Trump should be terrified of Mueller
Special counsel on Russia probe is slowly tightening the noose around the president
And so, on the 258th day of Donald J. Trump’s term of office, we reach a watershed. The slow unravelling of his presidency has begun.
It is not the indictments alone of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, and Manafort’s associate, Rick Gates. Or the guilty plea of George Papadopoulos, a junior foreign policy adviser.
If they were the whole case that Robert Mueller, the special counsel, was building against Trump, there would be calm in the White House.
In fact, for a moment or two on Monday, there was. The Washington Post, which has been reporting on this administration as if it had taken up residence in the West Wing, said Trump was “relieved.”
For the first time, the story was not about him, and he was fine with that. No, he was not implicated in the indictment. It was all about allegations of money-laundering, among other counts against Manafort and Gates. Trump thinks this can be kept at bay.
But it cannot, at least not for long. Mueller is a methodical, mulish investigator, focused on the big story: the interference of the Russians, in possible collusion with Trump’s campaign, to tilt the 2016 election.
For Trump, at Halloween, this inquiry is a “hoax” and “a witch hunt.” What should terrify him is Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. It suggests that Mueller has turned Papadopoulos, using the threat of a severe prison sentence. If he sings, he will implicate others.
And if he is joined by Manafort and Gates — with whom Mueller may also strike a plea bargain — the chorus will swell like a funeral mass. The case will move closer to Mike Flynn, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr. and Trump himself.
No wonder that an agitated Trump was said to have spent Monday morning in the residence “seething” while the news channels reported the indictments and arrests.
This was Richard Nixon in the summer of 1974, in the sixth year of his presidency. Trump is in his 10th month.
Oh, the agony of being Donald Trump. Here he was, beleaguered, hoping to launch a week of good news.
There was to be the announcement of a new chair of the Federal Reserve. It won’t be Gary Cohn, who prostrated himself before the emperor — tolerating Trump’s defence of white nationalism and his coded anti-Semitism.
There was to be the introduction of the tax cuts, likely to be Trump’s only legislative achievement of 2017. If it fails, he will have done little but rescind Barack Obama’s environmental and regulatory legacy by executive order.
And he embarks on his 12-day trip to Asia. Trump will visit China, among other places, amid the veil of threats from North Korea. All that matters less now. Trump’s popularity has hit the lowest level of his presidency, the lowest of any president at this stage since polling began. That eats at him. Mueller has now signalled that he will follow Trump, corner him and accost him relentlessly. It will be an exquisite exercise of indictments, trials, leaks and allegations that go on and on, as these inquires do. Will Trump survive this? He is unlikely to resign, like Nixon, because he has little respect for the office. He is unlikely to be removed by his cabinet as “incompetent;” it is filled with loyalists such as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, there to teach public schools a lesson.
He is unlikely to be impeached unless the Democrats re-take Congress next November. Even so, it would require many principled Republicans in the Senate to convict him.
More likely, Trump will lurch to the end in 2021 — discredited, diminished and depleted. He may try to fire Mueller, as Nixon did Archibald Cox. He may pardon his acolytes, his family, even himself. All would cause a crisis.
But make no mistake. Monday was a moment. Mueller has set in motion a train of events that will undo, one way or another, the presidency of Donald Trump.