We're Not Stupid

Blog readers know I like the view of the world as seen through magazine covers, now here's today's front page of the Chicago Sun-Times:

PHOTO: Front page of the @Suntimes pic.twitter.com/eVSX4Jxq8w

— Matt Rodewald FOX 10 (@Matt_Fox10) May 11, 2017

Something else that's on my mind this morning as I watch the "Comeygate" disaster play out: How many (supposedly) honest and honorable people will find their reputations and future careers destroyed because they insist on carrying water for Donald Trump?

Afternoon update: Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo shared some thoughts about this too:

… no more than 30 hours in, the White House’s absurd cover story about firing Comey over his misdeeds toward Hillary Clinton – a lie that virtually everyone at the White House has now publicly repeated and vouched for – is coming apart at the seams. We can also see the staggering fact that after no more than two weeks on the job, Rosenstein’s public reputation, which was formidable, has been destroyed. He now joins a legion of Trump Dignity Wraiths, men and women (though mainly men) of once vaunted reputations or at least public prestige who have been reduced to mere husks of their former selves after crossing the Trump Dignity Loss Event Horizon.

… I cannot figure why Rosenstein took part in this. I don’t know enough about him to attempt any analysis of his personality. All I know is that he did. And that, whatever his motivations and however it matches or mismatches with his career to this point, his public reputation is deservedly obliterated. There’s something dark and sick at the center of the Trump World because I don’t think anyone can really deny the pattern I’m taking note of here, even though I describe it in fulsome and lavish language: everybody who gets close gets damaged, usually badly. And the heart of that darkness is Trump himself, a lumbering vortex of need and rage, a black hole. The only question is why people keep going, mainly of their own free volition into his reach. (From a post titled The Wraithing of Rod Rosenstein, read it here.)

Marshall follows that with a post titled "They're Trapped in His Lies," which I've copied in its entirety: 

I mentioned earlier that we shouldn’t forget this simple point. Virtually everyone of note in the White House has already repeated and vouched for President Trump’s story of how and why he fired James Comey. Not only was this story a plain absurdity on day one; all the information which has emerged over the last two days has tended to confirm its falsity. Here’s the key point. Everyone who has repeated it knows it’s false. They have knowingly lied on the President’s behalf and about a matter of grave national importance. That includes the Vice President. So in the extreme scenario that the President leaves office and is succeeded by the Vice President, the sitting President will still be directly implicated in this lie and this cover-up.

But there’s an additional problem for everyone in the White House and all the President’s defenders in Congress. And it’s a big one. 

It’s not only that the President has implicated all of these people in his lies and deceptions about Comey’s firing. It is that he will not even stick to his story.

So just a short time ago, NBC released footage of its interview with the President conducted by Lester Holt. In that interview Trump is crystal clear that he decided to fire Comey entirely on his own. He asked Rosenstein to write out his views. But he was going to fire Comey regardless. That specifically contradicts what Pence said in an impromptu press conference yesterday on Capitol Hill.

Trump is like a wild fire hose whipping about violently, driven not by coils and water pressure but his own demons and rage. He will say whatever he wants at any given moment based on emotion, impulse, and his impression of tactical advantage as of that moment. This is not strategy. It’s an out of control person. But there are now large numbers of people and institutions implicated in Trump’s actions. They are on the line and along for the ride with every twist and turn.