Donald Trump is destroying his own presidency

Again and again and again, Trump has taken real problems — real problems but manageable
problems, which he has then turned into disasters.
All of it is Trump recklessly, impulsively endangering his own presidency.
And in doing, he has reminded Republicans what they feared a Trump presidency would
be like — unconstitutional, unfocused, chaotic, scandal-plagued, and damaging to both America’s
standing in the world and the GOP’s brand at home.
I’m not saying Trump is about to be impeached.
There’s a long way between here and there.
Republicans still see that as a calamity for their party.
But this is a moment in which the tectonic plates that underlie political opinion in
Washington are shifting.
It’s a moment in which the unthinkable is being thought, announced, and perhaps even
hastened.
“About the only thing I can say is, I think we’ve seen this movie before.
I think it’s reaching the point where it’s of Watergate size and scale and a couple of
other scandals that you and I have seen.”
Donald Trump’s been doing this all himself.
Trump’s feud with the intelligence agencies began in earnest after the CIA concluded that
Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win.
Trump could have just been angry at Russia.
He could have said it’s bad that a foreign government is interfering in American elections.
Instead, he turned his ire on the CIA.
And then this happened:
There was no evidence for his claims, and, unusually, the heads of the FBI and the NSA
refuted him during sworn congressional testimony.
“Director Comey, was the president’s statement that Obama had his wires tapped in Trump Tower
a true statement?”
“With respect to the president’s tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him
by the prior administration, I have no information that supports those tweets.
And we have looked carefully inside the FBI.”
“Michael Flynn told the transition, told Don McGahn, in early January that he was under
federal investigation for his work on behalf of Turkey throughout the campaign.”
Of course Trump named Flynn national security adviser anyway, ’cause why not have an agent
of a foreign government as your national security adviser.
And then there’s the story that dominated the news.
“There’s word tonight that President Trump may have jeopardized a secret source of intelligence
on the Islamic State group.
The Washington Post is reporting that the president divulged highly sensitive information
when he met with the Russian foreign minister and Russian ambassador last week.
That means that whatever Trump said made it possible for the Russians to figure out where
the intelligence was coming from, which in turn means it’s possible Israel will lose
a key source of information on ISIS because of Trump’s actions.
So investigations — and calls for investigations — have swirled around Trump since the beginning
of his administration, but congressional Republicans found it reasonably easy to ignore them.
“The point I was trying to make is I don’t think there needs to be a political or politicized
investigation.
Law enforcement is always free to investigate people they think broke the law so if someone
broke the law here, and I’m still not aware of what law was broken and who broke it, but
if they did, we have mechanisms for trying people in the courts.
But I don’t want a politicized investigation here, that detracts from doing the things
that we need to do.
First, Trump asked Comey to stop investigating Michael Flynn.
He also asked Comey to announce, publicly, that Trump was not under investigation.
Comey refused both requests, and in addition, he took notes on both encounters.
Then Trump fired Comey, and he fired him over the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s
contacts with Russia.
The timing of the firing, it was bizarre, and the way it was handled alienated both
Comey and the FBI.
This, too, was a problem Trump created for himself.
But there was a quasi-reasonable explanation for Comey’s firing, and the White House,
Trump’s White House, tried to offer it: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who’s
pretty widely respected, they said had reviewed Comey’s handling of the controversial Clinton
email case, and they concluded his credibility was now compromised.
Fair enough.
People didn’t quite believe it, but it had a shred of truth to it.
But then Trump destroyed it, telling NBC’s Lester Holt:
“Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey.
I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story; it’s an excuse
by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.”
No one made Trump do this.
And then no one made Trump in an Oval Office meeting with Russia’s foreign minister,
Sergei Lavrov — the same meeting where he gave up that intelligence — nobody made
him brag about firing Comey.
“The latest bombshell, a New York Times report that the president told Russian officials
in an Oval Office meeting earlier this month that firing Jim Comey as FBI director removed
great pressure on him.”
I don’t know why you would do that.
What would possess a human being in Trump’s position to do that?
Some things cannot be explained.
Notes from that meeting were subsequently leaked to the New York Times, and press secretary
Sean Spicer confirmed the account.
The remarkable thing, looking back on the timeline, is that none of it was necessary.
Trump could have simply treated Comey well and tried to win him over as an ally while
offering bland statements of support for his work.
As recently as two weeks ago, Republicans thought it safer not to know the crimes Trump
may have committed or the lines he may have crossed.
Today, the GOP is facing the grim reality that Trump is not disciplined enough, and
the bureaucracy he leads is not loyal enough, to keep his misdeeds hidden.
Some Republicans — some Republicans, not all — are concluding that the truth will
emerge, as it appears to be doing now, so they may as well be the patriots who uncovered
it rather than the hacks who suppressed it.
And that, more than anything, is what endangers Donald Trump’s presidency.

Donald Trump is destroying his own presidency

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