It's hard to believe Donald Trump could follow up last week’s Helsinki sellout to Russian President Vladimir Putin with a week that was he even worse, but he managed to find a way. Between voter dismay, upheaval on Capitol Hill, and the public disintegration of his relationship with a man who could be a linchpin witness in multiple investigations, the only safe space for Trump was his fantastical world of make believe.
For starters, in poll after poll, reviews on Trump's performance in Helsinki were dreadful.
Fully 68 percent of American voters told Quinnipiac they were "very" or "somewhat" concerned about Trump's relationship with Russia. They said they were more inclined to believe U.S. intelligence officials over Trump by a whopping 38-point margin (63 - 25 percent). And get this—a majority, 54 percent, said Trump, the pr*sident of the United States, was not acting in the best interests of the country. Only 41 percent believed he was. Stunning.
An NPR/Marist poll found that 64 percent of Americans say Trump is “not tough enough” on Russia, with only 10 percent saying he has it about right.
Lost in the shuffle, a Latino Decisions poll of registered voters from 61 districts deemed most competitive by Cook Political Report, CNN, Sabato's Crystal Ball found that 73 percent of voters said they were "angry" over Trump's family separation policy. The generic ballot in those critical districts favored Democrats by 13 points (51 - 38 percent).
Finally, an NBC/Marist poll brought dreadful news for Trump: Not only were his approval ratings abysmal in three key Midwestern states—Michigan (36 percent), Minnesota (38 percent), and Wisconsin (36 percent)—but by a 30-point margin or more in each of those states, voters said Trump did not deserve to be reelected.
Capitol Hill offered Trump little refuge from his beating in the polls. Though House Republicans remained predictably as useless as ever, Senate Republicans came as close to being in open revolt as they have been at any point in Trump's tenure. They almost universally panned his plan to funnel a $12 billion bailout to farmers struggling under his decision to simultaneously alienate friend and foe alike in the global marketplace. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson compared the scheme to a "Soviet type of economy" where commissars pick winners and losers and "sprinkle around benefits." Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski wondered why Trump had settled on helping farmers when so many other sectors like the seafood and energy industries in her home state are also suffering under Trump's self-inflicted blow to the economy.
“Farmers are hit, but others are hit by these tariffs as well,” Murkowski said. “Where do you draw that line?”
It's a good question. Why not fisheries on the coasts, whisky makers in Kentucky, or auto parts manufacturers dotting the South and Midwest?
But ultimately GOP Senators who started circulating bills to restrict Trump's near unilateral control over tariffs were stymied by their do-nothing counterparts in the House. So goes one-party control of Congress when the master is as hypersensitive and irascible as he is dense and out of his depth.
Finally, Trump got perhaps the worst news of all: Not only is his former fixer Michael Cohen leaking incriminating tapes to the press and reportedly eager to cooperate with investigators, but this week delivered the clearest sign yet government prosecutors are crossing over Trump's "red line" on investigating his family business. Government investigators in the Southern District of New York reportedly set their sights on questioning the Trump Organization's Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg. Having worked for the business since the '70s, Weisselberg is as close as you can get to being the walking-talking tax return that Trump has guarded with his life.
The development obviously set off alarm bells in Trumpland for multiple reasons. Not only could Weisselberg's knowledge of Trump family business dealings prove downright lethal, Trump is pretty much powerless to stop the inquiry because it's not part of the Russia probe being conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller. While Trump, at great political risk, might be able to oust Mueller, that would do nothing to end the investigation in New York.
And there's one other thing: news of Weisselberg's questioning almost ensures that Cohen will flip if he was still on the fence for any reason. As former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah explained on MSNBC Thursday, it always behooves cooperators to be first in the door when their information is both most valuable and able to be leveraged against whatever legal liability they themselves face. Since almost everyone considers Weisselberg to be an even bigger treasure trove than Cohen, Cohen's lawyers surely explained to him the value of making himself available immediately. Sure enough, Cohen started down that path Thursday night with his claim that Trump indeed knew in advance about Don Jr.'s infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer/government agent to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. Yum!
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this week in Cohen leaks is that, if his claims about Trump's knowledge of the Trump Tower rendezvous prove true, then Trump was in fact central to two of the biggest scandals of his 2016 election: Russian collusion and the Stormy Daniels payoff. Rather than being at arm's length to these enterprises, as Team Trump has alleged, Trump micromanaged them before, during, and after, including the false statement his lawyers have admitted he dictated in response to initial news reports of Trump Jr.'s "dirt" meeting.
One could imagine with that type of news pouring in day after day that a hollow, insecure, nub of person might explode at the onslaught. After all, a New York Times account equal parts hilarious, pitiful, and frightening revealed that Trump "raged" against his staff last week during his overseas trip when he saw CNN playing on Melania Trump's Air Force One TV. Fox News must play on Trump’s AF1, nothing else. Last week was bad enough, but as this week snowballed out of control, Trump took concrete steps to bend reality to his will in a series of alarming attacks on First Amendment freedoms. Here's a brief list:
- The White House originally edited out of the White House transcript a question establishing that Putin preferred Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016 (the transcript stayed that way for the better part of two weeks until the White House faced serious scrutiny)
- The White House floated developing an "enemies list" of critics from whom Trump would strip security clearances
- After continuing to provide no details whatsoever on Trump's private meeting with Putin, the White House declared it had addressed the meeting "extensively"
- The White House is now no longer issuing public summaries of Trump's calls with foreign leaders, known as doing readouts (a story broken by CNN's Kaitlin Collins)
- The White House barred CNN's Collins, a credentialed White House reporter, from an open press event after she asked Trump questions he clearly didn't like (e.g. Did Cohen betray him? Was he worried about other tapes?)
And along with trying to stymie the amount of reality that reaches both his wife and the American people alike, Trump engaged in a rather breathtaking piece of gaslighting. Ripped straight from the pages of the book 1984, Trump flat out told a crowd not to believe their own eyes and ears anymore.
"Don't believe the crap you see from these people—the fake news," Trump told the crowd in Kansas City, MO. "What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening."
He also laughably tried to convince the public that he’s worried Russia might impact the midterms by "pushing very hard for the Democrats." Two days later, the very first documented case of Russian hacking in the 2018 cycle was reported: Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill was the target.
Don't expect the rate of Trump’s lies or the blatancy of his deception to decrease anytime soon. His Air Force One eruption makes clear that Trump is just as invested in his fantasy as he is in convincing the world to believe in it—no exceptions allowed, not even his wife. Meanwhile, the recording that Michael Cohen finally treated America to this week proves there's plenty more truths to be told that Trump simply won’t be capable of handling.