NONE DARE CALL IT
We’re now about halfway into our first and hopefully last summer of the Donald Trump presidency. As Republican consultant Rick Wilson has written, “One rule of Trump’s Russia problems: They never get better.”
I’m convinced that these last two weeks will go down in history as the period when the Trump presidency passed the point of no return.
I’m hoping that the (well-deserved) collapse of Obamacare repeal will turn out to be a watershed moment for Republicans. The 49 Republican senators who dutifully voted YES on a bill that most of them hated woke up the next day to see their three colleagues who voted NO hailed as heroes. Those 49 went out on a limb for their leadership, and Mitch McConnell sawed that limb off while they looked on helplessly. If Republican senators are smart, McConnell will find that lock-step party unity is harder to come by once Congress reconvenes after Labor Day.
Yes, I know. Republican senators haven’t been particularly smart so far. But without “Repeal and Replace” sucking up all the oxygen in the room, perhaps some of congressional Republicans will reflect on polls showing Trump’s popularity continuing to decline, even among his dreaded Base. Maybe a few of them will conclude that tying their political fortunes to Trump’s erratic behavior isn’t such a good idea. A few may be enough.
We’ve also reached the point at which the issue is no longer whether Trump can weasel his way out of the trouble he’s gotten himself into. Rather, it’s about whether he’ll decide to cut his losses, or whether he’ll thrash around like a bull in a china shop, making things even worse for himself – and for us.
A devil’s advocate argument for the cut-his-losses option would go like this. What if Trump spends his vacation golfing at his own resort, and when it’s time to go back to work, he realizes that he’s just had more fun in two weeks than he’s had in the past seven months? Could he cut a pardon deal with Mike Pence (while simultaneously blaming Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Republican Congress for screwing him over) and retire to Mar-A-Lago permanently? I wouldn’t bet money on it, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility.
It’s easier, though, to imagine that when he’s not golfing, Trump will spend his time watching Fox News and talking to his attorneys, stoking his anger to the tweeting point, and maybe to the point of making risky moves.
It’s been clear for the past month that what Trump really wants to do is fire both Robert Mueller and Jeff Sessions, and his path to the former depends on the latter. Congress, in a rare display of bipartisanship, has signaled that it is serious about opposing either action. They’re spending their August recess in pro-forma session, which means that Trump can’t dump Sessions and make a recess appointment of a new Attorney General with the authority to fire Mueller.
Ironically, Trump’s best case scenario is to re-enact Richard Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre. All he’d have to do is fire Sessions, and then order Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to fire Mueller. If Rosenstein refused (and either quit or got fired), no problem. Just keep firing people until you find someone down the chain of command who’d agree to fire Mueller. What could be simpler?
Another way Trump could scratch the itch to fire somebody would be to fire National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, who is now under attack from Russia and the Bannonite alt-right. This would be a huge PR disaster, but scapegoating McMaster would help mollify Trump’s BFF Vladimir Putin, which is probably a net win in Trump’s mind.
Alternatively, Trump could fire John Kelly, his Chief of Staff du jour. If General Kelly had been Trump’s CoS from day one, he might have made a difference. But at this point, it’s too little too late. He’s tidying up the deck chairs on the Titanic. Trump has never liked tidy. It’s hard to imagine that he won’t soon grow weary of being babysat by Kelly and just say “Let Trump be Trump.”
McMaster and Kelly are both working to limit the influence of Steve Bannon. If they win the internal struggle, Bannon could decide it was time to spend more time with his family and resign, which would disappoint Trump’s alt-right supporters. World’s tiniest violin, etc.
Apart from firing people, Trump will be tempted to take other unwise actions before the end of summer, most of which relate to his Russia problem. I still think there’s a better than even chance that Trump will issue pardons to members of his family, and perhaps also to some people connected to his campaign. But the timing is tricky. The longer he delays in issuing pardons, the more likely it is that one or more co-conspirators will crack and agree to cooperate with Mueller in return for leniency. I’d be surprised if that hasn’t happened already in a couple of cases.
Everything Trump wants to do would be a major public relations disaster (which, in Trump’s fantasy world, might not matter). But pardons would lead directly to a new set of legal risks for those he pardoned. Firing Mueller wouldn’t stop the grand juries from continuing their work (see link below). They (not to mention congressional committees) could still subpoena everyone Trump pardoned as witnesses, and they’d have no recourse to the 5th amendment. If any of them lied under oath, they’d find themselves in serious trouble.
At this point, trying to stop Mueller’s investigation is tantamount to standing at the base of a mountain and commanding an avalanche to cease and desist.
Trump’s support in the polls is at an all-time low, and he may be losing defenders in Congress, but he can take some comfort in the fact that his friends at Fox News (at least the ones who haven’t yet been fired for sexual harassment) are hanging in there. Sadly, the leftovers at Fox are struggling to find viable talking points on Trump’s behalf. Their current position is “Would you even care if he was guilty?”
It’s a bold approach, but it doesn’t leave them much wiggle room. The only two positions they’ve got left are “Treason? Fuck Yeah!” and “Putin for President in 2020.”
https://www.buzzfeed.com/zoetillman/heres-how-a-grand-jury-works?utm_term=.tyyQMnBkw#.nydYrRzWM