Category: Uncategorized

In a lengthy article you can still read in New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait, using facts that are already in the public record, sets out a case that Trump has been operating as a de facto asset of the Russian government since the late 1980s.  Chait readily concedes that this is not the only possible explanation for Trump’s enthusiasm for Putin and Russia, but he doesn’t think it can be completely dismissed as a bizarro conspiracy theory, either.

He has a point.  Like Ross Douthat, I think it is much more likely that Trump’s actions can be explained by his life experiences and his unusual personality than by any overt Russian effort to manipulate him.  Things have gotten to the point, however, where it is no longer appropriate to take even more sinister explanations off the table.

And so, in response to my question, I would say that Trump is still entitled to the benefit of the doubt, but that might not last much longer.

 

 

I was reading an article–either on Politico or Axios, I think–a few weeks ago in which the writer was polling Trump people to try to get a succinct description of our new foreign policy.  The most popular formula was “Bitch, we’re America!”

That sounds about right.  It encapsulates the arrogance, the belligerence, and the preference for unilateral action and raw power over rules that are characteristic of what you could call the Trump Doctrine.

Leaving aside any concerns about morality, it is also deeply disturbing, because it is out of date.  At the risk of sounding like Thomas Friedman, the fact is that technology has made national borders inherently more porous than ever before.  Terrorism, cybercrime, pandemics, and refugee crises can have their roots essentially anywhere in the world, and our only choices are to attack the problems on the ground or to wait until they do damage at home, and then try to build a physical or virtual wall around the country after the horse has left the barn.  Obama correctly decided that the better approach was the first one, with the assistance of rules and allies;  Trump, whose brain still operates in the 1950s, clearly believes in the latter, and we will ultimately pay the price for it.

So Trump clearly doesn’t get NATO.

For Putin, he’s opened the gate-oh.

If the Russians march in

Would a war soon begin?

Would he leave the small fry to their fate-oh?

David Brooks used this term in a column last week; we all know what it means.  It manifests itself in two ways:  in Trump’s deplorable behavior towards women, including other heads of state; and in some of his policy positions, ranging from increases in the defense budget to his eccentric preference for jobs traditionally held by brawny men (e.g., coal miners and steelworkers) over, say, retail jobs.

The sad fact is that Trump’s extreme version of swagger is one of the two pillars of his popularity with the base.  Its principal audience is unskilled male workers who feel that a world which increasingly places less value on physical strength than intellect is screwing them over.

All I can say is that men with more testosterone than brains are not at the top of the list of American “victims” for whom I feel intensely sorry.

We’ve all been living with Mueller and the Russia investigation so long that it seems like a natural part of the fabric of life.  The reality of it, however, is that Mueller’s report will seem like a bombshell when it finally arrives, and it is bound to dominate the discussion in the months prior to the election.

I see three possible scenarios:

1.  The report is a short document concluding that Trump did not commit any indictable offenses.  There is so much inflammatory information already in the public record that a report of this nature would not put an end to the discussion, but it would give an enormous boost to the GOP.

2.  The report concludes that Trump did, in fact, commit indictable offenses.  Trump’s base will blow this off as the product of a “rigged” investigation, and it will not lead to impeachment, but it will definitely help Democrats in November.

3.  The report is a lengthy narrative that provides plenty of support for the notion that Trump committed “High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” but concludes that no indictable offense occurred.  Both sides furiously spin the report in their direction, there is no serious effort to impeach, and the report has little impact in November.

If I were a betting man, I would go with #3, but we just don’t know.

The key known unknown, of course, is whether Mueller will find that Trump committed an indictable offense.  The intermediate questions are as follows:

1.  How far back will Mueller go?  There is a credible argument that Trump has been operating as a Russian intelligence asset for nearly thirty years.  Will Mueller attempt to put Trump’s behavior as a candidate, and as president, in the context of his business dealings, or not?

2.  What did Mueller get from his plea agreements?  Did anyone tie Trump personally to the Russians?  We don’t know yet.

3.  What, if anything, happens with Cohen?  By telling the world that he values his family over Trump, Cohen sent a message that he expects to be compensated for his silence.  Trump undoubtedly understood that.  How will Mueller respond to that?

4.  Will the report discuss a lower burden of proof?  On obstruction of justice, for example, it is perfectly possible that Mueller could find that a preponderance of the evidence supported the allegation.  That would not lead to an indictment, but it would be relevant to impeachment.  Will he discuss that, or just reach the conclusion that he would not indict, and leave it at that?

5.  Will the report address more political questions?  Impeachment is primarily a political–not a legal–proceeding.  You can imagine a scenario in which Mueller finds credible evidence of “collusion” with the Russian government, but cannot tie it to any criminal statute.   Would he address that issue in the report?  I would argue that he must, but it remains to be seen.

Do you remember the uproar that resulted when a GOP House member shouted “You lie!” at Obama during the SOTU?  Part of it, of course, was the occasion, but part of it was the explosive nature of the allegation.  Back in the day, the truth was perceived to be both knowable and sacred, and calling someone a liar was a very serious charge.

Today, on the other hand, Trump tells six lies a day on average, the MSM call him out for it on a routine basis, and the base doesn’t care.  As long as he swaggers and says he is on their side, the truth is irrelevant to them, because Trump embodies a higher truth.

Changing times, indeed.

 

I’m shocked that the public is shocked that Trump would stand shoulder to shoulder with Putin and criticize his own country.  What did you expect him to do?  That’s what he does, metaphorically speaking, every day.

The whole point of the meeting was to make it clear that the US is now a thuggish revisionist state that is determined to extort a pound of flesh from the liberal democrat weenies in the EU.  In that sense, the meeting was a roaring success.

Will Fox News, the base, and the GOP leadership ultimately follow his lead on this?  Given what has happened to date, why would you doubt it?

Let’s face it:  I don’t know what Mueller has, and neither do you.  The known unknowns about his work product will be the subject of a post tomorrow.  That said, there are enough facts in the public record to make the following predictions:

1.  The work product will be a report, not an indictment of Trump.  There are too many questions about whether a sitting president can be indicted to go down that path, and in any event, it would probably be outside the scope of Mueller’s authority.

2.  The work product will ultimately take no position on whether Trump’s actions constitute impeachable offenses.  “High crimes and misdemeanors” is ultimately a political question for Congress, not a purely legal question.

3.  Mueller will opine as to whether Trump committed indictable offenses.  His report will contain a factual narrative and his opinions on this legal question.  Whether it goes beyond that to identify critical political issues involving “collusion” and discuss the credibility of witnesses is one of the key known unknowns that I will address tomorrow.

Steve Bannon justified the Trump/Putin meeting by analogizing it to the alliance between the US and the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany.  That gives rise to the following questions:

1.  Does Bannon realize what happened to the alliance after the war ended?
2.  Who plays the role of the Nazis in this analogy?  The mostly liberal democratic and peace-loving EU?
3.  Is Bannon not aware that his reactionary, white nationalist ideology smells like fascism?
4.  In light of that, isn’t the better World War II analogy the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?

The best case scenario with the meeting is that Trump spent two hours ranting about Mueller, Clinton, and the American deep state to Putin, and that nothing was said about Iran, Syria, or Ukraine.  The worst case is virtually anything else, because it is only too likely that Trump would give away the store in exchange for, well, nothing.

Putin isn’t going to change his position on Ukraine or Syria, Trump doesn’t know enough about nuclear weapons to engage in a serious discussion about arms control, and Russia has nothing else to offer us except, perhaps, a free hand with Iran.  Substantively, the whole idea of the meeting was a waste of time; optically, it was a victory for Putin, and a disaster for everyone else.

It would appear that Mueller’s work will be done in the next few months, and will have a seismic impact on the midterms.  As a result, it is appropriate to review how Trump has reacted to date, and what is likely to occur between now and November:

1.  Denial:  Trump was relatively new to the job when Mueller was appointed, and while he was clearly angered by the decision, he didn’t know how to stop it.  He and his closest advisers also undoubtedly thought he would be exonerated.

2.  Mixed opinions:  While Bannon told him to fight Mueller at every step, most of his lawyers told him to cooperate in the expectation of a quick exoneration.  At this stage, he took their advice.

3.  Going to war:  By the later stages of 2017, Trump was sick of the investigation, saw it in primarily political terms, and no longer believed that a quick exoneration was possible.  He escalated his attacks on Mueller and laid the ground work for firing him.  Out of fear, laziness, or calculation, however, he did not pull the trigger.

4.  End game:  With the midterms just a few months away and the Kavanaugh nomination at risk, Trump is no longer in a position to put an end to the investigation.  Whatever the result, he will just have to grin and bear it.

I predicted months ago that he would fire Mueller.  That was the most likely outcome at the time, but it didn’t happen, and the time for it is gone.  What will Mueller’s work product look like?  That is tomorrow’s topic.

As I’ve noted before, three of the four GOP factions oppose Trump’s hard line on immigration, but he’s determined to fight the midterms on that issue, because he sees it as a winner.  Is he right?

I doubt it.  Yes, it certainly motivates his Reactionary base, but it also triggers a powerful blue backlash, and, in any event, the base represents less than half of GOP voters.   He would be wiser to talk about Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

When I created the model of the GOP with four factions, I was a bit worried that lumping primarily religious and nationalist Reactionaries in the same group was a mistake.  To put the issue in concrete terms, it might be wrong to put Cruz and Trump primary voters in the same faction.

I needn’t have worried.  Recent polls indicate that Cruz voters are actually more supportive of Trump at this point than Trump voters.

Scratch a Reactionary of whatever kind, and he’s still a Reactionary.

Theresa May is a dogged centrist politician with no great gifts or vision.  She continues in office mostly because she has a talent for self-preservation and because her more flamboyant rivals are less trusted by the majority of the Conservative Party.  She is, in a sense, the lowest common denominator.

There are a fair number of British Prime Ministers throughout history who fit this description, but the one who comes to mind first is Stanley Baldwin.