"Dizzying" is the clichéd characterization of how we feel hit with non-stop revelations of impeachment-worthy crimes, misdemeanors and blundering faux pas, one tromping on the heels of the other before we've had time to digest the implications of the first, or second, third, etc.
I feel for the op-ed writers who have to write and submit their stuff without possibly knowing the subject of the next day's newly exploding "bombshell" that could demolish the timely relevance of the commentaries before they appear in print or even online. For example, Dana Milbank's column today drills into the destructive effects of allying oneself with rump, starting with a case study of Sean Spicer's downward spiral as a jumping-off point for reviewing the using and screwing of thousands who've done business with him in the past and the recent histories of Flynn, Manafort, Comey... Enumerating each link in rump's chain of destruction, Milbank tells the story of a world-class sociopath with some sympathy for the people who along the had the misfortune to trust him. I would like to have seen Milbank hold rump's victims to account for bad judgment that made them corruptible in the face of evidence that this has always been a pathologically self-aggrandizing man who values the wrong things and demonstrates stunted moral, emotional and intellectual development.
All that said, Milbank's otherwise apt and important focus on the character of the POTUS (his column is pasted in at the bottom of this post) looks like yesterday's analysis when the Comey memo-to-self has swamped the commentariat with the whirlwind of Watergate impeachment obstruction W T F, not to mention Putin offering to provide a transcript of the rump-Lavov-Kislyak Oval Office meeting.
In fact, literally as I was typing the above, Milbank was on MSNBC commenting on the nuclear news of the day and standing up to a right-wing radio host I'd never heard of who was spouting the GOP's pathetic last line of defense against empanelling a Watergate-model nonpartisan committee is, like, "why didn't Comey mention rump's attempt to abort the Flynn investigation when it supposedly happened?"
The Daily 202 (linked just below) is the most updated written report and cumulative commentary on the state of scandal. The links within Hohmann's column include the NYTimes report that started last night's media tornado around the Comey memo quoting rump asking him to drop the Flynn case. The 202 gives a nod to rump's "inexperience" as a factor, but the core of the problem is rump's character and the actions it drives him to take without devoting even a blink of consciousness to consideration of consequences.
Below the 202 link is a letter to the editor that is a psychoanalytic psychiatrist's look at the unhealthy psychodynamics and developmental warping that comprise that character. Below the doc's letter is Harvard Law's Laurence Tribe's 5/14 column on the legal case for undertaking an impeachment inquiry. The column was written before either the leak of classified intel to Russians or the Comey memo had come to light. Those two items are mega-exclamation points to Tribe's argument.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/05/17/daily-202-trump-s-inexperience-contributed-to-comey-interactions-that-now-cloud-his-presidency/591b9e08e9b69b209cf2b84b/?utm_term=.2e0c4ae52c65
To the Editor:
As a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and parent, I am very familiar
with teenagers’ tendencies to see what they can get away with. For many
adolescents, it is a natural part of the developmental process, but most avoid
causing serious harm to themselves or others.
We now have a man in the White House who is constantly trying to
see what he can get away with, who has been encouraged by the leniency shown him
thus far, and whose wish to deconstruct the norms of our governmental processes
could hardly be more destructive. Further, based on what is best described as
malignant narcissism, he seems incapable of shame or remorse. The result is his
blustering and bullying attitude when things do not go his way or there are
attempts to challenge his statements. That he can lie and deny responsibility
for statements is part of his attempt to push the limits as far as he can.
As responsible citizens, we must continue to point out his
irresponsible and dangerous behavior to hold him accountable.
Marc R. Inver, Lafayette Hill
Trump Must Be Impeached. Here's Why.
14 May 17
The time
has come for Congress to launch an impeachment investigation of President Trump
for obstruction of justice.
The remedy of impeachment was designed to create a
last-resort mechanism for preserving our constitutional system. It operates by
removing executive-branch officials who have so abused power through what the
framers called “high crimes and misdemeanors” that they cannot be
trusted to continue in office.
No American president has ever been removed for
such abuses, although Andrew Johnson was impeached and came within a single vote of being convicted by the Senate and
removed, and Richard Nixon resigned to avoid that fate.
Now the country is faced with a president whose
conduct strongly suggests that he poses a danger to our system of
government.
Ample reasons existed to worry about this
president, and to ponder the extraordinary remedy of impeachment, even before he
fired FBI Director James B. Comey and shockingly admitted on
national television that the action was provoked by the FBI’s intensifying
investigation into his campaign’s ties with Russia.
Even without getting to the bottom of what Trump
dismissed as “this Russia thing,” impeachable offenses could theoretically
have been charged from the outset of this presidency. One important example is
Trump’s brazen defiance of the foreign emoluments clause, which is designed to
prevent foreign powers from pressuring U.S. officials to stray from undivided
loyalty to the United States. Political reality made impeachment and removal on
that and other grounds seem premature.
No longer. To wait for the results of the multiple
investigations underway is to risk tying our nation’s fate to the whims of an
authoritarian leader.
Comey’s summary firing will not stop the inquiry,
yet it represented an obvious effort to interfere with a probe involving
national security matters vastly more serious than the “third-rate burglary” that Nixon tried to cover up in
Watergate. The question of Russian interference in the presidential election and
possible collusion with the Trump campaign go to the heart of our system and
ability to conduct free and fair elections.
Consider, too, how Trump embroiled Deputy Attorney
General Rod J. Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, despite Sessions’s
recusal from involvement in the Russia investigation, in preparing admittedly
phony justifications for the firing on which Trump had already decided. Consider
how Trump used the vice president and White House staff to propagate a set of
blatant untruths — before giving an interview to NBC’s Lester Holt that exposed his true motivation.
Trump accompanied that confession with self-serving — and
manifestly false — assertions about having been assured by Comey that Trump
himself was not under investigation. By Trump’s own account, he asked Comey
about his investigative status even as he was conducting the equivalent of a job
interview in which Comey sought to retain his position as director.
Further reporting suggests that the encounter was even more
sinister, with Trump insisting that Comey pledge “loyalty” to him in order to
retain his job. Publicly saying he saw nothing wrong with demanding such
loyalty, the president turned to Twitter with a none-too-subtle threat that Comey
would regret any decision to disseminate his version of his conversations with
Trump — something that Comey has every right, and indeed a civic duty, to
do.
To say that this does not in itself rise to the level of
“obstruction of justice” is to empty that concept of all meaning. Obstruction of
justice was the first count in the articles of impeachment against Nixon and, years later, a
count against Bill Clinton. In Clinton’s case, the ostensible
obstruction consisted solely in lying under oath about a sordid sexual affair
that may have sullied the Oval Office but involved no abuse of presidential
power as such.
But in Nixon’s case, the list of actions that together were
deemed to constitute impeachable obstruction reads like a forecast of what Trump
would do decades later — making misleading statements to, or withholding
material evidence from, federal investigators or other federal employees; trying
to interfere with FBI or congressional investigations; trying to break through
the FBI’s shield surrounding ongoing criminal investigations; dangling carrots
in front of people who might otherwise pose trouble for one’s hold on power.
It will require serious commitment to constitutional principle,
and courageous willingness to put devotion to the national interest above
self-interest and party loyalty, for a Congress of the president’s own party to
initiate an impeachment inquiry. It would be a terrible shame if only the
mounting prospect of being voted out of office in November 2018 would
sufficiently concentrate the minds of representatives and senators today.
But whether it is devotion to principle or hunger for political
survival that puts the prospect of impeachment and removal on the table, the
crucial thing is that the prospect now be taken seriously, that the machinery of
removal be reactivated, and that the need to use it become the focus of
political discourse going into 2018.
Burnt by the Donald
by Dana Milbank
I’m often asked if I think President Trump will make it through
all four years of his term.
My stock reply: The better question is whether we will survive the next four years.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he does make it to 2020
without impeachment, or the 25th Amendment, blocking his path. Trump has a long
history of walking out of disasters unscathed. It’s those around him — the Sean
Spicers of the world — who are destroyed.
Alas, poor Spicer! I knew him well.
He was one of the top Republican flacks in town, affable and
quick-witted, always happy to dish with reporters off the record. I liked him. I
still like him — or at least that Spicer I knew before he answered Donald
Trump’s call.
The Spicer who strode into the White House briefing room Monday
afternoon I did not recognize. He scanned the room, unsmiling. He furtively
checked his watch. He recited a long opening statement carefully and flatly, as
if reading from a science textbook. And he had absolutely nothing to say.
President Trump’s hint that he taped conversations with Jim
Comey? “I was very clear that the president would have nothing further on that
last week.”
The Russia probe generally? “The president’s position's been
very clear.”
And everything else: “I think I’ve made it very clear. …He made
it very clear. … It’s been made very clear.”
Spicer was studiously dour and clearly wasn’t enjoying himself.
He was puffy, pinched, and pale. And little wonder: Trump has sucked the
lifeblood out of him.
The president turned him into a national punchline on his first
day on the job, forcing him to provide “alternative facts” about the
inauguration. On Friday morning, Trump confirmed for the world what was widely
suspected: Spic-er doesn’t really know what’s going on. “As a very active
President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to
stand at podium with perfect accuracy!” Trump proclaimed.
The next day, Saturday Night
Live did its latest sendup of the hapless spokesman. This time Melissa
McCarthy’s Spicer hid in the bushes, attacked reporters, and rode his motorized
podium in search of Trump, vainly seeking assurance that he hadn’t been lied to.
Alec Baldwin’s Trump tried to grope and kiss McCarthy’s Spicer.
“Is this like The
Godfather when you kiss me and no one ever sees me again?” the Spicer
character asked.
“Yes,” the Trump character answered.
It’s a matter of time until life imitates sketch. Washington is
abuzz with speculation about when Spicer will be shown the door, but it doesn’t
really matter. His credibility, and his dignity, have already been
defenestrated.
He will soon be added to the heap of unhappy people who cast
their lots with Trump and were repaid with misery.
Trump entities have filed for bankruptcy protection six times.
Investors, lenders, and workers took hits — and Trump moved on. Trump was caught
on tape boasting to Billy Bush about sexually assaulting women — and Bush lost
his job. Corey Lewandowski and Paul Manafort poured themselves into Trump’s
campaign and were unceremoniously dumped.
The carnage has increased since Trump came to Washington.
National security adviser Michael Flynn is out and potentially in legal trouble.
The FBI’s Comey arguably handed Trump the election — and learned of his
dismissal from TV. As my Washington Post colleague Abby Phillip documented, Vice
President Pence has been “unflagging in his loyalty,” only to be made “the
public face of official narratives that turn out to be misleading or false.”
Trump humiliated Steve Bannon by publicly downplaying their association. Trump
repaid House Speaker Paul Ryan’s loyalty by winking at calls for Ryan’s ouster.
Attempts to defend Trump by aides Reince Priebus and Kellyanne Conway and Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have left them sounding clownish. Trump takes
what he can from each of his aides and allies and then moves on.
It would seem that time is near for Spicer, who started Monday’s
briefing 45 minutes late and, in the minutes that followed, avoided answering
questions by saying no fewer than 22 times how very “clear” he or Trump had been
about this or that.
At the end of the lifeless performance by the beleaguered
spokesman, what was clear is this: His utility to Trump has diminished. And, as
many a Trump loyalist has discovered, you are useful to Trump until you are not
— and then you are cast aside.
I’m often asked if I think President Trump will make it through
all four years of his term.
My stock reply: The better question is whether we will survive the next four years.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he does make it to 2020
without impeachment, or the 25th Amendment, blocking his path. Trump has a long
history of walking out of disasters unscathed. It’s those around him — the Sean
Spicers of the world — who are destroyed.
Alas, poor Spicer! I knew him well.
He was one of the top Republican flacks in town, affable and
quick-witted, always happy to dish with reporters off the record. I liked him. I
still like him — or at least that Spicer I knew before he answered Donald
Trump’s call.
The Spicer who strode into the White House briefing room Monday
afternoon I did not recognize. He scanned the room, unsmiling. He furtively
checked his watch. He recited a long opening statement carefully and flatly, as
if reading from a science textbook. And he had absolutely nothing to say.
President Trump’s hint that he taped conversations with Jim
Comey? “I was very clear that the president would have nothing further on that
last week.”
The Russia probe generally? “The president’s position's been
very clear.”
And everything else: “I think I’ve made it very clear. …He made
it very clear. … It’s been made very clear.”
Spicer was studiously dour and clearly wasn’t enjoying himself.
He was puffy, pinched, and pale. And little wonder: Trump has sucked the
lifeblood out of him.
The president turned him into a national punchline on his first
day on the job, forcing him to provide “alternative facts” about the
inauguration. On Friday morning, Trump confirmed for the world what was widely
suspected: Spic-er doesn’t really know what’s going on. “As a very active
President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to
stand at podium with perfect accuracy!” Trump proclaimed.
The next day, Saturday Night
Live did its latest sendup of the hapless spokesman. This time Melissa
McCarthy’s Spicer hid in the bushes, attacked reporters, and rode his motorized
podium in search of Trump, vainly seeking assurance that he hadn’t been lied to.
Alec Baldwin’s Trump tried to grope and kiss McCarthy’s Spicer.
“Is this like The
Godfather when you kiss me and no one ever sees me again?” the Spicer
character asked.
“Yes,” the Trump character answered.
It’s a matter of time until life imitates sketch. Washington is
abuzz with speculation about when Spicer will be shown the door, but it doesn’t
really matter. His credibility, and his dignity, have already been
defenestrated.
He will soon be added to the heap of unhappy people who cast
their lots with Trump and were repaid with misery.
Trump entities have filed for bankruptcy protection six times.
Investors, lenders, and workers took hits — and Trump moved on. Trump was caught
on tape boasting to Billy Bush about sexually assaulting women — and Bush lost
his job. Corey Lewandowski and Paul Manafort poured themselves into Trump’s
campaign and were unceremoniously dumped.
The carnage has increased since Trump came to Washington.
National security adviser Michael Flynn is out and potentially in legal trouble.
The FBI’s Comey arguably handed Trump the election — and learned of his
dismissal from TV. As my Washington Post colleague Abby Phillip documented, Vice
President Pence has been “unflagging in his loyalty,” only to be made “the
public face of official narratives that turn out to be misleading or false.”
Trump humiliated Steve Bannon by publicly downplaying their association. Trump
repaid House Speaker Paul Ryan’s loyalty by winking at calls for Ryan’s ouster.
Attempts to defend Trump by aides Reince Priebus and Kellyanne Conway and Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have left them sounding clownish. Trump takes
what he can from each of his aides and allies and then moves on.
It would seem that time is near for Spicer, who started Monday’s
briefing 45 minutes late and, in the minutes that followed, avoided answering
questions by saying no fewer than 22 times how very “clear” he or Trump had been
about this or that.
At the end of the lifeless performance by the beleaguered
spokesman, what was clear is this: His utility to Trump has diminished. And, as
many a Trump loyalist has discovered, you are useful to Trump until you are not
— and then you are cast aside.
