D.C. events make for one frightening Halloween tale
I pulled up behind a car yesterday with a bumper sticker that read:
“ELECT A CLOWN, EXPECT A CIRCUS.”
Indeed, the circus that is Donald Trump’s presidency formally began its slow, steady drift toward the precipice with yesterday’s indictments of his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and his partner, Rick Gates.
Over 31 pages, Robert Mueller and the feds laid out a squalid story of how Manafort and his buddy schemed to hide as much as $75 million they were paid to act as shills for Vladimir Putin’s designated henchman in the Ukraine.
Of course, none of this bothered Trump when he hired Manafort and Gates to choreograph his Republican convention a year ago. He even crowed to the media about it, saying, “Paul has done a really fantastic job. He’s put together a team of great guys who know how to win.”
Yesterday, from half a world away in Seoul, South Korea, William Overholt, the former director of the Center For Asia Pacific Policy, reacted to the news of Manafort’s indictment.
“It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” Overholt told me. “Paul Manafort and his team have a long history of making themselves available to the nastiest of regimes around the world. They will do just about anything for money.”
Overholt recalled how a desperate Philippine dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, paid Manafort a million bucks in a sleazy, and ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to hold on to his power against Corazon Aquino.
“Manafort and his crew were willing to traffic in the most outrageous lies about Aquino being a communist,” he said.
“This is a guy with a complete lack of principles who was part of Donald Trump’s inner circle. And the worst part of it is,” Overholt added, “many right-wing Republicans have known Manafort as an operative who worked on behalf of our enemies.”
Just as Manafort and Gates were answering to money laundering charges, up popped George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser in Trump’s crazy orbit who copped a guilty plea to lying about having contact with Russian nationals regarding dirt on Hillary Clinton and her campaign.
The Papadopoulos hit put a sizeable crimp in Trump’s Twitter finger. Papadopoulos’ guilty plea raised all kinds of speculation about whether Mueller had landed at least one cooperating witness to shed critical light on Trump’s bromance with Putin.
Last night, after two fallen Trumpians were indicted and a third pleaded guilty, the president passed out Halloween candy at the White House.
His press mouthpiece, the frightening Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said her boss has no plans to fire Bob Mueller … but then Halloween isn’t over yet.