Susan Wright on the Right
Ok. With all the very serious news to crowd the headlines on Tuesday, it was easy to miss some of the more amusing – although, ultimately benign – stories floating about.
One story that popped up, based on a Vanity Fair piece from the weekend, paints a very clear picture of just how unglued President Trump is coming, because of the ongoing probe into Russian interference in our 2016 election.
Multiple members of the Trump campaign team have been implicated in the investigation, with a number of guilty pleas to crimes related to the investigation (although, seemingly separate from the actual topics of collusion and obstruction).
On Tuesday, former campaign chairman for Trump’s campaign, Paul Manafort, was found guilty of eight out of eighteen felony charges brought against him by special counsel.
Watching Trump’s Twitter feed this morning has been absolutely mesmerizing. He has lashed out at his former attorney and “fixer,” Michael Cohen, and like a mob boss, praised Paul Manafort for his “loyalty.”
He doesn’t understand how that makes him look. He doesn’t just appear manic, but like a man who desperately needs someone to take the fall for him.
President Trump, through this whole ordeal, has pointed the fingers at many. He is the only innocent party in this entire mess, and the fact that there is a Russia cloud hanging over his head now is blame he has often, and publicly, laid at the doorstep of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Sessions, while a senator, was the first to jump the Trump train, writing Trump’s immigration policy for him and giving this reprobate sideshow carny credibility. He has proven himself a loyal toady, time and again.
That ended when he, himself, was implicated in the Russia investigation, due to contacts he had while still a senator with several Russian officials. He failed to mention those in his confirmation hearing, so as an ethical precaution (the right thing to do, by the way), he recused himself from the Russia probe, and left it in the hands of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Rosenstein, after the firing of FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, appointed Robert Mueller to lead the special counsel investigation – a move praised by Democrats and Republicans, alike.
Even slavish Trump defenders like Newt Gingrich praised Mueller for his upright character and professionalism.
It was only after it was clear that Mueller was taking his duties seriously that Trump’s defenders began screeching in protest.
And as time as drawn on – 15 months, so far – Trump and his loyalists have not ceased to blame Sessions for recusing himself, rather than standing as a buffer between Trump and the Russia probe.
He doesn’t understand what the job of the attorney general is, among so many other things related to the government of the United States.
In the Vanity Fair report from this past weekend, it suggests that the president’s blame game has shifted into hyperdrive, and he’s found other targets for his petulant wrath.
To be specific, he’s now blaming his attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
A source familiar with the conversation told Vanity Fair on Tuesday that Trump and Giuliani got into an argument at the president’s Bedminster, N.J., golf club over the weekend, during which Trump blamed his outside attorney for helping to bring about the Russia probe.
“I offered you attorney general, but you insisted on being secretary of state,” the president allegedly told Giuliani, adding that “none of this would be happening” if he had accepted Trump’s original offer.
Ok. This is textbook grasping at straws.
He’s now saying that if Rudy Giuliani had agreed to be his attorney general, he knows the former mayor would not have recused himself and would have acted as his shield.
Apparently, Giuliani’s name was in the top 4 for selection as Secretary of State, during the transition period, but he eventually withdrew his name.
“The whole thing was becoming kind of very confusing and very difficult for the president-elect, and my desire to be in the Cabinet was great, but it wasn’t that great,” Giuliani told Fox News in December 2016, adding that he decided he could be more effective “being on the outside and continuing to be his close friend and adviser.”
Yes. He has been a dream for the president.
And by “dream,” I mean he’s probably implicated Donald Trump in things that nobody was even considering.
Is the Russia investigation Giuliani’s fault, though?
No. Of the many things Giuliani can be faulted for, it’s desperation on a new level for Trump to attempt to pin this on him.
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