So I am reading an analysis by Karen Tumulty in today’s Washington Post titled Trump’s charge that he was wiretapped takes presidency into new territory. Her analysis is in many ways spot on, for example
Trump’s response also has deepened doubts about his own judgment, not just in the face of the first crisis to confront his young presidency but in dealing with the challenges that lie ahead for the chief executive of the world’s most powerful nation.
and this
Trump’s tweetstorm early Saturday made his disciplined, well-received speech to Congress four days before seem less a turning point than an aberration.
But what really grabbed my attention was this paragraph:
“We have as president a man who is erratic, vindictive, volatile, obsessive, a chronic liar, and prone to believe in conspiracy theories,” said conservative commentator Peter Wehner, who was the top policy strategist in George W. Bush’s White House. “And you can count on the fact that there will be more to come, since when people like Donald Trump gain power they become less, not more, restrained.”
I will return to Wehner’s words in a moment, but they are bracketed by some key words by Tumulty, before, after talking about how Trump had used social media and extreme statements to propel himself to the top of the heap of Republicans:
But the voice of a U.S. commander in chief carries much greater weight than that of just about anyone else on the planet. Trump’s detractors say the way he uses that platform has worrisome implications that go far beyond the sensation he creates on social media and his ability to dominate the news.
and after Wehner’s words were offered:
Nor does Trump appear to have a governing apparatus around him that can temper and channel his impulses.
There are an increasing number of observers, some partisan on both sides of the political divide, and some who are ostensibly non-partisan representatives of the press, for whom this latest outburst is so much “too far” that they are going on record in very forceful ways. Wehner is not alone.
Consider Charles M. Blow in a column in today’s New York TImes titled Pause This Presidency! which begins like this:
The American people must immediately demand a cessation of all consequential actions by this “president” until we can be assured that Russian efforts to hack our election, in a way that was clearly meant to help him and damage his opponent, did not also include collusion with or coverup by anyone involved in the Trump campaign and now administration.
Granted, the column was more motivated by the exposure of Sessions having not been truthful about his own contacts with the Russian ambassador, but as Blow tweeted over the weekend he had to partially rewrite a column he had already submitted when Trump’s tweet storm broke.
The heart of Blow’s column was intended to be a series of challenges to Trump’s legitimacy, beginning with
America deserves to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that our president is legitimate before he issues a single new disruptive executive order.
But what now catches one’s attention is this paragraph:
This is absolutely outrageous. One of three things is true here: Obama, during the waning months of an eight-year term free of personal scandal, decided to maliciously and illegally tap the phones of the candidate all the polls at the time predicted would lose; a law enforcement agency was able to present evidence and convince a federal judge that someone or some group of people in Trump Tower were engaged in illegal activity; or this “president,” who has proven himself a pathological liar, is once again chasing conspiratorial windmills and seeking to detract and deflect from legitimate scandal. Any of these scenarios has the profoundest of consequences.
Or consider Jake Tapper of CNN, whose Twitter feed is becoming a must follow, as are some of his commentaries on the network. From Twitter consider the following over the past few days:
I want to return to the paragraph about the wrds of Peter Wehner:
“We have as president a man who is erratic, vindictive, volatile, obsessive, a chronic liar, and prone to believe in conspiracy theories,” said conservative commentator Peter Wehner, who was the top policy strategist in George W. Bush’s White House. “And you can count on the fact that there will be more to come, since when people like Donald Trump gain power they become less, not more, restrained.”
erratic, vindictive, volatile, obsessive, a chronic liar, and prone to believe in conspiracy theories
This has been obvious of Trump throughout not only the campaign, but realistically for much of his public career, starting well before his becoming “birther in chief.” It is part of the pattern of his business career, which is vastly overstated as far as its true success.
I think many would agree with those words by Wehner.
But what is most attention grabbing is the second part, about more to come because as Wehner notes when people like Donald Trump gain power they become less, not more, restrained.
There are very few restraints on Presidents that they do not accept for themselves. Trump has made clear he refuses to be bound by informal practices. He has not released his taxes. He has in violation of the emoluments clause not separated himself from his business. His tweeting on a private phone is in violation of the Presidential Records Act (he has since inauguration deleted/changed some tweets). He has not had his key advisers get their own ethics paperwork in order before insisting upon their cooperation.
The question before the nation now is whether the tweet storm we saw this weekend is finally something too far even for those Republicans who want to use Trump as a means of dismantling the New Deal and Great Society programs once and for all.
They should ask themselves if they really want to be enabling a man who in the office of the President is far less restrained and whose basis of operation — besides the kleptocratic approach parallel to Putin of using the office to enrich himself and his family — is rooted in being
erratic, vindictive, volatile, obsessive, a chronic liar, and prone to believe in conspiracy theories