Month: April 2019

THE MUELLER REPORT: AN EPIC TALE WITHOUT A HAPPY ENDING

The biggest mystery of the Mueller investigation is why Donald Trump was so obsessed with stopping or stymying it. The outcome, in his post-fact universe, was always destined to be rewritten, revised and repurposed in order to cast the Donald as the perpetual winner he imagines himself to be. 

Not even Lewis Carroll could have envisioned a scene like this:  Trump beaming from ear to ear as he declared himself to be having “a very good day. . .no collusion, no obstruction.”  Such joy and jubilation from a 448-page report that paints a picture of an incendiary White House led by a dishonest, paranoid and prevaricating  president who repeatedly orders his aides to lie and falsify documents. God only knows what it would take for this guy to have a bad day.

Robert Mueller’s meticulous report has been analyzed, annotated and otherwise sliced and diced since its release. In many ways, the magnum opus is the legalese version in the glut of Trump books that hit the market over the past few years.  It portrays 45 as an out-of-control narcissist who views events through a prism of whatever makes him look good in the moment, a man who bows to no norm or ethical standard. 

Yet, there is little in this report to stun an American public that has sadly developed an immunity to Trump shock over these past tumultuous  27 months.  Take one of Muller’s more pedestrian findings: that the president dictated a deliberately falsified press statement relating to the Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer and her entourage.  In any other administration, that would have been a page one story for days. Instead, it was merely Trump meeting our expectation of untruthfulness.  After all, we’re talking about a guy who, according to a former Mar a Largo butler, used to falsely tell guests that nursey rhyme tiles in Ivanka’s room were the original work of Walt Disney because, as Trump told his employee, “who cares” if it’s not true? 

One of Trump’s pre-presidential biographers, Michael D’Antonio, prophetically anticipated a major theme of the Mueller report weeks before the inauguration. In describing his vision of the then-incoming presidency, D’Antonio told Politico, “. . .he’ll give orders and they may not be followed, and he wouldn’t care if he doesn’t find out about it. He’s not going to be that concerned with the actual competent administration of the government. It’s going to be what he seems to be gaining or losing in public esteem.”

Therein lies Trump’s biggest ego bruise from the Mueller investigation.  Revelation of his constant fabrications or utter disregard for ethical behavior does not faze him. That’s simply Trump being Trump, a persona he has embraced for 72 years.  For this president, the real kryptonite in Mueller’s findings is that his staff regularly ignores the Donald’s orders, otherwise known, in the words of former White House counsel Don McGahn, as “crazy shit”.   For a man who ran for president on the theme of “only I can fix it”, a pathological egotist who takes counsel from no quarter, the Mueller report had the impact of Dorothy’s dog, Toto.  It pulled back the curtain on this boisterous, vile-tweeting, bombast-spewing loudmouth to reveal that the mighty Oz is actually just a feeble old man who nobody pays much attention to.

Of all of Mueller’s findings, this one sentence carried the heaviest blow to Trump’s ego: “The president’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.” 

According to Mueller:

WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL MCGAHNrepeatedly refused Trump’s orders for him to have Mueller fired.

DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF RICK DEARBORN took Trump’s written instructions for the Justice Department to limit the Russia probe to future elections and threw them into a trash can.

ATTORNEY GENERAL JEFF SESSIONS continuously refused Trump’s pleas to “un-recuse” himself from the Russia investigation so he could protect the President.

DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE DANIEL COATSrefused the president’s request to say there was no link between the Trump campaign and Russia.

DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY DIRECTOR K.T. MCFARLANDrefused Trump’s order to write a witness statement saying that the president hadn’t told her then-boss, Michael Flynn, to discuss sanctions with the Russian ambassador.

CHIEF OF STAFF REINCE PRIEBUSignored Trump’s order to fire Jeff Sessions.

DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL ROD ROSENSTEINrefused Trump’s order to falsely announce that James Comey’s firing was Rosenstein’s idea.

The list goes on and on. In many cases, as Trump biographer D’Antonio prophesized, the refusal of presidential orders took the form of passive resistance. They simply ignored the assignment and waited for Trump’s attention to move to the next shiny object.  

While the Mueller report provides the most extensive documentation of how many of Trump’s aides routinely ignored his commands, it’s not the first we’ve heard of this phenomena. His former defense secretary, Jim Mattis, refused Trump’s order to assassinate the president of Syria and provide options for military action against Iran. Aides also prevented Trump from pulling out of trade deals by removing papers from his desk and waiting for him to forget about it.  Other top assistants reportedly declined Trump’s instructions to lobby the Justice Department to prevent the AT&T-Time Warner merger as a way of punishing CNN for what the president regarded as negative news coverage.

There is, of course, only slight solace in the fact that so many of the president’s subordinates found ways to avoid doing “crazy shit”.  Of those identified above, all except Coats have either left the White House or are about to.  

Now that the curtain has been pulled back on the illusion of the great and powerful Oz, passive resistance offers little comfort for the future of Trump’s presidency.  That means, unless we find a way to cut this nightmare short, we will need a pronoun change in what has been the most quoted line in the Mueller report, the part where Trump, upon learning of Mueller’s appointment, said, “This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.”  The truth of the matter is that if his presidency doesn’t end soon, WE are fucked.  

THE TWILIGHT ZONE OF PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

CBS’s timing for the third revival of its other-worldly series The Twilight Zone could not have been more impeccable.  As we approach the precipice of a presidential election campaign, we are, indeed, about to enter another dimension. With apologies to the late Rod Serling, here is the introductory narrative:

Imagine if you will, a score or more of ambitious politicians, a horde of men and women of various shades of liberalness, all seeking their party’s nomination. It is, by and large, an honorable constellation of star candidates. Except for one thing. Each of them possesses a flaw. Although neither felonious nor disqualifying, these foibles haunt the presidential aspirants like a Dickensian ghost. Meanwhile, the other party has but one candidate, the incumbent president, an utterly immoral, soulless, bloviating shell of a man who routinely performs at least a dozen despicable acts before breakfast. What does it mean, you might ask, that a good candidate, even with a minor peccadillo, would not be a shoo-in when pitted against a deplorable bastion of evil?  It means that we are now in the Twilight Zone.

And we’d better get used to it. Between now and November of next year, this country’s quest to elect a president will be subsumed in a bizarre and preternatural odyssey unlike anything we have experienced.  The campaign will be void of symmetry, packed with irrationality and mired in a Byzantine battle of facts versus alternative facts.  

For the Democratic candidates, the focus will be on benign blemishes, things like having a faux American Indian identity, bullying staff members, being too close to Wall Street, dating a much older political figure decades ago, or having a rope line reputation for pressing the flesh a tad too much.

On the Republican side is Donald Trump, a rapidly growing malignant goiter on the body politic.  So far in 2019, he has clocked in at an average of 22 lies a day. He took migrant children away from their parents and caused the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. He said some neo-Nazis and Klan members are “very fine people”, and complained that Nigerians won’t “go back to their huts” and that Haitians “all have AIDS”.  He shared highly classified data with top Russian officials, and has sided with Vladimir Putin over U.S. intelligence agencies.  

In just the past few days, Trump has outdone himself when it comes to unraveling. He threatened to close the country’s southern border, and then backed off and said he’d use tariffs to force his will on Mexico. Then he urged border patrol agents to force asylum-seeking immigrants to turn around and go home because there is no room for them, completely contrary to facts and law. He promised a top Homeland Security official a presidential pardon if he ignored the legal rights of migrants. His record is so bad on this issue that there have been at least 25 federal court rulings that have blocked nearly every move Trump has made on immigration.  

Clearly, no American president has stood for reelection with a record as odious as Trump’s.  Yet, it is very possible that he will win a second term in 2020.  He remains revered by his base as the Great White Hope in a country that has grown far too diverse for his supporters’ tastes. And he remains acceptable to many mainstream Republicans who may hold their noses privately while publicly applauding his tax cuts for the rich and appointment of conservative judges.  Besides, his acts of atrocity are so numerous and frequent, they have a way of fading into the ether to make room for their successors.  That leaves us with this bizarre, irrational and asymmetrical  environment in which the quotidian flaws of Democratic candidates have a staying power that outlasts the cumulative horror that has been Trump’s presidency. Not only that, the challengers’ flaws pale in comparison to Trumpian foibles in the same category.

For example:

AMY KLOBUCHAR has been accused of bullying staff members.  Trump routinely insults, demeans and verbally abuses not only staff but cabinet members, congressional leaders and foreign dignitaries.  

ELIZABETH WARREN has been unable to shake the criticism that she incorrectly claimed to be an American Indian.  As of March 17, Trump told 9,179 lies since taking office. One of them was that his father was born in Germany.

KAMALA HARRIS is constantly bombarded with reports that, as a young political apprentice, she dated – more than 20 years ago – a much older Willie Brown, former mayor of San Francisco. This barely even qualifies as a flaw but she has been getting flack on it. Harris was single at the time, although Brown was technically married but estranged from his wife. Trump’s alleged flings with a porn star and a Playboy Playmate, along with hush money paid to both, don’t even make the top ten list of his aberrant behaviors.

CORY BOOKER has been on the carpet for having close ties to Wall Street.  From day one of his presidency, Trump has catered to the moneyed class, filling his cabinet with Goldman Sachs alumni, rolling back regulations for the financial sector and cutting taxes on the mega rich.

KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND has acquired the “flip flop” label as a result of becoming more liberal after she moved from a moderate House district to her current New York Senate seat. Trump has not only spent his life flip-flopping (abortion, gun control, LGBTQ rights), but lately, as noted above, he has been reversing himself on an almost hourly basis (border closing, health insurance, Special Olympics funding). A creative entrepreneur has had great success in selling “Presidential Flip-Flops”, sandals that carry Trump’s contradictory tweets on the straps of the footwear.

JOE BIDEN has run into problems with his habit of expressing affection with hugs, kisses and caresses that sometimes make people feel uncomfortable.  Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 23 women and boasted on the Access Hollywood tape of grabbing them by their genitals.

The good news in all of this is that any of the Democratic candidates would be head and shoulders above Trump. The bad news is that it does not assure electoral victory. That will come the way it always has, through good messaging and the hard work of voter registration and turnout. It’s either that or four more years in the Twilight Zone.

UNCLE JOE’S TOUCH IS . . . WELL, OUT OF TOUCH

I’ve been a fervent Joe Biden fan for most of my adult life. How do you not love a guy who blurts out stuff like: “This is a big fucking deal” into a hot mic? I even cheered with guilty pleasure when he said he wanted to take Donald Trump “behind the gym and beat the hell out of him”.  In a world of buttoned-down, circumspect politicians guided by focus groups, Biden has forever been one of a kind. But please, Joe, don’t run for president. 

I don’t say this because of the seven women (at last count) who have complained that he invaded their personal space by hair smelling, nose rubbing, head kissing, shoulder squeezing or prolonged hugging.   I say it because his most endearing quality – being himself – is out of sync with an evolving and younger world around him.

As a 69-year-old retiree who had to turn to Google for a definition of the word “woke”, I feel his pain. Yet, one of life’s most important choices is when to leave the party. Particularly after the past few days, now seems like the time for Joe to call it a night. He can flash that disarming trademark smile, take his bows, and lend his considerable wisdom to the diverse and growing cast of Democratic candidates seeking the one office that has forever eluded him.

Because of my affection for the guy, I initially vacillated on the question of whether he should run as the women’s stories began to emerge last weekend. The media frenzy – both social and mainstream – didn’t help. As each woman complaining about Biden’s touchy-feely behavior stressed, this wasn’t about sexual assault or harassment.  Many news stories, however, failed to make that clear, as they trotted out #MeToo background references to men who were accused of assaultive or harassing behavior. Even the esteemed Washington Post, in its Tuesday print edition, ran a cutline saying “Bidden denied sexual misconduct charges”.  

So much of the response to this story has been predictably hyperbolic and tribal.  Fox News has had a field day with “Creepy Uncle Joe” stories. The other side has questioned the political motives behind the accusations.  Social media has been inundated with variations on the social construct that Biden’s hair kissing is de minimis compared with Trump’s pussy grabbing, an assertion that is at once factually correct and a lousy basis for selecting a president.  

Finally, after several days of insisting he never acted inappropriately and had no intentions of causing discomfort, Biden issued a video statement yesterday that was filled with his charismatic charm and empathy, along with a promise to change his behavior. He said he recognizes that “social norms (have) shifted, and the boundaries of protecting personal space have been reset, and I get it.”

I watched the video three times, warming to Biden’s embrace of human connection as a vital force in life and in politics.  But what really got to me was the fact that he still doesn’t get it.  The boundaries of personal space have not changed.  What has changed is that women have become more empowered to speak out about men who enter that space without consent.  As long as 50 years ago, about the time Biden entered politics, academic researchers put a microscope to tactile communication. They found it to be powerfully constructive if used correctly, but also cautioned that it is far more susceptible to misinterpretation between sender and receiver than verbal or other nonverbal communication. Particularly problematic, they said, is the matter of touch initiated by someone in a position of power over the recipient, as in the case of a professor and a student, or a vice president and a campaign volunteer. 

 In my career as a union representative, I rarely encountered a female worker who didn’t have at least one story of an overly tactile, Biden-like boss. It wasn’t sexual harassment per se, but the managerial touches left them uncomfortable. Because of the power imbalance, the vast majority opted not to complain.  The only thing that has changed over all these decades is that many women are now objecting when they feel their personal space has been violated.

If Joe really got it, yesterday’s statement would have included an apology. With his characteristic authenticity and warmth, he could have said:  “It pains me to no end to think that I made some women uncomfortable. Because we are now in a new era where women – thankfully – feel comfortable in telling us when they are uncomfortable, I know now that I crossed a line that I didn’t know existed. I am so sorry.  I get it now and I will immediately change my behavior.”

Joe Biden, to use his own terminology, is one hell of a decent guy.  But he is of a different era, and it is not easy to adjust to change. That’s why, in a recent speech, he referenced 23 people by name and only three were born since 1961.  That’s why, in another appearance, he blasted the “younger generation” for complaining about how tough things are, and then listed all of the accomplishments of his generation.  That’s why he told a New York gathering that he regrets that he “couldn’t come up with a way of getting (Anita Hill) the kind of hearing she deserved,” a reference to the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing he chaired in 1991.

I know well the pain of comprehending that your best years are behind you.  Growing old and being – at least a little – out of touch is a natural life rhythm. But it is not a useful predicate for a presidential campaign. The Democratic field for 2020 is packed with unprecedented diversity, in gender, race, age, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, as well as new thinking and ideas.  It’s hard to imagine how the enthusiasm in all those constituencies carries over to the general election if the eventual candidate turns out to be an old white guy trying to defend everything he has done since 1972.  For the country’s sake, and for Joe’s sake, I hope that doesn’t happen.