Asked on Friday if he still had confidence in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Donald Trump played coy: “You figure that one out.”
Don’t be fooled, Trump thinks release of the sham memo is an absolute home run: 100 percent! And somewhere in the White House residence, he is presently drooling over the prospect of canning Rosenstein, posthaste.
What’s happening now is a waiting game to see which way Senate Republicans will fall. Will they go the way of Sen. John McCain, who immediately lamented disclosure of the memo as serving “only Putin’s” interests and declared that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation “must proceed”? Or will they follow Sen. Orrin Hatch’s lead in offering Trump cover for Rosenstein’s dismissal, even if the crackpot memo utterly failed to do so?
On Thursday, the GOP’s No. 3 in the Senate, John Thune, struck a cautionary tone about releasing the memo. House Republicans had failed to even provide the Senate Intelligence Chair Richard Burr with a copy of it. Seems like a coordinated effort might have a been smart thing, that is, if House Republicans had the courage of their convictions. They clearly did not.
Senate Republicans truly may be the only people left who could squelch Trump’s desire to trigger a Constitutional crisis by firing Rosenstein on the way to quashing Mueller’s investigation. House Republicans, under the direction of Paul Ryan, have made clear that they will follow Trump’s orders, whatsoever they may be. The complicity of House Republicans is perhaps the most craven leadership we as a country have witnessed on a mass scale in the modern political era.
Watch the Senate Republicans. It’s hard to have any faith in them, but they truly hold the keys here. If they make a strong showing in pushing back on the memo and circling the wagons around Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray, we could dodge a bullet here.