Letter 2 America for May 20, 2017

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We were watching the news about a week ago when this most recent flurry of Trump miscues began, and I said to my wife that what was just starting out then was reminiscent of Watergate.  Sure enough, a few minutes later, and then every day thereafter, someone invoked Richard Nixon's downfall, saying that this whole Russia-Comey matter was running in an ominously parallel direction.  That night, I told my wife that Trump's mention of Comey's purported triple assurance that Trump wasn't under investigation was just the first domino.  It wasn't enough by itself, but it would be followed by others, and we would know that impeachment was coming when the first one fell.  Every day this past week, there has been a new domino to talk about, and I say to her that the dominos themselves are just the means of Trump's self-destruction, and they could stand there interminably--something like his presidency.  Their mere existence could come to nothing.  But when one or more dominos started teetering, that would be a sign of real, impending trouble, and then, the rattle snakes would start biting each other.  Well, more than one is teetering now, and I have a feeling that soon, even the Republicans will see Trump as a pariah...the poison pill that will bring their party down, and then the venom will start to flow.

Well, the teetering has begun, and it began when Trump embarked upon explaining his mental processes, something of an oxymoron in Trump's case, relative to firing Comey. First, he was the recipient of the Rosenstein memo, and the firing was a response to it.  Then, he was going to fire Comey no matter what and the Rosenstein memo was just the coup de grĂ¢ce,  etcetera, etcetera, until now, a record of the conversation he had with the Russians at the White House has emerged, recounting how Trump told them that he had just fired Comey, which had released great pressure he was facing on account of the Russia investigation.  "That's taken off," he confided, which begs the question, what pressure if Comey said three times that Trump wasn't under investigation.  That's what I mean about Trump and thinking being mutually exclusive.  For a guy who thinks he is so clever, he is so obtuse, and it all could have been avoided if he had just left out that one sentence from his Comey termination letter thanking Comey for exonerating Trump on three separate occasions.  Without that sentence, none of this would be happening...except of course the Trump campaign-Russia investigation itself, and that wasn't going to go away whether Comey or Ish Kabbible was leading it. But that's where the other dominos come in: Trump's importunate conversation about loyalty with Comey at a private White House dinner; Trump's claim that Comey asked for it, or at least that someone else arranged it; Flynn's confession to Trump before his inauguration that Flynn was already under investigation for acting as a lobbyist for a foreign power and his other connections to Russia; the dilatory firing of Flynn, whom Trump continues to characterize as a nice guy; the expression to Comey by Trump of his hope that the Flynn investigation would just go away; Trump's threat to Comey about possible tape recordings of White House conversations, almost defying the American people not to think about Watergate.

The ineluctable question is, why did all this happen, and of course the answer is that Trump is not just foolish, he is totally without character.  For one thing, he is incapable of self-doubt because he assiduously eschews self-evaluation.  In case you haven't noticed, our president never considers the possibility that he has made a mistake, and therefore, he never tries to go back and fix it.  He just plows ahead in the direction he has chosen, doubling down every chance he gets, and even creating some chances of his own, like that now-infamous claim of exoneration in the Comey letter and the furious tweeting that has ensued.  Perhaps it is because he has become so rotund that he hasn't seen his shoes in a long time.  That would explain why he doesn't recognize them when his foot is entering his mouth.  Or perhaps it is because he is so vapid...so lacking in substance that he doesn't even know how to stop shooting himself in that foot.  Perhaps it is because he is just amoral, which would be slightly less despicable than if he is in fact immoral...also a possibility.  Who knows what goes on in his tiny little soul.

But one thing is sure.  The country is in for an ordeal, just like the one precipitated by the Watergate break-in.  The more scrambling Trump does to get out from under this allegation of collaboration with the Russians--something that may never even have occurred--the more Nixonian this all becomes.  Nixon's downfall wasn't the burglary; it was the connection of the burglary to his campaign and Nixon's own efforts to extricate himself from what was only a tenuous, and probably forgivable, connection to the whole amateurish enterprise.  It was the altered tapes, which congress only found out about by accident, mention of a slush fund or two on those tapes, John Dean's famous "cancer on the presidency" speech to Nixon in the Oval Office on those tapes.  It was Nixon's paranoia that brought him down along with his hatred of those who held him in low esteem.  It was using the IRS to harass them and his smirking public disdain that galvanized his enemies, and in that respect, Trump is just like Nixon.  I would be surprised if his fate is any different, except that he has made so many enemies so quickly that I would be shocked if Pence could get away with giving him a pardon in the aftermath.

Your friend,

Mike

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This page contains a single entry by Michael Wolf published on May 20, 2017 11:23 AM.

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Michael Wolf published on May 20, 2017 11:23 AM.

Letter 2 America for May 10, 2017 was the previous entry in this blog.

Letter 2 America for May 25, 2017 is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

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