TRUMP AGONISTES

TRUMP AGONISTES

Trump has escaped.

To the Middle East and Europe.

Trying to flee from himself.

We learned a week ago that, on the day after he fired James Comey as Director of the FBI, the President met with Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and its ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak.  In that meeting, according to reports in both the Washington Post and New York Times,  Trump  -- in an unplanned comment that was not scripted beforehand -- disclosed highly classified information obtained from Israel regarding ISIS plots to blow up airliners with bombs implanted in laptop computers.

Lavrov, Kislyak and Russian President Vladimir Putin quickly -- and predictably -- denied they had obtained anything confidential. But Trump -- as is his wont -- essentially confirmed that they had. The next day he noted that he had the "absolute right" to disclose classified material, effectively admitting that he had, and today he asserted that he had never mentioned to the Russians that  Israel was the source of his information, thus confirming that Israel in fact was the source.

For its part, Israel never gave Trump permission to disclose the secret, an act that breaches the terms under which the secret was shared with the United States in the first place.  Nor was the disclosure planned out beforehand or discussed with the CIA or National Security Agency (NSA).  Instead, it came in the course of one of Trump's signature off the cuff ad libs as he bragged to Lavrov and Kislyak about what "great intel" he, Trump, had.

For the next twenty-four hours, the "shows," as Trump calls them, were all abuzz about this "thousand palms to a thousand foreheads" moment of idiocy.  The Israelis were angry.  No doubt some spies in Syria and/or Iraq, namely, the ones who had told Israel about the plot, were very nervous, having either been outed or subject to the strong risk of such by a President whose narcissism may now be matched only by his negligence.

Trump, however, just hunkered down . . .

And sent out his minions to claim that the real villains were the intelligence "sources" who had leaked his loose lips to the press in the first place.

The President then waited for this latest storm to pass  . . .

Which it did late on Tuesday afternoon . . .

When we found out that James Comey had kept notes of his post-Inaugural meetings with the President.

In those notes, Comey states that Trump in effect  asked him, in a February meeting at the White House,  to end the FBI's investigation into General Michael Flynn's contacts with the Russians during and after the Presidential campaign. Trump's exact words to Comey were "I hope you can let this go." And though that was bad enough,  the even more damning fact was that Trump asked Attorney General Sessions and Vice President Pence to leave the room before he spoke to Comey.

That is what prosecutors call "consciousness of guilt."

For his part, Trump immediately denied asking Comey to stop any investigation.

He did not, however, deny asking Sessions and Pence to leave the room beforehand.

So inquiring minds are now wondering what it was the Donald was so eager to tell Comey on the QT that the Veep and AG had to be escorted out before it could be said.

Maybe one of those minds was Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Rosenstein has recently become famous in his own right, having authored a memo outlining Director Comey's putative malfeasance in publicly discussing last year's investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails during the summer and just before the November election. Trump initially claimed that this memo, and Sessions' agreement with it, was the reason he, Trump, fired Comey.  Trump, however, being Trump, blew that excuse up a day after it had been floated, admitting in an interview with NBC that (i) he intended to fire Comey regardless of the memo and (ii) he was doing so because of the Russian investigation, not because Comey had violated DOJ policy in the Hillary email investigation.

In any case, on Wednesday, Rosenstein set off the week's third bomb, appointing Ex-FBI Director Robert Mueller III as special counsel to take over the Russian investigation. 

The scope of Mueller's writ is broad.  The order appointing him allows him to investigate (i) any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; (ii) any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation; and (iii) any other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a). Section 600.4(a) provides that "The jurisdiction of a Special Counsel shall also include the authority to investigate and prosecute federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, the Special Counsel's investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses; and to conduct appeals arising out of the matter being investigated and/or prosecuted."

Trump was given no real heads-up on the appointment, told of it only an hour before it was released.   He was also informed of the order, not asked whether it was a good idea.  

Nevertheless, Trump's first reaction was surprisingly muted. Said the President on Wednesday night:

"As I have stated many times, a thorough investigation will confirm what we already know - there was no collusion between my campaign and any foreign entity.  I look forward to this matter concluding quickly.  In the meantime, I will never stop fighting for the people and the issues that matter most to the future of our country."

Then he went to bed.

And woke up the next morning

And reverted to type.

At 7:52 am, he tweeted "This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!" By mid-morning, he was supporting this claim with the false tweet that special counsels should have been appointed to investigate "all of the illegal acts that took place in the . . . Obama Administration", oblivious to the fact that there were none. At lunch, oblivious to the fact that his own political appointee, Rosenstein, had appointed Mueller, he called the appointment an "excuse for the Democrats having lost an election that they should have easily won because of the Electoral College being slanted so much in their way. That's all this is." And later in the day, at a joint press conference with Colombia's President Santos, he was back to saying "The entire thing is a witch hunt."

He also claimed that the appointment "hurts our country terribly, because it shows we're a divided, mixed-up, not-unified country."  He's right about the division.  In fact, he is the largest cause of it, having catapulted himself into the White House on a tweetstorm of personal invective, ad hominem insult, and applauded thuggishness.

There's no division, however, on this issue . . .

Where 78% of those polled favor a special prosecutor.

On Friday, Trump left for the Middle East.  As his plane headed east, the reminder of the week that was came from the White House's own documentary record of the meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak. "I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job," said Trump to the Russians. “I faced great pressure because of Russia," he continued, "That’s taken off."

And so, in one fell swoop, the real motive for the firing -- the Russian investigation -- was again made self-evident.  As was the perverse character of the man for whom the term "low blow" knows no limit.

Trump spent the weekend basking in the adulation of Saudi princes. And for him, that was no doubt a welcome respite.

Because, of the many things we know about Donald John Trump, one is that . . .

Adulation is his tonic.

Another is that . . .

Honesty -- certainly -- is not.