In case you were
backpacking in Borneo last week and hadn’t heard, the Most Powerful Man On Earth
(and Grand Imperial Poohbah) fired his insufficiently loyal FBI Director.
That was the easy part.
Trump was either always planning to fire Comey (after being outraged that Comey
didn’t insist Hillary be indicted) or blowing kisses at him (literally and
figuratively) after Comey’s yes-she-did-no-she-didn’t just before the election,
or “furious” that Comey hadn’t set the entire FBI to the sole purpose of
finding leakers, or whatever else he might have been thinking at any moment
since then. You can check with his crack communications staff to get an
annotated hour-to-hour sense of the Trumpian mood, with an approximate 50%
certainty that it would be half right.
Exhausting, isn’t it? Watching the Good Ship Trump is like chasing a
gaggle of 4-year-olds after the video-game and candy-corn portion of a high-end
Pre-K graduation party. The well-groomed parents practice their
proud-but-tolerant-but-slightly-pained smiles as they watch the future heirs to
the throne thoroughly wreck the place. All
while praying that none of this goes viral since there are still a couple of
kids on Kindergarten wait-lists.
OK, we can leave the
future grown-ups and return to the present superannuated children, because at
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it’s always one big party, with Donnie hacking at the
Twitter piñata, and Spicey playing hide-and-seek.
And life goes on. Trump
hires, Trump fires, Trump blurts out nonsense and threats, Trump signs an
Executive Order mandating all Federal Employees wear MAGA sleepwear (manufactured
in China), Trump invites strange people with Russian accents to the White
House, Trump goes to his favorite safe spaces (Mar-A-Lago, Fox, Liberty
University). Trump is just Trump-like.
Can’t something be done
to stop this lunatic? Not really. Forget the 25th Amendment: Trump
isn’t voluntarily stepping aside and, despite all the arm-chair psychologists
out there, “shouldn’t be President” isn’t incapacity. Impeachment? Lawrence Tribe has a piece in
the Washington Post where he lays out a lawyer’s case for impeachment. It’s well-written, but completely divorced
from reality.
Let’s start with the
legal hurdles. “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” lacks a specific Constitutional
definition, but being a crass potty-mouthed bully doesn’t meet the
standard. Nor ignorance in policy, nor
serial truth-massager, nor tawdry, nor just about any other pejorative you can
lay on him. Even “grifter” isn’t going to be dispositive, since a lot of
grifting is just “grifty” and not necessarily “emolumenty”.
Now, to the political.
First is a straight-out numbers game. To impeach, you need a majority of the
House and 67 votes in the Senate. Suffice to say that’s not happening any time
soon. Impeachment wouldn’t even get out of committee right now. Remember, 90%
of Republicans profess public support for Trump, and many of those believe that
he’s being unfairly persecuted by a biased media and bitter Democrats. After
2018? Forget it. Even if Democrats take back the House (a longshot) they will
be lucky to just hold their serve in the Senate.
Second, Trump is, on the
fly, reinventing what normal is. Previous
Presidents of both parties displayed a certain public decorum and went by a
group of largely unwritten rules about what was and was not acceptable. A visit
to Trump-land rewrites every single one of them. More accurately, it covers
them with graffiti to the point they become almost unrecognizable. In just four
months, Trump has taken us past the point where we feel shock. We may never do
this again with any other President, but as it applies to Trump, excesses are
simply superfluous.
Why Trump? Yes, some of
this is just political expediency—there’s no question that the Paul Ryans and
Mitch McConnells of the world are fully aware of the Faustian Bargain they have
made. But with Trump’s real base, the ones he’s made an emotional connection
with, there’s something different going on, almost a peculiar folie à deux, a
sharing in a certain view of the world. “I just want to get things done”, I
heard from a Trump supporter last week.
In a nutshell, I think
that’s what saves Trump. Trump isn’t Teflon—rather he’s an entirely different
species that has rendered the term “gaffe” irrelevant. His supporters will not
judge him the way they would just about any other politician. They aren’t
really engaging in hypocrisy, they are just throwing out the script entirely.
Trump is acutely aware
of this, and it liberates him to act the way he does, on impulse, with apparent
disregard for the consequences. But it
has risks for him as well—he’s insulating himself from alternate views and
ever-narrowing his horizon. He’s not paying attention to the details of what he
signs—regardless of whether it would adversely impact the very loyalists who
would go to the ramparts for him. And he’s
lost his ear for any music other than his own.
The Comey firing is
Exhibit A in this. Trump (and whatever advisors he happened to trust at the
moment) assumed that this was comparatively risk-free. They whipped up a soufflé
of a memo from Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy AG, coupled it with a solemn recommendation from
the distinguished Jeff Sessions, and rolled it out there. They counted on (and
got) mostly lockstep Republican support.
But they misjudged the Democrats, whom they expected to cheer. What they failed to realize is that Democrats don’t
have lingering nostalgia for Hillary—rather they have a sense of being
personally cheated. The Rosenstein Memo actually added fuel to the fire. Comey made two seminal decisions—to break
with Department policy with regard to Clinton’s emails, and to keep to
Department policy with regard to Trump’s Russian contacts. From the Democrats’
perspective, Comey was bitter medicine they had to accept—and now Trump was
pushing away the poisoned chalice before he had to take his sip.
There are a lot of
Democrats who are convinced that the Russian angle will never be properly investigated. We won’t see Trump tax returns because Donald says no. There’s
not going to be an Independent Counsel, because Senate Republicans won’t permit
it. In the end, Judge and Jury are going to be picked by Trump. The “recused” Jeff
Sessions will help select Comey’s successor. That successor, whomever he or she
is, is going to take the job knowing full-well what The Boss wants, and that
service is at the pleasure of an easily displeased President. As to the FBI
itself, the general professionalism of the rank and file is beyond question,
but every one of them will have a consciousness of the environment in which
careers are made or sacrificed.
Is there hope for normalcy,
post Comey? I’m pessimistic. There has been talk of a White House shake up, but
it’s hard to see how Trump changes himself enough to be willing to bring in
professionalism and voices other than his own. The drift of the Republicans in
the Senate is to dislike Trump personally but to work around him so a
legislative agenda can be enacted. They will run interference for him as long
as it profits them, and that could be quite some time. Ryan has an entirely
different problem—first, Devin Nunes embarrassed him more than he would admit.
Second, he runs a Gerrymandered House caucus where the firebrands are calling
the tune from safe districts, while more centrist Republicans are at risk next
year. And Ryan looks weak—lacking in
integrity and stature. He may not have the juice to shift the House into a more
independent mode when the time comes.
That leaves us with all
Trump, all the time. Four years of him.
Where are the laughs?
May 15, 2017
Michael Liss (Moderate Moderator)
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