Trump/Russia: Waiting for The Other Shoe to Drop
This Weak in Politics, Vol. LXXXIV
July 13, 2017
What a week! The still shy of 6-months old Trump administration continues to make news and make history at a record pace — including going from Inauguration to the first articles of impeachment being filed faster than any administration on record.
The big news this week was the revelation that Donald Trump Jr. is apparently an expert on the finer points of Russo-American adoption laws. This, according to the White House.
For the rest of us based here in reality, the news was watching the 17,633rd shoe to drop on the Trump Russia story; a story that has produced a steady stream of bad news for President Trump since before his swearing-in, and one that hit a frenzied pace this week.
Just how fast has the news been breaking? Well, we’ll put it this way: in each of the three stories that broke from Saturday through Monday, regarding Donald “Mike Flynn” Trump, Jr. (which we discuss at length later), Trump, Jr. had not even finished lying about the first story before the press had already moved on to the second.
To put this another way, in the movie version of this period in history, the spinning newspaper between scenes won’t even have time to stop.
And fittingly, it is indeed print newspapers that are breaking much of the current news. The New York Times (full disclosure: The NY Times and TWITPOL have a combined circulation of 928,000 and have won a combined 122 Pulitzer Prizes) has been leading the way in breaking the news on the Trump Russia story. The Times, like other newspapers, in an increasingly desperate effort to remain relevant in a digital age, has begun revealing daily damaging stories about the administration well into the evening. The procedure, called “taking a gigantic Trump” has become all the rage. Print outlets wait until after 9pm to break big stories. This is because 9pm is both after the networks have concluded their newscasts on the west coast and after the bedtime of most bloggers.
In case you missed it — and our sister publication, the NY Times, did its level best to make sure you didn’t — Donald Trump, Jr. (whom we are told is a high- quality person with admirable transparency) seems to indeed have colluded with Russians. While apologists may call this a “leak” and “fake news,” it is important to note the leaker of Donald Trump, Jr.’s emails was Donald Trump, Jr.
Despite having grown accustomed to bad news, administration officials still reacted strongly upon learning of the devastating nature of Donald Jr.’s email chain. Here are photos taken of key officials the very moment they were informed of the NYT’s bombshell news:
Trump critics have called Junior’s emails a smoking gun, while Trump supporters have called it a nothingburger (which as a word is annoying, childish and should only be uttered by shitburgers.) We will not take sides in that debate. We will simply show you a photo of the email and let you decide for yourself.
We aren’t saying that our nation’s politics have become juvenile and unsophisticated, but, a fair summary of this week’s news would look like this: The president this week said his son is a good boy, the president’s son said “they did it first,” Trump’s Republican allies said of allegations that they are colluders, “I know you are, but what am I?” and Mitch McConnell shortened everyone’s recess. Not to be outdone, Trump added that if he doesn’t get his way, he is taking his wall and going home. (Note: “going home” was a euphemism for “shutting down the government.” Sadly, this is an instance where the president was not to be taken literally.)
But we digress. Let’s not be distracted by the news; let’s move from news back to the distraction.
Trump Jr., who had been on the record saying that allegations of secret meetings with Russians were disgusting lies, has changed his story often. Just this week he was saying he may have met with the KGB lawyer, but that he didn’t know her name or what the meeting was about. That evolved into “I did what anyone who was offered opposition research would do.” We expect him to end the week by saying “oh, collude! Did I collude? Yes. Of course I did. I thought you said “exclude! As in ‘did I exclude any Russians?’ Definitely not.” And finally, his defense will be: “I’m not really Donald Trump, Jr.”
He’s a high-quality person after all.
Interestingly, Trump Jr.’s actual defense is: “Of course I colluded with Russians. They said they had information that Hillary Clinton was colluding with Russians. That would have been a huge story. I don’t know why you guys are making a big story out of this.”
The story is indeed big. Sufficiently so that it is time to trot out the old Watergate era question, “What did the president know, and are you fucking kidding me? They were that explicit in emails?!?” You’d think this crew has never read anybody’s emails (though evidence suggests they definitely read Hillary Clinton’s and John Podesta’s).
Even allies of Trump, including his favorite media outlet, saw the latest news as the proverbial drip…drip…drip of scandals past.
All this being said, Trump’s party holds control of both the House and the Senate. As such, it is very unlikely that pesky little legal troubles will be sufficient to derail his presidency.
Truth be told, legal issues have been a part of the Trump story for decades. A recent analysis shows that Trump and/or his businesses have been sued 4,095 times in 30 years. That averages 2.6 lawsuits per week. In short Donald Trump gets sued more often (2.6 times per week) than the average American man gets laid (.0000043 times per week).
In other news (believe it or not, there was other news), the Senate this week began confirmation hearings for Trump’s pick to head up the FBI until he fires him. Whoever replaces James B. Comey will be put in a difficult situation — replacing an internally popular but externally polarizing predecessor, trying to boost agency morale and keeping a critical, and heavily investigated president at bay all the while serving at that very president’s pleasure.
Who could possibly walk that line between serving, pleasing and taking a beating? None other than Christopher “50 Shades Of” Wray.
Trump’s relationship with the FBI continued its off again-off again tradition. This week also saw the administration reversing the decision to build a new headquarters for the agency.
To recap what this means for the Trump/ FBI relationship, here’s a succinct overview: The President of the United States unexpectedly and abruptly halted the process of building a modern facility for the FBI to replace the one that is so old that it was built before we knew J. Edgar Hoover was a cross-dresser. Trump did this, apparently without consulting with the acting FBI director (McCabe) who replaced the FBI director Trump fired (and called a nutjob) to relieve pressure from the Russia investigation. There is no word on how this will impact Trump’s relationship with the bureau (which Trump called a disaster), or the agents (whom Trump called “leakers” and suggested work for a rigged system).
And finally, we have late breaking word that “musician” Kid Rock is seriously contemplating entering the 2018 United States Senate race from the state of Michigan. Ha! What a dolt! There is no way a foul-mouthed, ignorant, controversial celebrity Republican could EVER carry Michigan! We should know…we are beltway pundits and we have seen the polling.
And that’s the way the weak spent the week in a nation where we are still trying to figure out how to get poor people health coverage (something over 5 dozen countries have been doing for decades). Saying the United States is working to “get poor people health coverage” is a bit of an overstatement, as one of the parties (hint: it rhymes with G.O Me.) is trying to strip poor people of health care coverage by replacing it with “freedom.” The U.S. Senate has been unable to achieve either of those goals because it is too busy thinking about building a giant wall to keep Mexicans out.
Meanwhile, China has begun teleporting things into space. Seriously.
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