Here is a good rule of thumb for dealing with Donald Trump: Everyone who gives him the benefit of the doubt eventually regrets it.
.. This was true of clients and contractors and creditors throughout his business career. It was true of the sycophants and opportunists before whom he dangled cabinet appointments during the campaign and then, oh, never mind. It has been true of his cabinet members and spokesmen, whose attempts to defend and explain their boss’s conduct are gleefully undercut by the boss himself.
And it should be true — for the sake of their souls, I sincerely hope it’s true — of the Republican leaders whose reputations for probity and principle he has stomped all over since winning their party’s nomination.
.. The meeting’s existence does not carry us all the way to the maximal collusion scenario, in which Trump himself was aware of Russia’s role in the hack of the Democratic National Committee and ordered his aides to conspire with WikiLeaks and Russian intelligence to time the drip-drip-drip of hacked emails and maximize their impact.
.. So the Trump team presumably assumed that it involved some other Hillary-related dirt — some of the missing Clinton server emails that Trump himself jokingly (“jokingly”?) urged Russian hackers to conjure and release, or direct evidence of Clinton Foundation corruption in its Russian relationships.
.. the Russians are still a more-hostile-than-not power these days, with stronger incentives to subvert American democracy than the average foreign government. So taking their oppo has a gravity that should have stopped a more upright and patriotic campaign short.
.. it’s strong evidence that we should drop the presumption that such collusion is an extreme or implausible scenario... Instead, the mix of inexperience, incaution and conspiratorial glee on display in the emails suggests that people in Trump’s immediate family — not just satellites like Roger Stone — would have been delighted to collude if the opportunity presented itself. Indeed, if the Russians didn’t approach the Trump circle about how to handle the D.N.C. email trove, it was probably because they recognized that anyone this naïve, giddy and “Burn After Reading”-level stupid would make a rather poor espionage partner... That means there is probably more and worse to come, and the more there is, the worse the president’s dealings with James Comey look. Even if the president himself is innocent of Russian collusion, protecting your family from exposure is a pretty strong motive for obstruction.
.. the House G.O.P. probably won’t impeach for anything short of a transcript of a call between Trump and Putin in which the words “yes, I want you to hack their servers big-league, Vladimir” appear in black-and-white. And even then.. But right now, the 2018 congressional elections promise to be a de facto referendum on impeachment. There are enough sparks in the smoke; there will probably be fire for some of Trump’s intimates before another year is out... And as for the president himself — well, to conclude where I began, anyone presuming his innocence at this point should have all the confidence of Chris Christie awaiting his cabinet appointment, or Sean Spicer reading over the day’s talking points.
Somebody Has a Helluva Vendetta Going Against Donald Trump Jr.
There’s something crazy going on here, and not just the fact that Don Jr. met with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer. Let’s face it: he’s plenty dumb enough to do something like that. The crazy thing is that someone—or multiple someones—really has it in for Junior. They’ve been releasing information to the New York Times in very, very carefully staged tidbits designed to
(a) get Don Jr. to lie on the record, and
(b) keep the story going.
At this point, Don Jr. has no idea what evidence these folks have, so he has no idea what it’s safe to lie about.
But why? Why is someone going after Don Jr.? He’s not involved with politics and Don Sr. doesn’t seem to rely on him for anything. So why destroy him? Is it just a way of going after Don Sr.? If so, who’s doing it?
The Consequences of Donald Trump Jr.’s Stupidity
Pursue unsavory business, pay the price.
Hanna was taken aback. “Not so fast,” he protested, explaining that, while it would be “damned hard” to prevail over the powerful bosses, who would surely not take kindly to a rebuff, Hanna thought it could be done and he welcomed the challenge. The men in the room pondered the situation and came up with a slogan: “The People Against the Bosses.’’
.. Both sides are trotting out criminal lawyers declaring, based on their prior political proclivities, that no laws were broken—or that laws were clearly broken.
.. “It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder.’’
Limbaugh: ‘Energy’ Focused on Donald Trump Jr an Attempt to Destroy His Political Career Before It Starts
“We had the caller who said the Trump kids are good-looking and leftist don’t like that,” Limbaugh said. “And that’s certainly true. But, you note the energy with which the media is going after Donald Trump, Jr. And there’s reason: They want to dirty him up. They want to destroy the guy before he gets started on his own political career. He has an obvious interest in politics. I don’t know if you have heard this guy speak. Folks, he is what his dad isn’t in that he is an ideological conservative. And if you have heard him speak, he has got it down. He knows his stuff. And he can sell it, and he can be persuasive with it. And he is the exact kind of conservative they want to destroy before he gets started, especially given they don’t have a bench of their own. That is an added reason for all of this energy in destroying Donald Trump, Jr. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”