Trump is a sore loser
President Trump has taken a beating over the past week. The Democrats have won control of the House of Representatives by a wider margin than originally thought. They are now approaching a 40-vote majority. The suburbs, Hispanics, Asians, and white college-educated women abandoned the Republicans in droves. The uptick of one or two Republican seats in the Senate enables Trump to continue getting judges and other high officials approved, but the House will be conducting oversight as never before and initiating budget bills the Administration won’t like.
The Democrats will also pass legislation they know won’t get past the Senate but will lay out their own agenda for 2020. First up will apparently be a bill protecting the right to vote, something the Republicans have been trying hard to suppress, as well as the voting system (from foreign interference). Access to health care and education as well as environmental protection are likely in the queue.
Then last weekend Trump went to Paris for the World War I centennial, where he declined a visit to a cemetery because of rain, refused to join the other allied heads of state in a walk up the Champs Elysees, and got scolded by his erstwhile friend President Macron for his attachment to nativist nationalism. He looked out of sorts and out of place in the events he did attend, except when smiling broadly at President Putin.
Back in the US, Trump failed to make the traditional 3.3 mile trip to Arlington Cemetery on Veterans’ Day. Instead he sulked in the White House and has stayed there since, tweeting criticism of forest management in California while its first responders were risking their lives fighting a giant forest fire and dozens of Californians were dying. To boot: the Federal government controls 98% of the forests in California, so if forest management is really the cause… But it isn’t: Trump said that just to please logging interests. The main cause is climate change, which has made California much drier and windier.
Trump has good reason to be worried. Rumor has it that Special Counsel Mueller is getting ready to charge Don Jr., his eldest son and confidante, with conspiracy against the United States by plotting to gain Russian assistance during the election campaign. That will put Trump in the unenviable position of either throwing his son under the bus or admitting what we all suspect: his son did it with his father’s knowledge and encouragement. Even if that indictment doesn’t happen, the Mueller investigation and oversight hearings in the House threaten to expose financial and other malfeasance in the Trump real estate empire. There is little doubt that Trump was laundering Russian oligarchs’ ill-gotten gains.
So Trump fired his racist Attorney General Sessions, who had recused himself from the Russia investigation and failed to prevent Mueller from exploring the financial angle, and replaced him with an “acting” AG who has publicly advocated hogtying the Special Counsel. This Matthew Whitaker was quickly shown to be so blatantly unqualified, and associated with dubious business dealings, that Trump claimed not to know him well.
Anything Whitaker does with respect to the Mueller investigation will no doubt lead to a subpoena to testify in Congress. Mueller, expecting the worst, I trust has prepared a dead man switch in the form of evidence and investigations by US attorneys (Federal prosecutors in the states) as well as state attorneys general. It is hard to turn off the multi-layered US justice system completely. That thought will redouble the President’s concerns.
To compound Trump’s problems, his wife instructed him in public this week to expel the deputy national security adviser from the White House staff. Mira Ricardel had offended the First Lady or her staff in some fashion on her recent trip to Africa. Trump obeyed. You can imagine how that made him feel.
Some will worry that Trump’s ugly mood may make him take military action. He is certainly not above trying to use the military to bolster his own cause, as he did in pointlessly deploying US troops to the Mexican border to counter a dwindling “caravan” of asylum-seekers more than a thousand miles away.
But real military action seems to be something he shies from. The one-off 2017 cruise missile retaliation in response to a Syrian chemical weapons attack seems to be his kind of thing. He has not initiated any sustained military action since coming to office. In the absence of compelling national security issues this Administration would find it hard to convince Congress or the American people it was a good thing to do.
What we’ve got is a president whose surprising good fortune in getting elected along with a Republican Congress has peaked. He is now facing stark political and judicial realities. Some presidents would respond with reassessment and renewed energy. Not this one. Donald Trump, for whom winning is everything, is a sore loser.
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