The Only Thing Keeping Trump Out of Jail [View all]
We can’t look to Donald Trump for guidance or wisdom in the wake of Tuesday’s twin blows to his presidency. We know that he’s going to go down fighting to the end, snarling back at his foes and anyone else who gets in his way. We know he’ll continue to deny the facts, the evidence and the truth, until someone takes away his power, and finally, his microphone. That day is not here yet, but it is measurably closer than it was a week ago. America knows that two more of the president’s men are crooks.
The people who really matter as Trump’s damnable presidency starts to implode are those who always have held in their hands the power to determine his fate: Congressional Republicans. Does the conviction on tax fraud and bank fraud charges of former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort erode their support for this administration? How about the fact that Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, implicated the president during his plea colloquy in federal court? Will Republicans, at last, save themselves, and America, from this rogue White House?
It’s anyone’s guess.
We’ve reached the part of the story where Trump, if he were not the president, would surely be a federal criminal defendant charged with campaign finance violations and likely others. Let that sink in as the administration continues to pitch itself as the “law and order” White House. Trump’s legal troubles are only going to get worse now that he is linked, in court and under oath, to admitted criminal conduct. It doesn’t matter if Cohen isn’t formally “cooperating” with prosecutors (though I bet he is). Cohen’s already done enough public damage.
What will Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell do now that Cohen has essentially corroborated other evidence linking Trump to multiple hush-money payments? Is he prepared to campaign this fall on behalf of a party led by an unindicted co-conspirator who successfully (until now anyway) paid off a woman not to tell her story of an illicit affair? What about Speaker Paul Ryan? He is going to go back home to Wisconsin and do, what, exactly? Tell voters that they should re-elect Republican incumbents so they can return to Washington and continue to cover up Trump’s crimes and the administration’s rank corruption?
What about all those feckless Republicans running in gerrymandered House districts that suddenly are competitive for the first time in a long time? Are any of them going to have the courage to do something now that it’s even clearer that this is the most corrupt administration in the nation’s history? Is there a point at which Trump’s legal problems are so profound that his perceived political power among his fellow Republicans weakens? If that doesn’t happen now, then when?
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-cohen-manafort-714430/
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