A political cradle rocks violently
Let’s make sense of the mayhem now underway in Washington
President Donald J. Trump’s meetings with leaders in the Middle East and Europe, crosshatched with what is going on in the United States, underlined again that it is futile for a leader to try to represent the nation overseas while his political cradle at home is rocking violently.
So we are driven again to try to make sense of the mayhem underway now in the United States as the Trump administration tries to get off the ground. Let’s try to drive a few stakes in the ground to help keep our bearings as we labor through all this, particularly the business with the Russians.
An effort is underway to shift public focus to Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as opposed to Mr. Trump himself. There are at least two reasons not to make that mistake. The first one is that Mr. Kushner, in spite of having married Mr. Trump’s daughter, doesn’t amount to much himself. His experience is basically as the slumlord of rundown properties. The second, preeminent fact is that Mr. Kushner wouldn’t be doing anything that wasn’t approved or directed by Mr. Trump himself.
After all, his only ultimate defense if it comes to not going to prison, as his father did, would be a presidential pardon from his father-in-law. He can’t not know that as he fiddles around with the Russian ambassador and the head of a Russian bank on the U.S. sanctions list.
A second point not to lose sight of — as former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, now special counsel, and the House and Senate Intelligence Committees probe the role that Russia played in America’s 2016 elections — is that the Trump and Kushner families, now in government, maintain a laser-like focus on money. There are the hotels, the golf courses and Ivanka Trump’s line of products, at home and abroad. Mr. Kushner’s contacts with key Russians included Sergey N. Gorkov, the head of Russia’s Vnesheconombank, which is close to President Vladimir V. Putin.
Is it thus not unlikely that the subject, upon which to open a confidential line of communications and to take great pains to cover up now, was money. It could be Russian financing of Mr. Trump’s campaign, or it could be Mr. Trump’s debts to Russia, the government, the banks or companies, or individuals. And, of course, if the public could see Mr. Trump’s tax returns, which stay hidden, it might be possible to know the truth of that. If he has something to hide, it is not likely to be Israeli secrets he has passed to the Russians or loans from Slovenian banks; it is much more likely to be his financial ties to Russian entities.
The third point not to lose sight of is the fact that we elected Mr. Trump president. There is no point in bleating about the Electoral College. I share the view that it is archaic and undemocratic. But it was and is part of the rules of the electoral game. We elected him, and it would be hard to impeach him with both the House and the Senate in the hands of his nominal party. Consider the fact that Mr. Trump named Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, to his Cabinet as transportation secretary. Consider the squealing from those who voted for Mr. Trump if the congressional Republicans acquiesced in his impeachment, even if it turned out that Russians financed both his company and his campaign.
The only thing that can bring Mr. Trump down, in 2020 or sooner, is if and when the American people who voted for him conclude that he doesn’t care a hoot about them and is not going to do anything to improve their situation. One could conclude that now, looking at early signs, but we definitely are not there yet. He named Betsy DeVos, an enemy of America’s public school system, which sees to the education of 91 percent of our children, as secretary of education. He named Jefferson B. Sessions, a supporter of private prison systems and longer sentences thereto, as attorney general. Mr. Sessions is also too tainted by his own intercourse with the Russians to play a role in the investigations into Russian involvement in our elections and has had to recuse himself from that, perhaps the most important current activity of the Department of Justice and the FBI.
Mr. Trump has just demonstrated an inability to play well with foreign leaders, other than Saudi Sunni Muslim kings and princes, while sticking his fingers in the eyes of the Europeans on climate change, trade and mutual defense through NATO. (I found the look on the face of Pope Francis when he posed with the Trumps to be priceless. Poor Melania.) That, plus his clear intention to mess up relations with neighbors Canada and Mexico through fooling around with the North American Free Trade Agreement, means that job prospects for the forgotten people of America are unlikely to improve.
There are things he could do for the people who voted for him. The first would be to send Ms. DeVos back to Michigan and name a credible education specialist, a university president or the secretary of education of a forward-looking state, as secretary of education. He could send Mr. Sessions back to Alabama and name someone who is actually embarrassed by the number of people we have locked up in privately owned prisons, to the profit of some of America’s rich, who would dedicate himself or herself to reform in his place. As it stands now, about the only thing we aren’t doing is, like the Chinese, selling prisoners’ body parts for transplants for the rich. (I guess we aren’t doing that.)
On job creation, whatever happened to the idea of a big infrastructure bill? Instead, Congress is redoing the Affordable Care Act, with the House version designed to take health care away from 23 million Americans. They also apparently plan to pass “tax reform” that will cut taxes for the rich, with the reduced revenues coming out of the hides of the poor and needy in fewer services.
Mr. Trump is supposed to be a businessman who can change course. So why doesn’t he, now?