This Week in Trump
Points are awarded based on absurdity, narcissism, and ignorance.
Well, here we go again. Another week with Trump and about 8 more scandals to think about. There were some minor stories from this week involving Trump, the most interesting is his search for a new chief of staff. His top prospect, Nick Ayers, has recently turned down the job in, ironically, a tweet. His statement reads “Thank you @realDonaldTrump, @VP, and my great colleagues for the honor to serve our Nation at The White House. I will be departing at the end of the year but will work with the #MAGA team to advance the cause.” The reason this is so intriguing is that Trump is looking for his third Chief of staff in his almost two years as president. Trump has tweeted “Fake News has it purposely wrong. Many, over ten, are vying for and wanting the White House Chief of Staff position. Why wouldn’t someone want one of the truly great and meaningful jobs in Washington. Please report news correctly. Thank you!” However it is up to you to decide who you trust more, Trump’s tweets or the many news sites reporting with sources that Trump is desperately trying to fill this important job.
Speaking of tweets it’s time for a segment that I’ll label tweet review where I will give Trump tweets ratings out of 10. Points are awarded based on absurdity, narcissism, and ignorance. Also extra points are awarded if he uses nicknames or if he uses the words democrat, Mueller, fake news, Mexico/The Wall or MAGA. On Monday he tweeted that “President Xi and I have a very strong and personal relationship. He and I are the only two people that can bring about massive and very positive change, on trade and far beyond, between our two great Nations.” I’ll give it a 9/10 for narcissism and absurdity but overall a 5/10 because there is a surprising lack of ignorance. The same day he tweeted “We would save Billions of Dollars if the Democrats would give us the votes to build the Wall. Either way, people will NOT be allowed into our Country illegally! We will close the entire Southern Border if necessary. Also, STOP THE DRUGS!” How is building a massive wall going to save billions of dollars? He doesn’t explain in this tweet (obviously) and threatens to “close the entire Southern Border” if he doesn’t get his way. He adds the truly moving and inspirational “STOP THE DRUGS” at the end of his tweet (It totally relates). I give it a 10/10 for absurdity, however a surprising lack of narcissism or ignorance brings it’s overall score to a 5/10. Then we add two extra points for mentioning both democrats and the wall to end with a solid score of 7/10.
Well what is going on with Mueller? Well that’s a surprisingly challenging question to answer, since he has been fairly secretive at what his plans are and what he knows. The big question is whether he’ll be able to indict Trump, which while unlikely, is far from impossible. He has interviewed a lot of witnesses in his search for the truth, but many of them have boldly lied to his face including Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Trump’s former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos (Notice all of the former Trump employees). However he has not given up when they lied to him and he has gotten many incriminating emails, bank statements, documents and more. This ability to pin these lies to the witnesses is incredibly important.
For one it lets Mueller work outside of just what people say. As we have seen throughout this investigation people are more than willing to lie if it means that the lies help them rise above accusations, and Mueller has an ability to look past the lies and find the truth. People also are afraid to lie as Mueller is incredibly talented at finding evidence for the truth, to a point where lying will often just make your situation worse. Look at Cohen for example: he recently pleaded guilty to working in “Trump’s direction” to pay off Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. Trump (allegedly) had sex with these women and then used campaign money to pay them off. Cohen said that these payments were made “for the principal purpose of influencing” the presidential election. Cohen could have faced up to 65 years in prison for what he did, however he only got 36 months. “These are very serious charges and reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty,” deputy U.S. Attorney Robert Khuzami told reporters after the hearing. “For that he’s going to pay a very, very serious price.”
Cohen famously said that he would take a bullet for Trump, but Trump has questioned his loyalty tweeting that “he [Cohen] plead to two campaign charges which were not criminal and of which he probably was not… guilty even on a civil basis. Those charges were just agreed to by him in order to embarrass the president and get a much reduced prison sentence, which he did-including the fact that his family was temporarily let off the hook. As a lawyer, Michael has great liability to me!” It is thought that this tweet turning on Cohen and suggesting that he is working against Trump might just be the turning point for Cohen to actually stop standing up for Trump. Put yourself in Cohen’s shoes for a second, he has done so much for trump, including paying off porn stars and models (unless he is in fact lying but I sincerely doubt he is) only for Trump to say that he is a traitor and claim that he is working against Trump. For me this would be enough for me to start working against Trump, however we don’t know if Cohen will work with Mueller yet. Cohen’s plea deal does not include working with the federal authorities, but there is still a chance that he will work with Mueller to prove that Trump has colluded with Russia. It’s easy to forget that Mueller’s main investigation is to figure out if Trump worked with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election, as so much has happened since the rumors that Russia was largely involved in the election started. However, that is still what Mueller is striving towards finding, and taking down Cohen is just a cherry on top of his sundae of Russian colluding. So, how far along is Mueller in proving his claims that Trump colluded with Russia?
Well, we don’t know. There is not a lot of information on where Mueller is on his main investigation. A file that he has released states that “Cohen received the contact information for, and spoke with, a Russian national who claimed to be a ‘trusted person’ in the Russian Federation who could offer the campaign ‘political synergy’ and ‘synergy on a government level,’” that’s fairly damning but Cohen says that he never actually worked with this ‘trusted person’. In conclusion, we don’t know where Mueller’s investigation will end. The evidence he has acquired will, at least, show Trump in an unpatriotic and reckless light, however, it might go as far as indicting him. The most likely outcome of Mueller’s investigation will probably fall somewhere in between these two extremes, but like I’ve already said it is too early to tell. These statements are backed up by what Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor has said, “I think it’s entirely possible that Mueller ends up concluding that there were all these contacts with Russia that were some combination of unwise or naive or reckless or unpatriotic… Even if the stuff wasn’t criminal, then presumably there are political implications for all the Russian ties. But who knows? Mueller is running such a tight ship, until something happens you don’t know it’s going to happen.”
Sources:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump (obviously)
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sen-chris-murphy-mueller-probe-now-stage-clinton/story?id=59702470
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/comey-refutes-trumps-claims-he-and-mueller-are-best-friends
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-news-michael-cohen-arrested-20180608-story.html
