Wednesday, August 22, 2018

A Big Day - Updated

Donald Trump. | AP Photo
photo credit: Alex Brandon/AP Photo

It was a big day yesterday, for better or worse, in the life of our country and in the life and presidency of Donald Trump. (In the picture above, taken last night at his big rally in West Virginia, it sure looks like he's worried about something. He also appears to be aging fast. If you have the stomach for it, you can see a larger version of the picture here.) As I see things that interest me I'll post them here, First a couple of tweets from yesterday:
From political scientist Jonathan Bernstein, writing at Bloomberg: 
Some pundits are already dismissing this as just another bump in the road without consequences. Don’t be fooled. Trump has been badly damaged already by the various scandals surrounding him and his administration. This will add to the hurt. After all, the bad behavior doesn’t have to end with the president in jail to inflict real damage.

Cohen’s case carries substantial dangers for Trump. As for Manafort, the president isn’t implicated in the charges, but that doesn’t let him off the hook, even if there are no larger links to the Trump/Russia scandal (and there still could be). Nonetheless, the buck stops with the president, or in this case the presidential candidate, who failed to do even the most cursory vetting of an operative before hiring him to run his campaign. Trump’s failure to notice or care that Manafort -- and General Michael Flynn, his former national security advisor -- had deeply compromising ties to foreign nations is even more of a devastating mark against the president than the allegation that he ordered Cohen to buy the silence of two women during the campaign.

And Cohen’s admissions don’t add much to what we already know about Trump. He remains the man who had to pay out $25 million for the Trump University fraud, and who is currently being sued by the state of New York for fraud involving his foundation. Not to mention that as president he almost certainly obstructed justice, abused his power and used the office for personal profit.

The main reaction of the public should be deep embarrassment that this is our president. This is just the latest evidence that he’s entirely unfit for the position. And it’s a dark stain on the Republican Party that picked him instead of the dozens of perfectly acceptable politicians who would have delivered identical tax policy and judicial nominations, and probably would have been more effective at advancing other party policy goals.

 From Lawfareblog.com:
The consistent incompetence of Trump’s inner circle is all the answer one needs. That said, the starting place in this conversation must be the degree to which close associates of the president of the United States keep turning out to be felons. Yes, only one portion of Cohen’s criminal conduct and none of the charges on which Manafort was convicted connect directly to President Trump. But the parade of greed and the continuous criminal conduct on the part of two people closely associated with Trump and his campaign sheds disturbing light on who the president regards as appropriate top aides and associates. That Trump himself continues to express sympathy with Manafort, not outrage at his conduct, further undermines confidence in his judgment of character.

Presidential judgment matters.

... How big a deal is the Manafort verdict?

Pretty big.

It is a big deal first because the failure to obtain it would have been an immense setback to the investigation. Going to trial is always a fraught process. And for the Mueller investigation to have failed to garner a conviction would have risked consequences for the legitimacy of the entire enterprise. A conviction on eight counts and a mistrial on 10 other counts may seem like a split decision—but it is not. The jury found Manafort guilty of substantial criminal conduct, and he faces significant jail time at his sentencing in December. Having the jury hang on some charges and convict on others shows independence and makes it hard to argue that Manafort did not get a fair shake. Mueller’s shop is no doubt satisfied with this outcome.

... Are there dangers here?

Yes. Big ones.

Major investigations that touch the president directly are always dangerous. Trump accentuates those dangers. The general danger is of presidential distraction. The burden of running the country is real—or at least it should be to a president who takes the job seriously. Being under federal investigation would distract almost anyone. And whether or not one likes Donald Trump should not obscure the reality that interfering with a president’s ability to govern and represent the United States globally—by compromising a president’s legitimacy and by distracting him from governance—is dangerous at the best of times with the most focused of presidents.

Trump is not the most focused of presidents. He is also mercurial and angry. With Trump there is the additional risk of his lashing out, taking vindictive action or engaging in irrational behavior—things he does in spades on a daily basis. This sort of behavior is inimical to cohesive national security policy, which requires presidential leadership and direction. The myriad bureaucracies involved with defense, intelligence, foreign affairs, economic security, law enforcement and homeland security all have different institutional needs, interests and missions. Absent policy direction and leadership from the White House, the national security apparatus does not work optimally on autopilot. (Read the entire blog post here.) 

Is Trump continuing to "express sympathy with Manafort, not outrage at his conduct?" Oh, you bet: 

And because there's always a quote:


If you're not a West Wing geek, this is President Bartlet talking to his White House counsel, played by Oliver Platt, at the start of the "Bartlet has MS and lied about it" plot. See episode "Bad Moon Rising." 

I'll add to this post throughout the day. Stay tuned, more to come. 

 Update: Apparently Michael Cohen has deleted this tweet from December, 2015, but as we frequently say here at Writing The World, screenshots live forever:

Update #2: From Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

 Almost everyone who gets close to Trump ends up getting burned. Not usually indicted, or at least not yet – but no one emerges with their reputations or dignity intact. But this is a different issue. Neither of these alleged crimes have anything to do with Trump. It also doesn’t seemed like his climate of criminal permissiveness played any clear role. It’s something different and a pattern I think we know: people who gravitate to Trump tend to be people of poor moral character. Or to put it more precisely: people who gravitate to Trump tend to be people who share his values and those values include a high willingness to break the law. (Read the article here.) 

 Update #3: From Senator Lindsey Graham, in May, 2016:


Update #4: One more thing. An exchange between George Stephanopolous and Michael Cohen's lawyer Lanny Davis on Good Morning, America today:

GS: "Would Michael Cohen accept a presidential pardon? Does he want one?"

LD: "He will not, and does not want anything from Donald Trump. After working for him all of those years he came to the recognition that Donald Trump is a president unsuitable to have that office and the powers of that office, which he has abused and which Donald Trump will continue to abuse, perhaps using the pardon power and Michael Cohen wants no part of that abuse."
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