Trump allies are freaking out about Tuesday’s twin bombshells: former campaign chair Paul Manafort’s conviction on eight charges and former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen’s plea on eight charges, complete with a finger pointed straight at Donald Trump. But while freaking out is absolutely the right response, Team Trump is still having a little trouble connecting to reality.
One Republican lawyer close to the White House worried that Cohen – with his unique access to Trump’s history of business dealings and scandalous personal entanglements – could ultimately prove more damaging to Trump, and give Democrats fodder for impeachment if they take the House in November. “It’s the only excuse they’ll need,” the lawyer said. “And believe me, they won’t need much of an excuse.”
Um, when the president’s former personal lawyer and campaign fixer has just said in court that he broke elections law at the direction of his boss, then a candidate for president, to help win an election, we’re past the “won’t need much of an excuse” phase. We’re past good excuses and well into reasons territory. Trump’s crowds are still chanting “lock her up” but considering impeachment for someone whose longtime associate has implicated him in a crime is somehow just grasping at straws? Yeah, right.
That’s not the only challenge with reality Trump allies have:
Many of the president’s allies have believed in recent weeks that he was winning the public relations war against Mueller – even if they anguished in private about what the special counsel has up his sleeve. Trump’s supporters regularly point to polling showing that the majority of Americans view the investigation unfavorably, crediting Trump’s Twitter war against the probe with turning public sentiment.
Note that that link goes to a June poll on Mueller. They might want to look at more recent polling before being so confident that Trump is winning the public relations war against Mueller. They might also want to consider that in major legal investigations, winning the public relations war on any given day is not the primary objective. Again, Trump’s former campaign chair and former personal lawyer have just been convicted/pleaded guilty to a combined 16 charges. His former national security adviser is cooperating with the investigation. Trump might be able to keep his base bamboozled, but the clash between his Twitter rants and reality is going to be becoming harder and harder to miss for everyone but the die-hards.