You know, it’s little wonder that Vlad the Impaler over there in Moscow found it so easy to identify The Orange Julius as an “unwitting asset” of the Russian government. It’s not like Putin had to put on a miners helmet and go digging deep into the earth to figure this out. All he had to do is to watch Trump. Das Donald is the literal human horse that you can get to walk until it drops by dangling a carrot in front of his nose from a string on a stick. For Trump the carrot can be either money or ego inflation. These are two things that Putin has in great supply, and knows expertly how to use.
This should not be a surprise to anyone who has ever seen Trump in action. A man so shallow that he would phone NY reporters, claiming to be a staff PR aide, doing nothing to try to mask his voice as he tried to spin a news story about himself. He was a media joke in the Big Apple. A man who didn’t mind looking like a total dick by publicly flaunting the fact that he was cheating on one beautiful woman with another beautiful woman. It was his access to unlimited beautiful women that was important in his mind, not what a total shit he was for doing it. Providing grist to the media to dig out information he would rather not have had out there never occurred to him. He hocked himself to the gills to build hotel-casinos in Atlantic City that were palaces of schlock, doomed to fail because the expense in building made them unsustainable, even with the incredible income from the casinos, as long as he got the media coverage and ego stroking. Forget the fact that the media uncovered his shady financing and spectacular mismanagement of the properties, that was mosquito bites for the media coverage. Trump has always been perfectly willing and able to dangle the carrot in front of his own nose.
And now he’s turning himself into an unwitting asset for both the media trying to take him down, and the investigations trying to do it legally. His Laurel and Hardy attempts at a cover up for this scandal is like something straight out of Jimmy Breslin’s classic book, “The gang that couldn’t shoot straight”. The only people these guys are dangerous to is people more stupid than they are. And since almost nobody in Washington is, their efforts are making them unwitting assets, they think they’re doing one thing, but they’re accidentally working for us.
Just look at the latest caper they tried to pull. Hair Furor was getting hammered. First FBI Director Comey came out and confirmed that they are actually investigating the Trump campaign for collusion with Russia. Add to that the fact that he wouldn’t let go of that “Obama wire tapped my campaign” pork chop bone, and he dominated the news cycle in the worst possible way. What to do? Get a hold of your faithful lackey, Devin Nunez to “discover” something that gives the impression that you were right about Obama, change the angle of the coverage. The rest is something from Barnum and Bailey, one of the outer rings. Nunes “finds” something, blows up protocol by notifying the press, notifying the Speaker, Paul Ryan, and then scampers like a bunny over to the White House to brief the suspect, Trump. When he’s done, he holds another presser in the white House driveway, all without a word to his committee. Trump thumps his chest, thanking Li’l Devy, popping a puppy treat into the little fellows mouth, and claims partial vindication to the world.
Did these idjits honestly think that nobody would wonder where this amazing info came from, and why it would be leaked to Nunes instead of the media like most other leaks? The media started tracking it down, not necessarily the information, since it was a self serving smoke screen, but the source. Turns out Nunes viewed the information in a sterile room on the WH grounds. You don’t just flash an ID and walk into the White House. You have to be cleared, and you’re escorted every moment you’re on the grounds. You can’t just book those sterile rooms, it has to be cleared on a high level. Multiple guests on both CNN and MSNBC who have personal experience in White House workings state that it had to be a White House source, neither NSA nor CIA would have access to those sterile rooms, nor reason to be there unless they were briefing someone active in the White House, not a visitor. Another story that isn’t going to go away anytime soon.
Keep passing Trump rope, he’s almost to the knotting the noose part. He’s made the mistake of thinking that politicians and the media are as malleable and desperate for Trump’s nod of approval as his business partners were. And he’s not the only one starting to pull on rope. If Trump thinks of himself as a modern Julius Caesar, then Jared Kushner is his Marc Antony, trusted enough to be at his right hand. There is no way that he met with a Russian oligarch and confidante of Putin in December or January, during the transition without at least the tacit, if not express approval of Daddy in law. Kushner is also an idiot. Volunteering to appear in front of the Senate committee, most likely under oath is the worst thing he can do. Even though the Senate can’t jail or prosecute him, they can turn over a nice, fat file to the FBI to investigate. And if he pleads the fifth to questioning, another nugget to hand to the FBI to dig into. You really would have thought that Jared would have figured out the awesome power of the investigative and justice branch of the US government after he watched them pop his father into a federal diaper pail for a stretch.
One last one. Paul Manafort must be regretting the day he ever signed on for a cruise on the SS Trumptanic. Manafort is supposed to be some kind of expert player on the international scene. Nothing quite like signing a $10M a year contract with a Russian oligarch who is so close to Putin that he reminds him to “shake” in the Kremlin head, and then leaving copies of your “secret” negotiation e-mail to the oligarch promising to make Putin look like Mother Teresa in the US in your office. And how slick can you be when you have 15 different bank accounts, connected to at least 10 companies on Cyprus, the most corrupt banking system in the world, and you’re so freakin’ slick that your transactions trigger internal alarms to prospective money laundering in at least one bank. And now the bank is cooperating with US investigators and even talking to Richard Engel from NBC. In Cyprus for gods sake?!?
Remember this when the shit starts to come down around their heads. Jared Kushner has been a power player in the Trump campaign since the very beginning. There is very little that went on in that campaign that Kushner didn’t know about. If the FBI or the Justice department starts to squeeze him, he’ll roll over on Paul Manafort in a New York minute. The same thing goes for Bannon, Conway, and Flynn if he has anything on them. His only loyalty is to Ivanka and Daddy in law.
I cannot honestly believe that the Trump Presidency will not unravel, and quite possibly sooner than later. At this point, it’s almost irrelevant as to whether or not they ever conclusively prove collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, although it would be a satisfying spectacle to watch unfold. Just like Nixon, Trump and his campaign have been tarred as filthy and corrupt. Even if this investigation is inconclusive, the hounds have the scent now. It’s inconceivable to me that there are not other juicy scandals out there, even in his personal life that could be proven to be criminal, and you can bet that the media will be digging into it if need be, hell, they may well already be. It will only take a strong whiff to set loose the dogs of the FBI on a new trail, after the same quarry. Stock up on popcorn.