Memo to Trump Toadies: Watergate Says Everyone Goes Down

History often repeats itself, especially for those who fail or refuse to learn from past events.  Many of us who remember the Watergate era see many parallels between that era and the present day where Donald Trump's lies and corruption make Nixon's sins pale in comparison.  Then and now, far too many Republicans chose to ignore facts and remained in lock step with their lying and corrupt party leader.  Ultimately, many of those who sold their souls in support of or co-conspiracy with Nixon paid a high price, many going to prison and many more seeing their political careers ended. This reality is lost on those currently prostituting themselves to Donald Trump - think Lindsey Graham and AG William Barr - and setting the longer term stage of seeing their reputations destroyed and their place in the view of history something other than what honorable people would want.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at the message that such individuals ought to remember for Watergate. Here are excerpts:

As the campaign to impeach and remove President Trump has intensified, so have the defenses from his most devoted underlings. Naturally, these have included individuals closest to him—his adult children, his attorneys, and White House officials.

More die-hard demagogues have taken fortified positions on Capitol Hill. As the impeachment inquiry kicks into gear, they are doing whatever they can to downplay the charges and delegitimize the process. In hearings, they demand evidence or dismiss it; in interviews, they dodge the problems and gum up the process. Throughout, they hope that the volume of their voices might overwhelm the volumes of evidence. These Trump loyalists have now lashed themselves to the presidential mast. And if Watergate is an American parable, most of them will go down too.

Richard Nixon avoided prison time thanks to a pardon, but all the president’s men weren’t so lucky. Four dozen were convicted of criminal charges, and about half did time—including Nixon’s chief of staff, White House counsel, top advisers, and attorney general. Some of Trump’s inner circle, including his lawyer and his campaign manager, are already locked up. Odds are, they won’t be the last.

Nixon’s congressional toadies avoided courts of law, but they couldn’t escape the court of public opinion. Republicans fared so badly in the 1974 elections that prominent conservatives pronounced the GOP DOA. The party’s name was “poisoned with negatives,” said strategist Richard Viguerie. It’d be easier to sell “Typhoid Mary, the Edsel, or tickets on the Titanic.” William Rusher, publisher of National Review, wanted to scrap it all and start fresh with a “Conservative Party,” led by Ronald Reagan or George Wallace.

Reagan’s fealty didn’t harm his long-term prospects, but only because his prospects were long-term. He didn’t face voters in 1974. When he challenged Gerald Ford for the nomination in 1976, the man who’d given excuses for Nixon looked fine compared with the man who’d given him a pardon. By 1980, his water-carrying over Watergate was a non-issue.

[T]wo columnists—liberal Marquis Childs and conservative James J. Kilpatrick—published excerpts from letters sent by “Nixon loyalists,” charging that the “rotten, slanted, and biased” media “brain-washed” voters against their “brilliant” president. They warned impeachment was a “political coup d’état” that would spark “chaos.”

Initially, House Republicans—especially those on the judiciary committee—weren’t reluctant at all. Representative Edward Hutchinson, the ranking Republican, said Nixon shouldn’t be held accountable “for every little impeachable offense.” A millionaire from Michigan, Hutchinson complained in early 1974 that impeachment had been drummed up by “some eastern newspapers.” Despite the damning evidence, Hutchinson remained “unconvinced” by the “grab bag of allegations.”

Others agreed. . . . These Republicans formed a wall around Nixon, but cracks soon appeared. The committee had some liberal Republicans—a group not yet an oxymoron—but a staunch conservative, Maryland’s Lawrence Hogan, was the first from either party to announce his vote to impeach. In late July, the longtime Nixon loyalist announced that “my President has lied repeatedly” and said he had no choice.

When the time came to vote on five proposed articles of impeachment at the end of July, Hogan voted yes on three; six other Republicans voted for one or two articles. All had been warned that breaking with the party would end their political legacies, but the opposite happened. All the Republicans who approved articles of impeachment, except Hogan, stood for reelection. Five of them won. Indeed, they were repeatedly reelected . . . . Ten other Republicans voted against every article of impeachment. Most immediately regretted it. They had spent months demanding a “smoking gun” that proved the president’s role in Watergate. To their embarrassment, the recording showing just that became public only days after their vote. . . . Only one of the six was reelected that fall.

Republicans lost 48 seats in the House that fall, with many of the president’s most vocal defenders among them. Take Indiana representative Earl Landgrebe. “Don’t confuse me with the facts: I’ve got a closed mind,” he announced. “I’m going to stick with my President even if he and I have to be taken out of this building and shot.” He wasn’t shot, but voters killed his political career with a humiliating loss that fall.

I remain dumbfounded by the willingness of so many to throw away honor and even basic morality to cling to someone as morally despicable as Trump.  One can only hope they face a very hard fall and are viewed by history as moral monsters.

Republicans Try to Ignore Sondland's Devastating Testimony

As The Hill notes, Kenneth Starr of Bill Clinton impeachment fame - or infamy depending on one's views - said that Ambassador Sondland's testimony today confirmed that (i) there was a quid pro quo between Trump's administration and the Ukrainian government — which would be "bribery," in the jargon of impeachment, and (ii) the orders to push Kyiv to open an investigation into Trump's political rivals had come directly from the Oval Office.  In the Watergate era, that would likely have been enough for Senate Republicans  of yesteryear to make a trip up Pennsylvania Avenue and tell Trump that it is time to resign.  Sadly, that was then and we are living in the now where the Republican Party of today is willing to run cover for and protect an occupant of the White House who operates as a crime boss and is only too willing to use bribery of a foreign power for his political gain.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the moral bankruptcy and willful blindness of Congressional Republicans.  Here are column excerpts:

Former White House counsel John Dean’s testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee beginning in June 1973 is widely seen as the beginning of the end of the Nixon presidency. Dean testified that he had told President Richard M. Nixon that Watergate was a “cancer growing on the presidency” and that the president had proceeded with the coverup nevertheless. Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s testimony on Wednesday before the House Intelligence Committee has been likened to Dean’s — and there is even a closer comparison, for good and ill, than most of those offering the analogy realize.

“Was there a ‘quid pro quo’?” Sondland said under oath. “With regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is yes.” The sound you hear is Republican denials of a quid pro quo exploding. Sondland went on to say he was acting on “the president’s orders” in demanding that Ukraine announce an investigation of the company that employed Hunter Biden — although not to actually carry out the investigation. The distinction is significant because it undercuts the Republican conceit that Trump was genuinely interested in fighting corruption. In fact, he was only interested in damaging a potential political foe.

Sondland also destroyed the Republican cover story that he, former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker and Energy Secretary Rick Perry (the so-called three amigos), were acting on their own to blackmail Ukraine. “Everyone was in the loop,” Sondland said, and he made clear that by “everyone” he meant not only the president but also Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton.
 If this were a movie, the next scene would be Trump resigning the presidency in disgrace. But real life doesn’t work like reel life. There was no sign of Republicans abandoning the president after Sondland’s blockbuster revelations. Republicans took great comfort in Sondland’s admission that “Trump never told me directly that the aid was conditioned on meetings,” even though he also said “it was abundantly clear there was a link” and no other credible explanation for the aid holdup has ever emerged. Republicans also continued to pretend that Trump did nothing wrong because, after the whistleblower came forward, Trump said, “I want nothing” and the aid to Ukraine — though not a White House meeting — was finally delivered. Republicans are convinced that 2+2=22. It was as though Republicans had demanded of Dean: Did you hear Nixon order the Watergate break-in? Did Nixon ever explicitly say that he wanted you to commit “obstruction of justice”? Did Nixon succeed in stopping the investigation? And then used Dean’s negative answers to exonerate Nixon. What we are learning is that it’s much easier to document a president’s crimes than to get his party to give a damn. Republican leaders finally told Nixon to resign in August 1974 only after the release of the “smoking gun” tape on which Nixon could be heard directing the coverup. This was an indirect result of Dean’s testimony: Dean had told lawmakers that Nixon might have tapes of his conversations and White House aide Alexander Butterfield had subsequently confirmed the existence of the taping system. Trump is almost entirely ignorant of history but knows enough not to tape his incriminating conversations — and he is wily enough not to flat-out tell his aides “I want you to break the law.” As Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen told Congress, Trump communicates in “code” like a mob boss to make his criminal intent clear.

In a sane world, Sondland’s testimony would have ended the Trump presidency. But Republicans have made clear that their devotion to Trump is irrational and, like other religious faiths, not subject to rational refutation.

Republican Impeachment Panic Sets In

Being of an age where I vividly recall the Watergate hearings of the 1970's, it is easy to compare the impeachment buzz of that era to that which is unfolding now with Trump's more or less acknowledged improper efforts to bribe Ukraine to do his personal politically motivated smear effort.  In the 1970's, the Republican Party still contained many honorable individuals who put country over political party.  Fast forward to today where the GOP has sold its soul and now focuses almost exclusively on pandering to the party white supremacist/evangelical extremist base while engaging in political fellatio to Trump. While increasing GOP panic appears to be setting in and increasingly disingenuous lies and ploys are being wielded to try to protect Trump, one still wonders if at some point a tipping point will be reached where self-interest will finally push Republicans to throw Trump overboard. A column in New York Magazine looks at the speculation and growing GOP panic.  Here are excerpts:

Congressional testimony this week by William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine, laid out an explicit quid pro quo linking U.S. military aid for Ukraine to a Biden investigation, and detailing the rogue “diplomacy” driven by Rudy Giuliani. Is this the “smoking gun” Democrats have been waiting for?

When Richard Nixon finally was forced to concede in August 1974, that a 1972 White House tape implicated him in the Watergate cover-up, the conservative columnist George F. Will called the revelation a “smoking howitzer.” Nixon was gone four days later. Some have been recycling Will’s locution this week, with good reason given the damning evidence provided by Taylor and so many others (including Trump himself) that the president of the United States committed an unambiguous criminal act. But Trump isn’t going anywhere so fast.

Yet over the past week there have been repeated signs that he and his party are more panicked than ever. The first indication of desperation was the White House trashing of Taylor, a Vietnam combat veteran with a bipartisan 30-year-plus career in public service, as a “radical unelected bureaucrat” and “human scum” despite the fact that it was Trump’s own secretary of State and Ukraine shakedown co-conspirator, Mike Pompeo, who put Taylor in his current diplomatic post. Then came the farcical and failed effort of a congressional flash mob, approved by the president, to physically disrupt the impeachment inquiry on the spurious grounds that Republicans are being shut out of the proceedings. (Forty-eight GOP representatives are permitted to attend the hearings on impeachment.) These protesting clowns, among them the racist Iowa congressman Steve King, not only violated national security by bringing cell phones into the room but thought it was a hilarious idea to order in pizza to further dramatize their ostensibly serious act of civil disobedience.

Another sign of Trump panic was his reversal of his decision to host the G7 at his own Miami hotel — a very rare about-face, prompted by complaining GOP congressmen fearful of 2020 blowback in their own reelection campaigns. You’ll notice, too, that Trump seems to be retreating from his claim to be a “lynching” victim. This may have something to do with an unexpected editorial that ran Wednesday in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal . . . the paper’s editorial page condemned Trump for using “self-indulgent” and “reckless” and “indefensible” language that exacerbates the “political trouble” he’s in.

Now comes the pièce de résistance, reported yesterday: In response to congressional Republicans’ complaints that the White House has no coordinated impeachment battle plan, Mick Mulvaney has been tasked with “working on getting a messaging team together.” To put Mick (“Who do you believe, me or your own ears?”) Mulvaney in charge of White House messaging can only mean that either that Trump can no longer recruit new political operatives to join him in his bunker or that Baghdad Bob was not available.

As new polling puts national support for an impeachment inquiry at an all-time high, Republicans who had previously been staunch Trump defenders are showing signs of indecision. Are we seeing cracks in the wall of Trump’s GOP support?

At the moment, polling averages show that Americans support impeachment by a plurality of roughly 49 to 43 percent. For a little perspective, the authoritative Harris Poll of the Nixon era found a similar 49 to 41 percent split in May of 1974. By a July 17, 1974, Harris survey, the pro-impeachment percentage had risen to 53 percent, with only 34 percent opposed. . . . . It took another two weeks for Nixon’s GOP support in the Capitol to collapse, prompting his August 9 resignation before the House conducted a full impeachment vote.

In the case of Trump, there’s no reason to expect that Senate Republicans will turn on him incrementally. Mitt Romney and retiring House members like Francis Rooney of Florida aside, they’ll mostly remain loyal — or in the case of Susan Collins and her Vichy ilk, in hiding — until the dam breaks. As to what might break the dam, it’s worth recalling the experience of H.R. Haldeman, the Nixon chief of staff who served 18 months in prison for Watergate crimes. In his 1978 memoir, The Ends of Power, he wrote: “The cover-up collapsed because it was doomed from the start. Morally and legally it was the wrong thing to do — so it should have failed. Tactically, too many people knew too much. Too many foolish risks were taken. Too little judgement was used at every stage to evaluate the potential risk vs. the gains. And when the crunch came, too many people decided to save their own skins at whatever cost to the president or anyone else.”

Just one small but conspicuous sign of such a crunch: It’s not out of a newfound press-shyness that Giuliani has vanished from cable news and is lawyering up.

Another factor will be the public impeachment hearings that Republicans have been demanding. The concept of Be Careful for What You Wish For will be ratified once again when those hearings do arrive in as soon as three weeks.

Voters Are Warming to Impeaching Trump

Perhaps Trump fatigue is finally taking hold or perhaps the Ukrainian shakedown and requests for yet another foreign intervention into U.S. elections has awakened the heretofore lethargic, but two polls suggest that a plurality of Americans support seeing Trump impeached and ultimately removed from office.  One can only wonder if support for impeachment will grow if Democrats are smart in how they conduct hearings and properly expose Trump's criminality and abuse of his office for personal gain with no thought about the best interests of the nation (in Trump's narcissistic mind, the two are one and the same much like dictators and despots of the past).  Whatever the cause for growing support for impeachment, it is seemingly a good sign that decency and a thirst for honesty are not totally dead in today's America.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at this shift in voter opinion.  Here are excerpts:

Two new polls suggest that American voters are warming to the idea of impeaching President Trump. According to a Morning Consult poll conducted from September 24 to 26, 43 percent of the public now backs impeachment proceedings. That figure has increased seven points from an earlier Morning Consult poll, carried out from September 20 to 22. Meanwhile, an NPR–PBS NewsHour–Marist poll, conducted the day before the whistle-blower report became public, finds that voters are roughly split on the subject; 49 percent support impeachment, and 46 percent do not.

One possible reason for the increase in public support for impeachment is so obvious it almost doesn’t need an explanation. Trump is not having a very good week: As a call record and now a declassified whistle-blower report attest, Trump asked the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate the son of a political enemy — Hunter Biden — with the assistance of the Justice Department and Rudy Giuliani. Trump later tried to withhold military aid from Ukraine. The unspooling crisis encourages talk of impeachment, and a number of House Democrats have come out in support of beginning the process.

By now throwing her support behind an impeachment inquiry, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has helped shift public opinion in tandem with media coverage of Trump’s misconduct. But she is an extremely late convert to the cause of impeachment, despite the president’s corruption and alleged sexual violence. Her ambivalence provided shelter to more moderate and conservative members of the party, who think an impeachment inquiry would cost them their seats. Whether these members will follow Pelosi’s lead is an open question.

Though no one can say with certainty that voter enthusiasm for impeachment will continue to grow, the president’s handling of the Ukraine scandal has clearly harmed him. A good number of Democrats already seem to realize that the story leaves them with no option but to endorse impeachment proceedings.

But there are still stragglers. Some, like conservative Henry Cuellar of Texas, equivocated even as evidence of presidential misconduct became increasingly difficult to ignore. Cuellar, who is currently locked in a primary battle with progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros, has said that he’ll support proceedings “if investigations prove that impeachment is the necessary course of action,” the Texas Tribune reports.

The events of this month make Tlaib look prescient and underscore the risks of the party’s fearful approach to impeachment. We’ve been here before: Morning Consult says that this month’s poll numbers “nearly match” its findings in August 2018, amid the convictions of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. Public opinion is malleable, but Democrats behave too often as if the opposite is true. The window is open, and they can’t afford their old ambivalence.

One can only hope Congressional Democrats are re-watching the tapes from the Watergate investigation and formulating an approach that will convince all but the racists and religious fanatics of Trump's base that it is time for the cancer in the White House to be removed.

It's Time for Congress to Impeach Trump

During his occupancy of the White House, Donald Trump has viewed his position as that of a Mafia Don who uses his office to threaten and harm opponents, enrich himself and his family, and who views the law and norms of behavior as something to be ignored, if not flagrantly violated. For his base, as long as he maintains his racist drumbeat and continues to throw favors and privileges to Christofascists, the fact that the Constitution is being subverted and criminal behavior is being normalized simply doesn't matter.  Hopefully, a majority of Americans feel otherwise and will pay attention to the impeachment inquiry announced yesterday and support members of Congress who take their oaths of office seriously and hold fast to the concept that no one, including the president is above the law.  An op-ed by a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings lays out why Trump needs to be impeached.   Here are highlights:

For those of us who were there during Watergate, the Ukraine scandal is beginning to sound like an echo chamber.

Multiple reports say that President Trump used his office to press Ukraine’s president to investigate Joe Biden and provide damaging information about him, though there is no evidence of wrongdoing on Mr. Biden’s part. This was a bid to affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, just as the Democratic National Committee headquarters break-in at the Watergate complex aimed to affect the 1972 presidential election.

Mr. Trump’s reported actions would amount to a Nixonian misuse of presidential power that threatens our democracy and constitutes high crime and misdemeanor. The Constitution is clear: A president who uses presidential powers for purely personal and political reasons, as Mr. Trump appears to have done, commits an impeachable offense.

Mr. Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani have already acknowledged much of what has been reported about the Ukraine affair. On July 25, Mr. Trump spoke by phone with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and is said to have mentioned Mr. Biden eight times. It was not casual name dropping. Mr. Giuliani also spoke with Ukrainian officials at Mr. Trump’s direction starting last May, urging them to investigate Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump admits that about a week before the infamous phone call, he put nearly $400 million in congressionally appropriated military aid for Ukraine on hold. It was not released until Sept, 11, after news broke of a whistle-blower complaint about the Zelensky call, a complaint that the inspector general for the intelligence community found “credible” and “of urgent concern.” This strongly suggests there was no legitimate reason for the hold. [A]n unredacted version of the complaint must be released, and since the transcripts Richard Nixon turned over to Congress were doctored, Congress should also demand a backup recording of the call. Assuming Mr. Trump refuses, Ukraine undoubtedly has a transcript and a recording. That recording could well be analogous to the Nixon White House tapes, which showed the president’s personal involvement in the cover-up, and Congress should request it immediately.

Like Mr. Nixon, Mr. Trump appears to have acted for his own personal political interests as opposed to a legitimate national interest. Mr. Nixon used his personal lawyer to pay hush money to the Watergate burglars. Mr. Trump used his personal attorney as the go-between with Mr. Zelensky, urging the Ukrainian president to work with Mr. Giuliani to investigate Mr. Biden.

Going through Mr. Giuliani says it all. If Mr. Trump had a shred of evidence against Mr. Biden or any legitimate governmental objective in view, he would have directed the Justice Department or State Department to work directly with Ukraine.

Holding up military assistance to coerce Ukraine into investigating Mr. Biden is itself a grave, impeachable abuse of power if done for personal and political reasons. The inspector general made a reference to a promise to a foreign leader in the whistle-blower’s complaint, though we don’t yet know what it was. If Mr. Trump promised to reward Ukraine with military aid for finding dirt on Mr. Biden, that could constitute bribery, a separate constitutional ground for impeachment.

It’s a violation of campaign finance law to solicit campaign help from a foreign country, as Mr. Trump knows well from the Russia collusion investigation. It’s also Nixonian.

Although we didn’t know this at the time of his impeachment, Mr. Nixon also secretly sought the help of a foreign government during his 1968 election campaign. Worried that the Vietnam peace treaty President Lyndon B. Johnson was pursuing would cause his defeat, Mr. Nixon sabotaged it by secretly promising South Vietnam it would do better under a Nixon presidency. It worked. The treaty talks failed, voters elected Mr. Nixon, and peace did not come for many more years.

As the legal commentator Benjamin Wittes noted last week on the website Lawfare, in addition to constituting abuse of power, pressuring Ukraine to investigate Mr. Biden and his son for political purposes violates their civil liberties. That also recalls Watergate, because Mr. Nixon violated the civil liberties of Daniel Ellsberg, who was being prosecuted for leaking the Pentagon Papers. Among the grounds for Nixon’s impeachment was his involvement in breaking into Mr. Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, seeking information to smear him.

Like Mr. Nixon’s, Mr. Trump’s reported actions demand impeachment — the one remedy to protect the rule of law, the rights of Americans and the integrity of our elections from a president bent on violating them. The framers created the impeachment power to safeguard democracy. It is Congress’s urgent responsibility to use it now.

One Day After Midterms Trump Reminds Us He's A Danger to the Rule of Law

One very next day after the 2018 midterm elections saw Democrats set to retake control of the House of Representatives, Donald Trump reminded us all that he is a clear and present danger to the rule of law, continues to be a strident racist and  will perhaps go to any and all lengths to kill the Mueller Russiagate investigation to protect family members and himself from criminal indictment and/or impeachment. By firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump seems to be openly endeavoring to obstruct justice and place himself above the law.  For those of us of a certain age, it brings back a sense of deja vu of the Watergate "Saturday Night Massacre."  The main difference between then and now is that today's Congressional Republicans put their party over democracy and the U.S. Constitution.   Trump's rant today that he can fire anyone he wants and trashing of news reports shows that he has a mind set akin to that of the dictators of the 1930's.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the looming constitutional crisis.  Here are excerpts:

Just in case the Democratic capture of the House of Representatives tempted you to relax for a moment about the state of our country, President Trump quickly moved to remind us that we still have no idea how low he’s going to sink — or how much damage he’ll do along the way.

This happened on multiple fronts. Here’s the most immediate one:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned on Wednesday at President Trump’s request, ending the tenure of a loyalist Trump had soured on shortly after Sessions took office in 2017 because the former senator from Alabama had recused himself from oversight of the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

At the center of this decision to force out Sessions is the ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Trump has long raged at Sessions for recusing himself from the probe, rather than constraining it on Trump’s behalf. We all knew this day would come as a result, because, as The Post notes, the two men were fundamentally at odds over whether it’s the proper role of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer to protect Trump’s personal and legal interests . . . . it has long been obvious that any attorney general who did not place Trump’s own interests over those of the country would have to go. Democrats immediately pounced on the news that Whitaker will replace him, pointing to highly questionable comments he’s made about the Mueller probe. Before becoming Sessions’s chief of staff, Whitaker suggested regulations allowed for Trump to put in an acting replacement for the attorney general — meaning one who would not have to be confirmed by the Senate — who could, if he wished, starve the Mueller probe of funds . . . . Now this person, conveniently enough, is Whitaker.
 Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein oversees the investigation, but the new acting attorney general, by not recusing himself, might be able to carry out such a scenario. According to legal expert Stephen Vladeck, Whitaker supplants Rosenstein as overseer of the investigation. This raises at least the possibility that some sort of effort to constrain the probe could be put in motion during the lame-duck period, that is, before Democrats take over the House. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer is calling on Whitaker to recuse himself over his previous comments. And Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, just put out a statement pointing out that “replacing the Attorney General with a non-Senate-confirmed political staffer is highly irregular and unacceptable.” Blumenthal called for new legislation to protect the Mueller investigation, describing this as a “break the glass moment.” [N]ote that it comes after Trump gave a startlingly unhinged performance at a news conference Wednesday. He flatly declared he can “fire” everyone associated with the Mueller investigation if he wishes . . . . . then, after a reporter pressed Trump on whether his declaration that he is a “nationalist” amounted to an embrace of white nationalism . . . . [Trump] dress[ed] down a black reporter’s question (Trump was also very abusive toward another black female reporter, April Ryan) about his white nationalism as “racist.” Given that these groups are already emboldened by the ongoing mainstreaming of their views at the hands of Trump and others, this is just an extraordinary act of malicious and destructive intent. There is a tendency after big electoral victories such as the one last night to grow a bit complacent, to imagine that a semblance of normalcy has been restored. In multiple ways, Trump reminded us today that we can’t relax even for a second.

I remain convinced that, if allowed to do his job, Mueller will likely expose massive money laundering operations involving Trump and his organizations and Russians and perhaps even treason.  Crimes that would put Trump in prison for the rest of his life and see Ivanka and Donnie Jr. spend many years in prison along with him.  The Mueller investigation must be protected at all costs.

Bob Woodward's New Book Paints a Damning Portrait of Trump

Those of us of a certain age remember the Watergate crisis all too well.  We also remember two journalist who helped pave the way for the ultimate removal of Richard Nixon from the Oval Office: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.   Now, Woodward has a new book about to hit the stands entitled "Fear" that paints a picture of a hideous and unstable regime that has Der Trumpenführer in spittle flecked rants. The Washington Post looks at the book that once again tells Americans that Trump is unfit for office, something that was always obvious to Americans not consumed by greed and religious and racially based hatred of their fellow citizens.  The take away?  Be very, very afraid. Secondly, Trump voters DO deserve to be viewed with contempt and derision.  Here are article highlights (read the entire piece): 

Woodward depicts Trump’s anger and paranoia about the Russia inquiry as unrelenting, at times paralyzing the West Wing for entire days. Learning of the appointment of Mueller in May 2017, Trump groused, “Everybody’s trying to get me”— part of a venting period that shellshocked aides compared to Richard Nixon’s final days as president.

The 448-page book was obtained by The Washington Post. Woodward, an associate editor at The Post, sought an interview with Trump through several intermediaries to no avail. The president called Woodward in early August, after the manuscript had been completed, to say he wanted to participate. The president complained that it would be a “bad book,” according to an audio recording of the conversation. Woodward replied that his work would be “tough,” but factual and based on his reporting.

A central theme of the book is the stealthy machinations used by those in Trump’s inner sanctum to try to control his impulses and prevent disasters, both for the president personally and for the nation he was elected to lead.

Woodward describes “an administrative coup d’etat” and a “nervous breakdown” of the executive branch, with senior aides conspiring to pluck official papers from the president’s desk so he couldn’t see or sign them.

Again and again, Woodward recounts at length how Trump’s national security team was shaken by his lack of curiosity and knowledge about world affairs and his contempt for the mainstream perspectives of military and intelligence leaders.

At a National Security Council meeting on Jan. 19, Trump disregarded the significance of the massive U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula, . . . . After Trump left the meeting, Woodward recounts, “Mattis was particularly exasperated and alarmed, telling close associates that the president acted like — and had the understanding of — ‘a fifth- or sixth-grader.’ ”

In Woodward’s telling, many top advisers were repeatedly unnerved by Trump’s actions and expressed dim views of him. “Secretaries of defense don’t always get to choose the president they work for,” Mattis told friends at one point, prompting laughter as he explained Trump’s tendency to go off on tangents about subjects such as immigration and the news media.

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly frequently lost his temper and told colleagues that he thought the president was “unhinged,” Woodward writes. In one small group meeting, Kelly said of Trump: “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”

Reince Priebus, Kelly’s predecessor, fretted that he could do little to constrain Trump from sparking chaos. Woodward writes that Priebus dubbed the presidential bedroom, where Trump obsessively watched cable news and tweeted, “the devil’s workshop,” . . . .

A near-constant subject of withering presidential attacks was Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump told Porter that Sessions was a “traitor” for recusing himself from overseeing the Russia investigation, Woodward writes. Mocking Sessions’s accent, Trump added, “This guy is mentally retarded. He’s this dumb Southerner. … He couldn’t even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama.”

With Trump’s rage and defiance impossible to contain, Cabinet members and other senior officials learned to act discreetly. Woodward describes an alliance among Trump’s traditionalists — including Mattis and Gary Cohn, the president’s former top economic adviser — to stymie what they considered dangerous acts.

Cohn came to regard the president as “a professional liar” and threatened to resign in August 2017 over Trump’s handling of a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. Cohn, who is Jewish, was especially shaken when one of his daughters found a swastika on her college dorm room.

Trump was sharply criticized for initially saying that “both sides” were to blame. At the urging of advisers, he then condemned white supremacists and neo-Nazis, but almost immediately told aides, “That was the biggest fucking mistake I’ve made” and the “worst speech I’ve ever given,” according to Woodward’s account.

Dowd then explained to Mueller and Quarles why he was trying to keep the president from testifying: “I’m not going to sit there and let him look like an idiot. And you publish that transcript, because everything leaks in Washington, and the guys overseas are going to say, ‘I told you he was an idiot. I told you he was a goddamn dumbbell. What are we dealing with this idiot for?’ ”

Later that month, Dowd told Trump: “Don’t testify. It’s either that or an orange jumpsuit.” . . . . “I’ll be a real good witness,” Trump told Dowd, according to Woodward.  “You are not a good witness,” Dowd replied. “Mr. President, I’m afraid I just can’t help you.”  The next morning, Dowd resigned.

The Striking Parallels of Nixon in 1973 and Trump in 2018

Many of us of a certain age and older remember being glued to the television as the Watergate hearings were broadcast and slowly revealed Richard Nixon in all of his depravity.  Would that more, especially Republicans, remembered those days and the hearings and the behavior they revealed.  Flash forward to today and we have another occupant of the White House who has revealed his depravity without even needing Congressional hearings to expose his unfitness.  Today, between Twitter rants, daily lies, and, of course boasts on the Access Hollywood tape, anyone not living under a stone or solely motivated by racism and/or homophobia knows the foulness of Donald Trump. Yet far too many Republicans refuse to open their eyes and put short term partisanship over the best interests of America.  It is truly stomach wrenching, yet that is the reality of today's Republican Party. A column in the New York Times reminds us of the parallels between Nixon and Trump and the only question thinking Americans can ask themselves is what will it take to make Republicans to put the nation as the first priority.  Here are column highlights:

The president attacked the investigation into his wrongdoing at the most inappropriate of places and in the most indecorous of ways, saying: “Let others spend their time dealing with the murky, small, unimportant, vicious little things. We have spent our time and will spend our time building a better world.”

Moments later, he came back to his grievances, saying that the nation should “not let ourselves be remembered only for the petty, little, indecent things that seem to obsess us at a time when the world is going by.”

That could well have been Donald Trump, but it’s not. You can tell by the complexity of syntax and the absence of nicknames, charges of “fake news” and the guilt-triggered repetition of “there was no collusion.”

No, the person speaking was Richard Nixon in 1973 . . . . . It was at the height of the Watergate investigation. Nixon, like Trump, was trying to minimize the import of the investigation and to cast it as a personal, “vicious,” and “petty” attack. It wasn’t.

Indeed, the parallels between Trump now and Nixon then are extraordinary.  As revelations of wrongdoing multiplied, many Republican senators continued to try to protect and console Nixon.

Nixon’s hostility toward the press grew, and the press was emboldened by his aggression. As one reporter then told The Times, “The President has declared war, and the war is on.”

Nixon was fighting — and losing — his battle to keep secret White House tapes from being released. The very real possibility of a constitutional crisis loomed as Nixon signaled a desire to defy the courts on the matter, offering instead a written summary of the tapes.

Feeling increasingly cornered and desperate, Nixon did the unthinkable in October of 1973: He ordered the firing of Cox and the abolition of Cox’s office in what would become known as the “Saturday Night Massacre.”

On July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over the tapes. In less than a week after the tapes’ release, the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment: obstruction of justice, abuse of power and contempt of Congress.

[T]he actual language here is instructive. In Article I, the committee found that Nixon had “prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice.”

In Article II, it found that he had “repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purpose of these agencies.”

And, in Article III, it found Nixon had “failed without lawful cause or excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives,” concluding that “In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government,

It is hard to read all of this, based simply on what is publicly known and excluding what special counsel Robert Mueller may know, without concluding that we are already in the territory where a case for impeachment can credibly be made.
Of course, these are different times.

The Republican Party is so infected with Trumpism, so fevered in its defense of him, so completely compromised by its alignment with him, that its members are not placing the well-being of the nation and fidelity to the Constitution first and foremost.

But even during the Nixon presidency, Republicans didn’t feel compelled to act until they were jolted out of inaction by the unassailable proof of Nixon’s voice on tape.

It is not clear even that would move today’s Republicans. Trump has already been caught on tape bragging about sexually assaulting women. He was still elected, and now congressional leaders grovel at his feet and laud his leadership.

We now see Trump trying to portray an air of confidence and control, but being betrayed at every turn by his own actions, which reveal a panicked man looking to purge anyone conducting an honest investigation.

This is no longer about Trump alone. This is now an indictment of the entire Republican Party — the elected officials and the still strident Trump voters — as well as the Trump propaganda machine at Fox News (“news” clearly being a misnomer).

These folks are engaged in an attack on the country from within. They are attacking our institutions. They are attacking the truth. All of this is being done to protect Trump rather than protect America.

This inches us further away from democracy and closer to despotism. Might as well call a thing a thing.

White House Counsel Resignation Threat Stopped Trump From Firing Mueller

Watching the train wreck that is the Trump/Pence White House, one would think that even a dumb as a brick narcissist like Trump would have learned from the firing of James Comey that firing those investigating you and/or your enablers and sycophants really is not a smart idea.  Yet, last night the New York Times reported that back in June, 2017, Trump ordered special counsel Robert Mueller fired.  Indeed, only the refusal of White House counsel  Donald F. McGahn II to carry out the order followed by McGahn's treat to resign stopped Der Trumpenführer from a move that would have greatly increased the political crisis that has basically gripped the country since before before Trump moved into the White House.  Trump's enablers and apologists can whine and rant all they want, but the one clear take away is that Trump is trying to hide something and will go to great lengths to thwart legitimate investigations. Here are excerpts from the Time's newest report: 

President Trump ordered the firing last June of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation, according to four people told of the matter, but ultimately backed down after the White House counsel threatened to resign rather than carry out the directive.

The West Wing confrontation marks the first time Mr. Trump is known to have tried to fire the special counsel. Mr. Mueller learned about the episode in recent months as his investigators interviewed current and former senior White House officials in his inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice.

[Trump] began to argue that Mr. Mueller had three conflicts of interest that disqualified him from overseeing the investigation, two of the people said.

First, he claimed that a dispute years ago over fees at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., had prompted Mr. Mueller, the F.B.I. director at the time, to resign his membership. The president also said Mr. Mueller could not be impartial because he had most recently worked for the law firm that previously represented the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Finally, the president said, Mr. Mueller had been interviewed to return as the F.B.I. director the day before he was appointed special counsel in May.

After receiving the president’s order to fire Mr. Mueller, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, refused to ask the Justice Department to dismiss the special counsel, saying he would quit instead, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation.

Mr. McGahn disagreed with the president’s case and told senior White House officials that firing Mr. Mueller would have a catastrophic effect on Mr. Trump’s presidency. Mr. McGahn also told White House officials that Mr. Trump would not follow through on the dismissal on his own. The president then backed off.

Mr. McGahn, a longtime Republican campaign finance lawyer in Washington who served on the Federal Election Commission, was the top lawyer on Mr. Trump’s campaign. He has been involved in nearly every key decision Mr. Trump has made — like the firing of the former F.B.I. director — that is being scrutinized by Mr. Mueller. Another option that Mr. Trump considered in discussions with his advisers was dismissing the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, and elevating the department’s No. 3 official, Rachel Brand, to oversee Mr. Mueller. Mr. Rosenstein has overseen the investigation since March, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself. Mr. Trump has long demonstrated a preoccupation with those who have overseen the Russia investigation. In March, after Mr. McGahn failed to persuade Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the inquiry, Mr. Trump complained that he needed someone loyal to oversee the Justice Department.

The former F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said Mr. Trump asked him for loyalty and encouraged him to drop an investigation into his former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn. Mr. Comey said he sidestepped those requests. He was soon fired.

The parallels between Trump's actions and the firings that brought Watergate - and Nixon's ultimate resignation - to a head are uncanny.  Having lived through that era and watched many of the hearings, I continue to believe that Trump is guilty of something be it collusion with Russia and/or obstruction of justice. Something stinks to high heaven.   

The Trump Administration’s Looming Political Crisis

It is election day here in Virginia but regardless of the outcome this evening, a piece in the New Yorker argues that America will be facing more drama and upheaval as the regime of Donald Trump, a/k/a Der  Trumpenführer, and Mike Pence lurches closer to a political crisis when additional indictments by special counsel Robert Mueller include more of Trump's inner circle or even Trump himself.  If these were normal times such as even back in the Watergate era, the Republican Party could be counted on to stand for the rule of law and democracy and the potential actions of Trump would be restrained.  Now, all bets are off as a majority of Republicans put their political party over the nation and normal legal norms.  As a prior post noted, Trump continues to seek to exceed his powers and to push for an authoritarian regime with his word becoming binding fiat.  Here are article highlights of what may lie ahead:

It was only a year ago that voters delivered Donald Trump to the Presidency. It feels much longer. Trump’s Twitter storms and erraticism can seem to slow time. There was his initial travel ban, last January, followed by protests at airports, court injunctions, a new travel ban, further injunctions, and an intervention by the Supreme Court. Add to this his adventures in nuclear brinkmanship; his assault on Obamacare; his moves to tear apart the world’s free-trade system; and his use of the White House bully pulpit to normalize white supremacy. It may seem many months ago, yet it was only in mid-August that he took note of the “very fine people” attending a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, where a white nationalist murdered a counter-protester. . . . Trump’s conduct rarely suggests deliberation; it more often seems to express his anger, his tiresome ego, and his instincts for performance.

It requires fortitude to accept the likelihood that the Trump Presidency is about to become more eventful still. The investigations into Vladimir Putin’s interference in the 2016 election, and the possibility that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia, are intensifying. The accusation that Russian covert operations influenced the Presidential vote clearly drives Trump to distraction.  . . . the latest revelations do not bode well for the President.

Last week, congressional committees summoned representatives from Facebook, Google, and Twitter to grill them about how they could possibly have allowed polarizing, race-baiting ads to be placed on their platforms by companies linked to the Kremlin. . . . . It is shocking that only now, and after early denials from Facebook that the ads were a serious problem, are we discovering the vast online spread of manipulative content linked to Russia.

The Justice Department has also made a leap forward in its efforts to clarify Russia’s interference and to prosecute anyone involved in illegality. Last week, Robert Mueller, the special counsel, announced the indictment of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, and an associate, Rick Gates, . . . the indictment served notice to Manafort that if he wishes to avoid a long prison sentence he might consider talking with Mueller’s investigators about, for example, what Trump knew about Russia’s efforts to help him get elected.

A Justice Department investigation of a sitting President or his senior aides creates its own ecosystem of betrayals and political calculations. When considering Donald Trump’s position, it is natural to reflect on Watergate and the events that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation, in 1974. The political equation is more favorable for Trump than it was for Nixon. . . . Trump remains popular with committed Republican voters, and the Party’s congressional wing has so far been largely supine.

The President’s allies at Fox News and at the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page continue to denigrate Mueller, priming the Republican base for a day when Trump might decide to fire him. Judging by Trump’s tweets, there can be no doubt that he would if he thought he could get away with it.

Such an intervention would precipitate a political crisis with an unpredictable outcome. Trump occupies the White House in an era of heightened Presidential powers. He may be constrained by his unpopularity outside the Republican Party, as well as by the professionalism of the F.B.I., the judiciary, and the press. But, as Archibald Cox observed just before he was fired, “Eventually, a President can always work his will.” In all probability, the country’s most dangerous trials during the Trump Administration lie ahead.

 I for one am fearful for the future. Trump - and Pence - is a malignancy on the nation and moral society.

Trump v. Mueller - Is A Constitutional Crisis At Hand?

Since being sworn into office Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, has routinely lied and ignored the rule of law and separation of powers as well as the independence of the FBI.  In an interview with the New York Times, Trump made it clear that he wants the FBI to report to him and to be loyal to him personally.  Allegiance to the U.S. Constitution on the part of government officials is nowhere on the radar screen for Trump who seemingly wants the FBI to act in the same manner as Vladimir Putin's intelligence agencies and secret police.  Equally disturbing is Trump's threats toward the Justice Department and special prosecutor, Robert Mueller who is apparently investigating both Donald Trump, Jr., meeting that sought to collude with Russia and many of the Trump financial transactions.  Should Trump attempt to fire Mueller, the parallels with Watergate will be almost complete but for the fact that Trump's possible crimes far exceed those of Richard Nixon during the Watergate era. Frighteningly, I have little faith in Congressional Republicans putting America first over the short term power of the Republican Party.  Here are excerpts from the New York Times on the very troubling interview:  

In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, the president also accused James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director he fired in May, of trying to leverage a dossier of compromising material to keep his job. Mr. Trump criticized both the acting F.B.I. director who has been filling in since Mr. Comey’s dismissal and the deputy attorney general who recommended it. And he took on Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel now leading the investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election.

Mr. Trump said Mr. Mueller was running an office rife with conflicts of interest and warned investigators against delving into matters too far afield from Russia. Mr. Trump never said he would order the Justice Department to fire Mr. Mueller, nor would he outline circumstances under which he might do so. But he left open the possibility as he expressed deep grievance over an investigation that has taken a political toll in the six months since he took office.

Asked if Mr. Mueller’s investigation would cross a red line if it expanded to look at his family’s finances beyond any relationship to Russia, Mr. Trump said, “I would say yes.” He would not say what he would do about it. “I think that’s a violation. Look, this is about Russia.”

He said that as far as he knew, he was not under investigation himself, despite reports that Mr. Mueller is looking at whether the president obstructed justice by firing Mr. Comey. Trump left little doubt during the interview that the Russia investigation remained a sore point. His pique at Mr. Sessions, in particular, seemed fresh even months after the attorney general’s recusal. Mr. Sessions was the first senator to endorse Mr. Trump’s candidacy and was rewarded with a key cabinet slot, but has been more distant from the president lately.

“Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president,” he added. “How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you.’

The president added a new allegation against Mr. Comey, whose dismissal has become a central issue for critics who said it amounted to an attempt to obstruct the investigation into Russian meddling in the election and any possible collusion with Mr. Trump’s team. . . . Mr. Trump said he believed Mr. Comey told him about the dossier to implicitly make clear he had something to hold over the president. Mr. Comey testified before Congress that he disclosed the details of the dossier to Mr. Trump because he thought that the media would soon be publishing details from it and that Mr. Trump had a right to know what information was out there about him. Mr. Trump was also critical of Mr. Mueller, a longtime former F.B.I. director, reprising some of his past complaints that lawyers in his office contributed money to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. The president also expressed discontent with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, a former federal prosecutor from Baltimore. . . . He complained that Mr. Rosenstein had in effect been on both sides when it came to Mr. Comey. The deputy attorney general recommended Mr. Comey be fired but then appointed Mr. Mueller, who may be investigating whether the dismissal was an obstruction of justice.

The take away?  Trump is a vindictive liar and only too willing to tell untruths about others and to throw the nation into a constitutional crisis in a desperate attempt to deflect attention from his own actions and the possible criminal activities of his son, son-in-law, and Trump sycophants.  Be very, very afraid.

Watching the Downfall of a Presidency

Watching the events unfold around Russiagate I am repeatedly reminded of Watergate except the current scandal has a much more sinister nature given that the apparent crime was conspiracy with a hostile foreign government.   Both Richard Nixon and Donald Trump display mental health issues, in my opinion, that rang from deep paranoia to megalomania not to mention a sense that they are smarter than everyone else and above the law. But with Russiagate, we see a similar arrogance and sense of something much more than mere entitlement on display by Donald Trump, Jr., and Jared Kushner.  Frank Rich, in a piece in New York Magazine  looks at the continuing unfolding of events. A piece in Talking Points Memo attributes the behavior of the main players to the ethos of the New York City real estate moguls where the wealthy see themselves as above the law and where shady dealings are far too prevalent.  The latter piece also argues that the Trump family players have no idea of the magnitude of the trouble that they are in as a consequence of this bubble like reality.  Some will ask where does Mike Pence fit into all of this despite his efforts to feign ignorance about everything even though he was in the midst of the Trump campaign?  From years of watching the self-anointed "evangelical Christian" leadership crowd, I believe that Pence's motivation stems from something different: the Christofascist view that the end justifies the means, be it lying or, in this case conspiring with an enemy nation.  The goal for Pence is furthering a quasi-Christian theocracy and special rights for Christofascists and this end justifies any means.  Here are excerpts from Rich's lengthy column:

There will be no single smoking gun that will bring down this White House. It will be death by firing squad — or perhaps a sequence of firing squads — as the whole story inexorably pours out of the administration’s smoldering ruins. This week’s bombshell has the feel of gallows humor. Trump Jr.’s panicked release of the self-incriminating emails is tantamount to picking up a loaded gun and shooting himself in the head. Why did Little Donald not do what the Trumps always do in these situations — let the press (in this case the Times) go ahead and report its incriminating findings, rail against leakers, and then dismiss the latest incontrovertible evidence of wrongdoing as “fake news”? Was Little Donald trying to protect his father from even worse revelations? To take down his brother-in-law even as his brother-in-law (a possible source of the emails) tried to take down him? To deliver a message from or to the Kremlin? For all we know, the released email chain may be only a small and relatively minor part of a much larger criminal web that stretches from Donald Trump’s tax returns to his and the Kushner family’s respective real-estate dealings in Russia and beyond. The authorities who matter — the investigators at the special counsel’s office and the FBI — are not telling us what they are up to. They may already know — or may soon know — of evidence far more incriminating than the revelations of the past 72 hours. Even this morning we are learning via McClatchy’s estimable Washington bureau that investigators are looking into possible coordination between the Jared Kushner–run Trump campaign digital operation and Russia’s “sophisticated voter targeting and fake-news attacks on Hillary Clinton in 2016.” The good news for those who want to see justice done is that this scandal not only resembles Watergate but also The Godfather — albeit a Godfather where every Corleone is a Fredo and not a single lawyer is as crafty as Tom Hagen, despite the fact that Little Donald’s private attorney has a history of defending clients from mob families. The level of stupidity of the conspirators is staggering: Not the least of the week’s news is that Kushner thought he could get away with omitting this Trump Tower meeting on the government questionnaire he filed to get his security clearance. (The $2.5 million that Charles Kushner donated to Harvard to gain his son admission was not money well spent.) Now it’s every man (and his lawyer) for himself as the president, having hidden from the press and the public ever since he returned home from his Yalta-themed tête-à-tête with Vladimir Putin, escapes to France, of all places. His press secretary is also in hiding, as is his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, who as recently as Sunday dismissed the Donald Jr. story as a “nothingburger” — Trumpspeak for the Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler’s designation of Watergate as a “third-rate burglary.” About the only administration stalwart not remaining silent is the vice-president, whose statement following the release of the Donald Jr. emails let it be known that he was “not aware” of the Trump Tower meeting and that it had taken place before he joined the campaign. Mike Pence has clearly been boning up on Gerald Ford, and may already be brooding about the risks entailed if he should eventually be in the position to pardon the 45th president. Republicans in Congress have been slow to respond to this story, if they’ve commented at all. Is silence an effective strategy?  It’s not a strategy. It’s desperation. Much like their predecessors in the Nixon era, they keep hoping somehow it will all go away so they can get back to business as usual. After all, it was less than a month ago that David Brooks, writing in the Times, reassured them that there was “little evidence” of “any actual collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russians” and that “most voters don’t really care” anyway. Prominent Republicans continued to use this script after the release of the Trump Jr. emails . .  . A furrowed brow is still what passes for bravery among Republican politicians these days.

They can run from reality and reporters, but they can’t hide indefinitely. As I’ve written before, the closer we get to the 2018 midterms, the faster Republicans in the House — and some of those up for reelection in the Senate — will scramble for the lifeboats. But by the time they wake up and see the looming iceberg, it may be too late to save their careers.

Trapping the Senate in Washington is not going to lead to the passage of the latest rewrite of the Senate health-care bill (whatever is in it). What we are likely to get instead is two weeks’ worth of television shots of Republican senators scurrying down the halls or shutting their office doors to escape reporters. Other things not happening this summer: tax reform, an infrastructure initiative, or the raising of the federal debt ceiling. The vacuum will be filled by the steady drip, if not flood, of White House revelations that neither the president nor his Capitol Hill enablers, apologists, and collaborators can stop. If McConnell were really canny, what he’d be doing right now is gaming out how his party will respond to the next looming constitutional crisis: Trump’s inevitable version of the Saturday Night Massacre, in which Robert Mueller is fired, and Rod Rosenstein along with him. For all of us, a little perspective is in order. Little Donald is not the story here any more than G. Gordon Liddy and those third-rate burglars were the story in Watergate. We are likely to reach a point when this week’s firestorm will be remembered mainly as a warm-up for conflagrations yet to come.

For the sake of the nation, I hope all of them fall, including Pence.  Some say but that would leave us with Paul Ryan, a man I see as utterly amoral.  This may be true, but a hopefully chastened Ryan and a severely damaged GOP reeling from Trump's fall may still be the lesser of the evils.