Trump has lived on the edge all his life. He thrives on the adrenaline that his confrontations, chaos, incompetence, illegality, lying and harebrained schemes evoke. He enjoys and wallows in the struggle. He is wedded to the uncertainty and like a cat toying with a mouse he is certain that he will be a winner in the end. His biggest “turn on” has been taking on American Democracy and declaring himself a de facto dictator of the United States. In so doing he hopes to turn a threatening impending defeat into victory. He is attempting to avert disaster in the Russiagate investigation by a broadside of outrageous counter measures. In so doing he risks all in the hope of the ultimate prize, total unquestioned control of America.
Like in all pursuits for a quick fix for “ultimate happiness” when the goal has been attained the withdrawal sets in and the search is on for a new challenge. The Presidential campaign and the subsequent Presidency has been an orgy for The Donald as he has been in almost status crisisiosus - mostly engineered and inflicted upon him by his good self. Even more significant for the boastful blowhard he has had unprecedented audiences watching his every move. Now he seeks total authority of the management of America without the impediment of an independent justice department. His vision of making America Great Again is to turn it into a Banana Republic.
In terms of his psychodynamics Trump now has created the ultimate challenge - he has taken on the Democracy of the United States of America. He is its CEO and he is about to prove that its laws don’t apply to him. Armed with like thinking lawyers his lifelong modus operandi has not changed - only the stakes have - namely the future of a nation.
TRUMP, JOE MCCARTHY AND COUNSELLOR ROY COHN .
The Donald’s mentor and his chief counsel from the sixties was Roy Cohn. The latter was the lawyer of the infamous persecutor Senator Joe McCarthy. In addition, Cohn’s clients included the Gambinos and he was tremendously influential in political circles. He believed that you never ever admitted any wrongdoing and that the key tactic in any adverse situation was to aggresively counter attack anything and everything that they accused you off.
McCarthy shook American democracy to it’s foundations by creating a milieu of trial and conviction by insinuation. With his strong arm smearing and bullying tactics he labelled and sentenced alleged Communists, left leaners and liberals as traitors. The rogue Senator ruined many lives in the process and in his wake he ended many a career. McCarthy, like Trump, never backed down and kept upping the ante. After McCarthy was finally derailed, his Svengali, Roy Cohn moved onto a worthy successor, Donald J. Trump. The Donald confided to Tim O’ Brien, the author that penned, Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald, “Roy was brutal, but he was a very loyal guy”. That summed up Donald Trump’s own mantra in a sentence - be brutal and demanding of loyalty.
In many ways Trump is McCarthy written large. McCarthy daily broadcasted unsubstantiated lists of who he alleged were Communists thereby exploiting, in the early fifties, the Cold War fears on the creeping Imperialist rise of the USSR. He would bully and smear opposition with lack of patriotism. Eventually McCarthy was brought down by the system and censored in the Senate by an overwhelming majority. McCarthy’s motive was mainly power. Trump’s alleged motivations, in many ways, are far more sinister. It is accepted that Putin’s Russia, a foreign power, illegally intervened in the USA elections to support his candidacy. The question that now remains is whether he and his campaign colluded in the effort and subsequent to the investigation into the affair did he attempt to obstruct justice.
TRUMP’S RESPONSE TO “RUSSIAGATE”
The pressure is on in the battle of Trump versus American democracy and Trump has not flinched. The more the disclosures that link Trump and his campaign to Putin oligarchs the more heinous the POTUS responses are. Where others might shrink in the face of damning revelations the Donald has thrived on the sense of shock engendered by the exposures. In spite of unanimous Intelligence Agency support for an investigation into whether he and his campaign colluded with the Russians he has not only attacked that as a “witch hunt”, he has not even accepted the premise that the Russians intervened. He has as well as attacking the investigations of the Department of Justice and in Congress, obstructed, from the word go, the course of those judicial enquiries. In so doing he has challenged one of the central tenets of American democracy, the independence of the judicial process. More significantly Trump has not disguised his attempts to thwart the judicial process. He has pulled every stratagem in the Cohn book to win the fight.
TRUMP AFFIRMS HIS SUPPORT FOR RUSSIA
Trump is so in “your face” on the issue that he has no hesitation in continuing his support of Putin and Russia even though this points further to his culpability. The POTUS has canvassed Congress to lessen sanctions on Russia even though the sentiment in both Houses was to stiffen them in the light of their war like intervention in the US election. He has openly favored Putin over NATO allies in his newly devised foreign policy. Trump has held at least two meetings with Putin where the full content of the discussions was not available to the suspicious American people. He has however, unashamedly, announced that he accepted Putin’s word over seventeen US Intelligence Agencies that he did not hack the US elections. He went one step further by publicly denigrating America’s Intelligence Agencies. So the POTUS rather than distance himself from Russia’s Putin who is accused of treasonous collusion with him in the Presidential election ups the ante by strengthening his relationship with him.
TRUMP OBSTRUCTS THE INVESTIGATION INTO RUSSIAGATE
Trump has done more than make it quite clear that he disapproves of the Russian investigation by actively intervening and issuing endless threats and bullying remarks. He fired the initial leader of the probe James Comey admitting to the Russian Foreign Minister and Ambassador that it was Comey’s role in the inquiry that had prompted his action. Removing Comey, he explained, would relieve pressure. In case the point was missed he repeated his motivation for the move in a TV interview with NBC’s Lester Holt.
He then repeatedly cast aspersions on the integrity on the new Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a life long Republican, asserting that he was biased as evidenced by the fact that he had appointed staff that were known Democrats. He banally moaned that Mueller’s supervisor, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, came from Baltimore where there were very few Republicans. He and the WhiteHouse repeated ad nauseam that Trump had the authority to fire Mueller. The POTUS has threatened Mueller that the Trump finances are out of bounds in his probe. He stated that such enquiries would cross a line…..
The ante was ratcheted up when he unprecedentedly assailed his Attorney General with a bombardment of non stop tweets and in an interview with the New York Times. The POTUS made it clear that his most longstanding loyal minion, Sessions, had been disloyal in that he recused himself from the Russian investigation and therefore was unable to do his bidding. Had he known this he wouldn’t have appointed him! He continued that the “weak” Sessons should be investigating “crooked” Hillary and the leaks. (The reckless Trump cares naught for the implications of using the Justice Department to harass political opponents). The transparent plan is to axe the “beleagured” Jeff Sessions and replace him during a Senate break so that a new Attorney General would not be subject to Senate confirmation. Trump pursues this vendetta daily against the advice of his legal team, aides and a growing number of Republicans including the Head of the Senate Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley that would have to vet Attorney General nominations . Sessions, Trump is learning, has much more support than was evident to the POTUS.
New insights were gained into Christopher Wray Trump’s nominee to replace fired FBI Director Comey. Wray, who in his confirmation hearings swore integrity to justice up the ying yang, is being looked at in a new light as a result of Trump opining in his Times interview that the FBI Director should report to the President directly and not to the Department of Justice. Rachel Maddow uncovered that Wray was the disgraced Christie’s lawyer in the BridgeGate scandal and there had been much negative speculation as to his role in that position. Christie had apparently put Wray’s name forward. All this has occasioned a delay in his confirmation as the Democrats are asking for a guarantee that he will not fire Mueller.
This sequence of events adds up to a resounding prima facie case for obstruction of justice.
TRUMP’S ANSWER TO THE PROBLEM - PRESIDENTIAL PARDONS
The Obstruction of Justice charge is easily coupled with an Abuse of Power indictment as The Donald rampages on. Again for all the world to note the pardoning of the dramatis personae in the Russian scandal has been mooted by the President and his legal team. In addition it has been affirmed again and again that it is within the President’s purview to pardon himself. The incongruity of these threats is not apparent to the Presidential tweeter. On the one hand he maintains that he and his campaign staff did nothing wrong with their meetings and contacts with the Russians and on the other he will issue pardons to exonerate.
What Trump ignores is that the Constitution specifically excludes Impeachment in his pardoning powers but that is a minor detail in his scheme of things.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
* By now all those who believed that The Donald would become Presidential when he assumed the Office have to be disabused of that fantasy. As time proceeds he follows and embellishes the playbook of his mentor Roy Cohn and his most infamous client Joe McCarthy. His legal team are clones of the deceased Counsel who was both “brutal and loyal”.
* Trump for his part will up the ante and fight to the bitter end. He will confront rather than compromise and negotiate. He is addicted to the high he gets when starting fights which by definition contain a risk of losing. When the political front is relatively quiet he obtains his fix by mercilessly sallying into individuals such as TV or Movie personalities. He sadistically uses his bully pulpit in the true sense of the term to belittle and denigrate those who have had the audacity to oppose him.
* The fear in all of this is that American Democracy might disintegrate. He hinted during the campaign that the system was rigged and that if he should fail only the Second Amendment People would be able to do anything about it. Trump as President no longer has to tilt at windmills. As Commander in Chief he is head of all the armed forces and if deposed he will call upon the Second Amendment People.
* While the Republican intelligentsia have almost to a man stepped up to the plate in recognizing the danger that Trump represents the leaders in Congress have not as yet accepted their challenge in rescuing the Republic from falling into the abyss. Senate Majority Leader McConnell, whose place in history is already enshrined for his unparliamentary obstructionism in Obama’s Presidency and his disgraceful stealing of a Supreme Court Judgeship from a highly qualified contender, is playing games in the Senate with TrumpCare which seventy percent of the population reject. To quote the former Republican House Speaker, John Boehner Obamacare can never be replaced as the Republican Governors want it. There are no words to describe the spinelessness of House Speaker Paul Ryan who believes a tax cut takes priority over the values this country was founded on.
* There is, however, a glimmer of hope in that the House of Representatives passed an all embracing sanctions resolution in response to the Russian’s intervention in the 2016 Presidential election by four hundred and nineteen votes to three. This follows on the original Senate resolution which was affirmed by ninety - eight votes to two. The resolution specifically bans the POTUS from modifying the legislation. All this is in the teeth of Trump’s request to lessen existing sanctions. Also there allegedly have been warnings to the WhiteHouse that if he axes Mueller that the consequences could be dire. That wont stop Trump who needs his fix but the fact that the Republicans may act is encouraging. If they don’t act Trump’s inevitable departure will have to wait till 2019 with another two years destruction in the interim.
* The choice is simple - stop Trump or bear witness to the death of democracy.
* Whatever happens this is going to be ugly so fasten your seat belts and prepare for a bumpy ride.
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