18 April 2018

Whistling Past the Graveyard

The American Prospect published an excellent piece yesterday (link here) with the title "Trump’s Impotent Rage" and the subtitle "The window for firing Rosenstein or Mueller, and getting away with it, has closed."

Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who leads the criminal investigation into Donald Trump and his associates, brilliantly played the President when he handed off investigation of Trump's lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The latter looks likely now to charge him with no less than bank fraud, wire fraud, and violations of campaign finance law and possibly much more.

So if Trump ordered subordinates to fire Mueller, the Cohen investigation and prosecution continues untouched because it's in an entirely separate office and can't be stopped by the President nor the Justice Department.

As the Prospect piece notes: "A President with broad political support might have illusions of quashing all such investigations, but Trump lacks the political support, and firing Rosenstein and Mueller would further erode what remains of his political backing, even among Republicans."

The piece moves on to discuss what the writer calls "a long-deferred crisis for the Republican Party" -- specifically, the Trump millstone hanging around collective GOP necks. They have been whistling past the graveyard for so long when it comes to Trump's behavior and corruption that they're now in a very bad place and an angry majority of voters is staring them down.

The Prospect article brought to mind another excellent piece that ran in The New Yorker over the weekend (link here) with the title "Michael Cohen and the End Stage of the Trump Presidency."

There, the writer notes "there are lots of details and surprises to come, but the endgame of this presidency seems as clear now as those of Iraq and the financial crisis did months before they unfolded....This is the week we know, with increasing certainty, that we are entering the last phase of the Trump Presidency. This doesn’t feel like a prophecy; it feels like a simple statement of the apparent truth."

Trump is in a corner with nowhere to go. This is the final act of his presidential farce. The final act may go on a long time -- far too long, in fact.

But it won't get any better for him. And, almost certainly, a lot worse. It will the darkest just before dawn. Stay tuned.

3 comments:

  1. That «45» never ending story has to get to somewhere like impeachment ASAP because that clown in the White House is such a disgrace for you, American citizens.

    Must talk about the lost of a great First Lady yesterday.

    Since the great First Lady of yours died yesterday, I learn so much of what kind of honest and sensible lady she was.

    I was listening to all the CNN tributes and reports on her life and must admit, that she was ahead of her time in USA for her feelings about the freedom of choice for abortion and the LGBT rights when her husband was in office in 1992.
    (Recognition of the freedom of LGBT and abortion was legal in Canada since 1982 and before)

    With her, Jacky Kennedy, Nancy Reagan and Michele Obama are those ladies that made the White House the REAL home to ALL Americans.

    Mrs Bush will be missed for all her great qualities I heard of.

    All my respect and condoleances from Canada

    ReplyDelete
  2. he's sinfully tempting :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hillary Cinton, Laura Bush and Rosalynn Carter are fine women too. They may not have been able to make their support of our causes known, but I feel they'd be supportive during their partners' terms if it didn't cause a commotion.

    But this guy, whoa!! I need more of him!

    ReplyDelete

Speak up!