Sunday, August 5th, 2018 began fairly much the same as any other Sunday, post-2016 Presidential Election. President Donald Trump was spewing forth poorly written, poorly thought out tweets. And then came this.
Contradicting sworn testimony that the meeting had been about anything and everything but digging up dirt on Hilary Clinton, this tweet seems to be a desperate measure by Trump to throw his son under the bus (“meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower”) and distancing himself from the brewing storm (“I did not know about it”).
Most experts seem to feel this meeting was a violation of 52 U.S.C. 30121, 36 U.S.C. 510 – Contributions and donations by foreign nationals. In other words, a criminal conspiracy with the Russians to interfere in our sovereign elections.
It will be interesting to see how official mouthpieces Sarah Huckabee Sanders (White House Press Secretary) and Kellyanne Conway (Counselor to the President) spin this on Monday.
Before that, consider what the New Yorker had to say in a well-written piece that put all the dominoes in a row.
It was possible, just days ago, to believe—with an abundance of generosity toward the President and his team—that the meeting was about adoption, went nowhere, and was overblown by the Administration’s enemies. No longer. The open questions are now far more narrow: Was this a case of successful or only attempted collusion? Is attempted collusion a crime? What legal and moral responsibilities did the President and his team have when they realized that the proposed collusion was underway when the D.N.C. e-mails were leaked and published? And, crucially, what did the President know before the election, after it, and when he instructed his son to lie?
The New Yorker article also makes comparisons to Richard Nixon’s fall from grace and eventual abdication of the office of the President. Nixon was a politician and a man of some degree of intelligence. He knew when it was time to give up. Trump has shown he is neither a statesman nor a politician, and remarkably lacking in intelligence (refer again to poorly composed tweets).
Unlike Nixon who in the end considered the harm he was causing the nation, Trump may only be concerned about his hide (refer to above tweet throwing Jr under the bus) and decide to fight it out.
But is President Donald Trump so delusional now that he thinks Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to Oversee Russia Probe does not read his tweets as well?
