Nobody and nothing can save him
Paul Waldman at the Post says Trump is cooked.
One of the remarkable things about the discussion we’ve been having lately is that the president still seems to think that he can be saved from whatever this investigation uncovers. He just announced that William Barr will be his next attorney general, and the New York Times reported that in private, “Mr. Trump has also repeatedly asked whether the next pick would recuse himself from overseeing the special counsel investigation into whether his campaign conspired with Russia in its interference in the 2016 election.” It’s as though he thinks this investigation is in its early stages and can be quashed by a properly loyal underling.
But at this point it doesn’t matter. It’s far too late. Trump’s former aides have cooperated, they’ve conducted their interviews with the special counsel, they’re being sentenced, the documents have been reviewed, the connections have been traced, and the full picture is soon to be revealed.
This scandal can’t be hidden away. Republicans in Congress can’t save Trump, his attorney general can’t save him, and no amount of desperate tweets can save him. Accountability is on its way, and it’s arriving very soon.
But…if he tweets many times every day, in all caps? Will that save him?
I sure hope so. I know this takes time, but I must admit buying into the hype that Mueller’s report was ready over a month ago but he was waiting to release it until after the election for ethics reasons. I hope it’s not still coming “soon” a year from now.
And the Stormy Daniels stuff alone is never going to trip him up. There’s been this huge burst of excitement over the revelation that the government thinks Trump induced Cohen to help Trump win the election by covering up sex stories and that this violated laws. Well, yeah, that’s all been pretty obvious, hasn’t it? Is the news that it’s a relief the feds aren’t morons?
The Republicans aren’t going to boot Trump over that. They’ll instead take great delight in digging up quotes from Democrats defending Clinton about how “everyone lies about sex”.
It all comes down to collusion with Russia. If they have something on Trump, that will almost surely tank him. If there was just some casual contact and a bunch of lies by people under Trump to cover it up, but not Trump himself, then some people will go to prison but Trump’s presidency will survive.
If there’s clear coordination between Trump’s campaign and the Russians, and if they show Trump knew about, then he’ll be out. Ethics aside, Republicans will see going with Pence as the safer bet at that point.
GOD I HOPE NOT!
(I know, not a tweet but still, ALL CAPS!!)
So, Skeletor, you’re more knowledgeable on this than Ken White, Joyce Vance, Neal Katyal, Renato Mariotti, Rachel Maddow, etc? How? What’s your field? Whence do you derive your certainty?
I think Skeletor is right. According to Eric Columbus, a former Justice Department official,Trump’s actions would only be criminal if he KNEW he was breaking campaign finance laws. That seems ridiculous, considering that with most other crimes, ignorance of the law is no defence, but it is what it is.
Also, even if it’s shown that he knew he was breaking the law, I have a hard time imagining Republican Senators opting to impeach Trump over this. Trump is still popular with Republican voters, so Republican politicians acting against Trump could jeopardise their own political careers, unless Trump loses support from Republican voters. And I doubt Trump using campaign money to cover up adultery will matter much to those voters.
I think a lot depends on what kind of timeframe is being assumed, and what he’s being “saved” from.
The end of his presidency? Well, obviously any Louise Mensch disciples who think that Trump is going to be frog-marched out of the White House any day now are wrong. Impeachment, if it’s a possibility at all, is still a ways off, and Republicans in the Senate can save him from that. But re-election is going to be much tougher when everything comes out; Trump barely won last time, has done nothing to win over those who opposed him, and can’t afford to lose even a small fraction of his supporters.
And in any event, Waldman’s article, and Ophelia’s post, aren’t speaking about that. Waldman writes that “accountability” is coming soon, and from the context of that paragraph (which begins “[t]his scandal can’t be hidden away,” I take Waldman to mean simply that the full story, or something close to it, is coming out soon, and that Trump can’t avoid that with tweets or firings or sham Republican Congressional investigations.
If that seems like a trivial observation, remember that it wasn’t that long ago that there was a very real possibility that after the midterms, regardless of outcome, Trump would fire Mueller and Rosenstein and everybody else, bury the investigation, and dare Congress to impeach him for it. As Comey just testified to Congress, now Trump would have to fire most of the DOJ to make this all go away.
Whether that public accounting leads to impeachment, or defeat in 2020, or prison, or resignation in disgrace, or some combination, remains to be seen. But for quite possibly the first time in his life, Trump is in the kind of trouble that he can’t bluster or bully or bribe his way out of.
Just think, if only he hadn’t decided to run for president, he could be sitting contentedly in the vulgar splendor of his penthouse right now, perhaps counting the profits from Trump Tower Moscow.