non-firing as a bullet successfully dodged is that Trump, to employ one of the president’s pet put-downs, is all talk, no action. We’ve all known people like this. They are paper tigers, ultimately impotent no matter how great their seeming power. They rage but retreat once their storm of fury has blown over. Everyone around them knows not to be too hasty in carrying out orders shouted in anger. …
So maybe we should all calm down. Except, this is Trump. Nothing in his response to the Russia investigation has been rational, which augurs continued irrationality. Or, perhaps, desperate self-preservation.
A lot of the talk around Trump’s obstruction efforts boil down to “that idiot, if he’d just sit on his hands, this would all be over.” But that assumes that Trump has done nothing wrong — and Trump has done plenty wrong. Mueller may or may not decide to bring Trump’s long history of money laundering and fiscal malfeasance into his report — we don’t know. And neither does Trump.
Which means that every one of his actions was probably taken, not out of impatience, but out of genuine desire to stop the investigation. That’s what makes it obstruction.
Maybe Trump’s legal team, which wasn’t fully in place in June, will provide a calming influence. Maybe, but these folks have Trump for a client. Meanwhile, don’t be fooled by Trump’s professions of willingness to cooperate with Mueller. Remember, we were going to see his tax returns, too.
Jill Abramson on the real import of Trump’s actions.
Since his election, revelations of Donald Trump’s contempt for the legal process have been dizzying. The rule of law is what protects democracy in the United States. The president has done everything possible to subvert it.
There was the White House counsel’s failed effort last March to convince Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia inquiry. Then came the stunning news that the very same counsel, Donald F McGahn II, threatened to quit if the president fired special counsel Robert Mueller last June. Then there was the president’s grilling of acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, including asking him whom he had voted for in 2016.
There was also Trump’s letter, written while on board Air Force One, in which he provided a knowingly false excuse for the Trump Tower meeting. I feel compelled to bring that one up in every discussion because, under the most lax interpretation possible, Trump has the authority to fire whoever he wants among the DOJ staff for whatever reason. Or no reason. But there’s no conceivable authority that provides Trump the authority to disseminate an “official lie” meant for no reason other than to cover up a potential crime.
“Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Trump reportedly wailed when his attorney general, a key actor in the Russia-infected presidential campaign, recused himself. The president was invoking the name of his disgraced fixer, long dead, a lawyer who was discredited for aiding Joseph McCarthy and disbarred for unethical conduct.
Where is my Congress? This is the urgent question posed by these outrageous attempts by the president to subvert the constitution. The legislative branch of government must hold an out-of-control president with authoritarian tendencies accountable.
That’s the real threat. The framers of the Constitution certainly imagined that we might have a run away president willing to abuse his power and defy the nation — they just didn’t imagine we’d have a Congress willing to go along with these anti-democratic actions. Trump isn’t the real threat to the Constitution. The Republican Congress’ reaction to Trump is the threat.
Richard Wolffe on the Trump show that is, unfortunately, reality.
Donald Trump has a problem with reality. To be specific, he has a problem distinguishing reality television from reality. With each passing news cycle, it’s alarmingly clear that he believes in his own character from the fantasy show known as The Apprentice. ...
“You’re fired!” worked so well on The Apprentice. Why shouldn’t it work so well with the multiple investigations into all these allegations of collusion with the Russian government, money laundering through his real estate business, obstruction of justice and his chaotic management of the executive branch of government?
If Trump gets to play reality star, can the rest of us play network? Let him keep his catchphrase. We’ll just say “You’re cancelled.”
After months of denials, Trump officials have finally confirmed what has long been rumored: the president ordered the firing of Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating his Russian collusion.
This would be the fourth attempt to fire someone either investigating the Russian connection, or allowing the investigation to proceed.
Can we also add the number of people who Trump has engaged in attempting to create false excuses to end the investigation? The number would seem to be … how many Republicans are in Congress again?
Kathleen Parker has to get a few Clinton remarks out of the way first.
Objectively, it is neither conjecture nor conspiracy to observe that the president strikes a defensive pose every time a well-sourced article reveals something that could seem incriminating. Indeed, he has become Clintonesque, reflexively dodging and covering up, whether he needs to or not.
Because it’s in her contract as a Republican. But eventually she gets around to the point.
These are the facts thus far:
First, Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey in May — after, according to Comey, Trump asked him for loyalty and to drop the probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, whose three-week tenure ended upon revelations that he lied about conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the United States. Flynn subsequently pleaded guilty to lying in exchange for his cooperation with the Russia investigation. …
Trump also asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Justice Department’s investigation into possible collusion. But Sessions did recuse himself for sound reasons and, for a brief spell, became a target of Trump’s Twitter feed.
Then Trump began pressuring Sessions to fire acting FBI director Andrew McCabe …
Then, a few days ago, reports surfaced that Trump in June ordered the firing of Mueller.
One thing that probably isn’t getting enough attention in all this is the fact that Mueller seems to be asking everyone not just about the firing of Comey, but the firing of Flynn. I strongly suspect that part of Flynn’s deal with the special counsel was revealing that there was a reason to his firing that had very little to do with Mike Pence being momentarily embarrassed on the Sunday talk circuit.
Trump got Flynn out of the way for a reason we don’t yet understand. And he wanted Comey to stop looking at Flynn so that Comey wouldn’t find that reason. Whatever that reason is, Mueller has it.
Republicans and their family values
Joe Scarborough stops by to wonder at how Republicans don’t seem to be manning the battlements.
Not so long ago, Republican leaders prided themselves on protecting middle-American minds from the liberal intellectual rot being spread by politicians and college professors they viewed as being hostile to law enforcement, contemptuous of constitutional traditions, indifferent to personal morality and accommodating to Russian tyrants. They claimed to be the intellectual heirs of Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley Jr. Now those same politicians debase themselves daily in service to Trump.
In the Age of Trump, it is no longer in vogue to stand athwart history in defense of American institutions, constitutional norms and cultural traditions. These days, Republicans’ intellectual firepower is rather focused on defending Stalinist attacks on the press and pricey payoffs to porn stars.
Well, really, when you already had Republican organizations like the Heartland Institute and Heritage Foundation continuously pumping out fake “research’ and conservative talk radio and Fox News drumming up fake scandals, dropping all pretense of reality just seems … right for the right.
Imagine that. Beneath the blizzard of news headlines pounding ceaselessly at our nerves, this week we discovered a Republican loyalist willing to sacrifice his political standing over a higher principle. McGahn’s stand contrasts greatly with Capitol Hill conservatives who do little more than occasionally tweet a veiled critique of the president or deliver a meaningless speech from the Senate floor.
Uhh, no. Sorry. Don McGahn’s move in this case can entirely be explained by his attempt to save the one person he treasures — Don McGahn. He risked nothing, in fact, less than nothing, because he knew if Trump pulled that trigger it would just signal an early start to the fight that’s coming. What McGahn did was buy more time for more deception, more attacks on the FBI, and more disinformation.
Dana Milbank on the scars Trump and the Republicans are carving deep into the American psyche.
New evidence suggests that the damage [Trump] is doing to the culture is bigger than the man. A Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday found that two-thirds of Americans say Trump is not a good role model for children. Every component of society feels that way — men and women, old and young, black and white, highly educated or not — except for one: Republicans. By 72 to 22 percent, they say Trump is a good role model.
In marked contrast to the rest of the country, Republicans also say that Trump shares their values (82 percent) and that — get this — he “provides the United States with moral leadership” (80 percent).
Republicans are now looking at the shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave and … denying there is a wall. or a cave. Those are just liberal delusions. Reality is what Trump and Sean Hannity tell then it is.
In fairness, we learned of the proposed Mueller firing after the poll was conducted, so let’s see what else might have led 72 percent of Republicans to conclude Trump is a good role model:
His lawyer arranged to make payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, a month before the election for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump, according to the Wall Street Journal.
He used a vulgar word to describe African countries during a racist rant to lawmakers at the White House.
He was mounting a campaign to discredit the “corrupt” FBI, the Justice Department and the special prosecutor, just as he previously sought to disqualify courts and judges.
He backed a credibly accused child molester for the Senate from Alabama.
And so on.
And so, ad infinitum.
Colbert King on why Trump’s first season may have been his best.
President Trump’s first year in office was presciently captured by former president George W. Bush’s declaration after Trump’s inaugural address: “That was some weird s---.”
It accurately forecast the Trump we would see in 2017: eccentric, uncouth, clownish and vicious. Last year, however, could well mark the high point of his presidency.
The worst may be yet to come.
Unfortunately, Trump’s contract on irreality comes with an automatic renewal for 2018. But if his ratings don’t improve, maybe even Republicans will look up and notice that he’s daily making Watergate seem about as important as Water Pick.
[The worst version] of Trump might emerge if special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into any links or coordination between the Russian government and Trump’s presidential campaign — or (significantly, in the wording of Mueller’s mandate) “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation” — happen to lead to allegations of wrongdoing against Trump or members of his family.
Should that occur, nothing less than the rule of law — or the absolute rule of Trump — will be put to the test.
That is absolutely going to happen. Trump is going to face charges well above those that resulted in the House impeaching Bill Clinton or that extinct species “reasonable Republican leadership” taking a hike to visit Dick Nixon. And again, the test isn’t going to come with Trump—because there’s nothing that would ever get Trump to admit guilt or accept his failure. It’s Congress that holds our fate.
Which is a good reason to hope that Mueller delivers his findings in, say February 2019. After the new class is seated.
Leonard Pitts is singing the Tin Woodsman song — as a warning.
What if Donald Trump were smart?
It is likely not a question you’ve given a lot of thought. After all, the urgency of our ongoing disaster leaves little time for speculation. One is too busy tallying up the damage that’s happening to worry about the damage that could.
But maybe it’s time we did.
Tyrannies, we tend to think, are things that happen in other places at other times to other people. We like to believe the strength of our institutions, of our character as a people, ensure that, “It can’t happen here.”
If you didn’t catch the Abbreviated Science Round-up on Saturday (and really *sniff* that’s okay *sniff* I completely understand why you might have missed it. *Sniff sniff*) there’s a study from two Yale psychologists how look at whether select moral or immoral people when looking for leaders. Why that found was that people were more than willing to select absolutely assholes when it mean those assholes were willing to punch good people who happened to have opposing views. To step away from Mr. Pitts for a moment …
They also suggest that immoral people sometimes win public adoration, and the power that comes with it, not in spite of but precisely because of their immorality.
Sound familiar? Okay, Leonard. Take it away.
Well, if Trump’s rise proves nothing else, it proves that it could happen here. It even shows how. Meaning that, more than any other single event, his presidency has forced us to see our vulnerability to new media manipulation and disinformation. Tweet by agonizing tweet, he has embodied the frightening possibilities of this new idea that truth can be whatever you need it to be.
As Stanford University law professor Nathaniel Persily put it last year in an essay published in the Journal of Democracy, Trump has “figured out that incendiary language could command attention or shift the narrative.”
Immoral people sometimes win public adoration.
Mark Galli at Christianity Today may be a new voice here, but he has something to say on the same subject.
We at CT are reluctant to enter the political fray on most issues because they rarely touch on core causes or issues for us. But when fellow evangelicals start exegeting and applying Scripture in the public square, we think we have something to add to the conversation. Two recent comments by evangelical leaders deserve comment.
Galli starts off by supporting Tony Perkins. Because … that Jesus guy was just handing out guidelines which are occasionally useful. No. Seriously.
To be fair to Perkins, however, the call to turn the other cheek is not a universal guideline for Christian behavior. It is a very good guideline in many, many situations, and one Christians should instinctively start with. But it doesn’t take deep imagination to recognize that Jesus does not call us to simply absorb evil in every instance. He certainly didn’t. He called out the Pharisees in the strongest language—“hypocrites,” “blind fools,” “sons of vipers” (Matt. 23)—and he turned over the tables in the Temple and drove out the money changers with a whip (John 2:15).
There’s a difference between calling out evil, which is always right, and defending evil in order to server your own interests, which is both always wrong and exactly what Perkins did. That does not seem to be a particularly tricky bit of exegesis. But let’s continue.
Because Trump is bullying the Left, and because these affairs are old news, Perkins says we should give the president a “mulligan.” Jerry Falwell Jr. chimes in: “All these things [Trump’s affairs] were years ago, and he has apologized.”
In fact, the payoff for one of the alleged affairs was offered a mere 14 months ago; meanwhile, Trump has never apologized for his affairs, only for his lewd remarks in one video. He’s never asked forgiveness as far as I can tell. But even if we charitably assume he has privately apologized to these women and to his wife, Falwell’s exegetical justification for Trump’s adulteries is startling. As he said to Erin Burnett on CNN:
Jesus says that if you lust after a woman in your heart, it’s the same as adultery. You’re just as bad as the person who has … Our faith is based on the idea that we’re all equally bad and we’re all sinners and we all need Christ’s forgiveness.
One does not have to have a doctorate in ethics to see the problem here.
And honestly, I’m going to say that reading all of Galli’s piece is worth it — both to ponder why he’s willing to accept the statement that Perkins is making, and why he’s not willing to sail along with Falwell.
Racism
Gary Younge on racism for profit and … mostly just profit.
In July 2016 the bigoted troll Milo Yiannopoulos, a British darling of the American far right, was banned from Twitter after encouraging a torrent of racist abuse at Leslie Jones, a black actor who starred in the remake of Ghostbusters. In one example he branded her “barely literate”. A few months later it emerged that Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, had given Yiannopoulos, 33, who calls feminism “cancer” and Donald Trump “Daddy”, a $255,000 book deal. “I met with top execs … earlier in the year and spent half an hour trying to shock them with lewd jokes and outrageous opinions,” he said. “I thought they were going to have me escorted from the building – but instead they offered me a wheelbarrow full of money.”
The sickness of this response is amplified in the rest of Younge’s column, which includes the editorial notes that Simon & Schuster editor Mitchell Ivers fed back to Yiannopoulos on receipt of his deliberately offensive manuscript. Notes such as …
In a section on feminism, Ivers says: “Don’t start chapter with accusation that feminists = fat.” Tellingly, he adds: “It destroys any seriousness of purpose.” …
Because the seriousness of attacking women, and people of color, and pretty much everyone else, is something that Simon & Schuster found important.
Ivers’ job was to get him into shape, to coach him in how to make his racism and misogyny palatable. What we see in those notes is the strenuous, and ultimately doomed, effort to lend Yiannopoulos’s bigotry gravity; to extract from the dung heap of his hateful worldview “the seriousness of [his] purpose”; to locate the boundaries of acceptable prejudice so that those borders can be more effectively breached. He was not just an editor but an enabler.
I hate what this says about the whole publishing industry.
Larry Nassar / Sexual assault
David Von Drehle has an angle on this I haven’t seen … one that made me uneasy all over again.
Reading the many outraged responses to the sex-abuse scandal in elite women’s gymnastics was a gratifying experience at first. Charles P. Pierce, a virtuoso of excoriation unexcelled since H.L. Mencken, set the tone with his bracing essay for Sports Illustrated titled: “Burn It All Down: It’s Time for Every Coward Who Enabled Larry Nassar to Pay for Their Sins.”
“No punishment is too harsh,” Pierce inveighed, “for the inhabitants of this universe of ghouls and gargoyles to which these brave young women were condemned.”
Yet, as the days have passed since the monstrous team doctor from USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University was sentenced to die in prison, as the judge put it, for the sexual abuse of more than 100 athletes, I haven’t been able to shake the uncomfortable feeling that an awful lot of sinners, including many of us in the pews (and in the pulpit for that matter), stand convicted by Brother Pierce and company.
And if you think that you’re off the hook on this one, read just one paragraph more.
I mean, how many of us can honestly say that, until now, we had the utmost confidence in the adults at the top of U.S. gymnastics? I keep thinking of the moment in 1996, when coach Bela Karolyi urged Olympian Kerri Strug to ignore her injured ankle long enough to execute a final vault for the team gold medal. As the bearish coach carried the tiny heroine to the medal stand, I was as appalled by him as I was inspired by her.
I have to admit, that example made me wince. Because — of course — I cheered when Strug stuck that one-footed landing, tottering for a moment, putting everything on the line to bring home the gold and validate years of work for her whole team. What an amazing moment. And what an unfair, punishing, and abusive thing to ask of a teenage girl who was already in agony.
Having witnessed the casual way in which Strug’s caretakers sent the injured teen to stick another landing — a feat of tremendous skill and beauty that ends with roughly the same violent impact as being thrown from the roof of a garage — the whole world was on notice. Certain values guided the thinking of these people, and safety of the athletes was not high among them.
Protest
Linda Martín Alcoff, Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, Rosa Clemente, Angela Davis, Zillah Eisenstein, Liza Featherstone, Nancy Fraser, Barbara Smith, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor are the longest list of names I’ve had at the start of an APR article … which seems fitting.
Last year on 8 March we, women of every kind, marched, stopped work and took over the streets in fifty countries across the world. In the United States we rallied, marched, left the dishes to the men, in all the major cities of this country and countless smaller ones. We shut down three school districts to prove to the world, once again, that while we sustain society we also have the power to shut it down.
8 March is coming again and things have gotten worse for us as women in this country.
There’s a month for women — and men — to get ready.
So, on 8 March we will go on strike against gender violence – against the men who commit violence and against the system that protects them. ...
We do not keep our mouths shut. We are forced to keep our mouths shut by capitalism.
So, on 8 March we will speak out, personally, against the individual abusers who tried to ruin our lives, and we will speak out, collectively, against the economic insecurity that prevents us from speaking out.
I’ve done a poor job of capturing the argument here, but to do so would mean copying most of the editorial … so the best thing is just to go read it all.
8 March 2018 will be a day of feminism for the 99%: a day of mobilization of black and brown women, cis and bi, lesbian and trans women workers, of the poor and the low waged, of unpaid caregivers, of sex workers and migrants.
On 8 March #WeStrike.