Three* months hence
The main conclusion to be drawn so far from the current trial of Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort is just this: the President of the United States has extraordinarily poor judgment about the people he surrounds himself with. Manafort defrauded banks, failed to report income and foreign accounts to the IRS, and accepted a lot of money from a Putin-linked oligarch.
Manafort’s sidekick Rick Gates, who worked for Trump throughout the campaign and until the Inauguration, has confessed to helping the illegal shenanigans as well as embezzling money from Manafort by means of fraudulent expense claims. Both men have the unenviable distinction of having worked for Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian former president of Ukraine, whose corrupt behavior is legendary.
I admit that anyone can be victim of fraud. I suffered such an instance once in my career, when an employee took a kickback in connection with renting an office. He was caught, charged, and plea-bargained. But Trump’s record is incredible: he has lost at least half a dozen more or less cabinet-level officials to scandals, not counting firings of people he regarded as disloyal, like Sally Yates and James Comey. The list of offenses by Trump Administration officials would be far too long to enumerate, but it includes blatant abuse of government funds and employees, in addition to wife and alcohol abuse.
This is not bad luck. It is the result low moral standards at the top, combined with failure to properly vet appointees. More than one has been dropped before even assuming the posts for which they were already named. This does not happen to everyone. It happens to bosses who themselves display abusive behavior and tolerate it in those close to them. In my view, the President himself is fleecing taxpayers by frequenting his own golf clubs with a large entourage and encouraging use of his hotels by foreign governments. I have little doubt but that we will eventually learn of illicit expenditures and abuse of employees for private purposes, as Trump makes no distinction between his personal and official activities.
Nor does he show any compunction about marital infidelity, which no longer seems to offend anyone. Do we really think he has stopped courting porn stars?
All the misbehavior by and surrounding the president opens him and his minions not just to accusations of abuse but also to blackmail. The Russians have demonstrated how capable they are of gathering data from US institutions. They and the Chinese no doubt know all about malfeasance in the Trump Administration and will be using it already to intimidate officials into doing their bidding. Trump’s poor judgment thus creates multiple national security vulnerabilities. American intelligence collection capabilities will guarantee that the Chinese and Russians are not the only ones who are in the know. Our own intel will show up traces of whatever the foreigners discover.
That I suppose is the silver lining. Trump can’t hope to hide malfeasance forever. He has now admitted that his son’s meeting with Russian operatives was intended to gather dirt on Hillary Clinton, after many months of denials and false claims that it was to discuss Moscow’s bar on adoption by Americans to retaliate for sanctions levied on Russia. He says what his son did was not illegal. I’ll be delighted to let a court decide that.
Admittedly the bar has been raised, so that just a little abuse–say a flirtation with a White House intern–would not attract much attention, as we’ve all been inured to far worse. But every once in a while America still proves capable of recoiling. Trump’s failure to stand up to Putin in Helsinki unquestionably hurt him outside his still substantial base. But when and how will the country finally react to a grossly incompetent and corrupt administration? I don’t know, but I hope it happens before November 6, just three* months hence.
*I managed somehow to publish this initially as “Two months hence.” My readers know better. Apologies.
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