Forget collusion, Trump is simply unfit
The scandal isn’t Russia, it’s everything else
“Where is the collusion?”
“You know, they’re still looking for collusion!”
“Where is the collusion?” “Find some collusion.”
“We want to find the collusion." These were the words of the 45th president of the United States of America on the night of Aug. 21 as he prodded an obeisant West Virginia crowd into howls of adoration. Of course, “There is No Collusion” is one of Donald Trump’s greatest hits, always played right beside “Fake News” and “Hillary’s Emails.” Going to a Trump rally without the president denying Russian collusion would be akin to seeing Dexys Midnight Runners and the band forgetting to play “Come On Eileen.”
Last week’s denial was particularly jarring as it came mere hours after Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to a slate of crimes that includes tax evasion, bank fraud and illegal campaign contributions. Cohen admitted he made six-figure payments to women to buy their silence before the 2016 election, and he said Trump ordered him to break the law by circumventing the campaign-finance reporting system to make the payments. The same day, Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was found guilty on eight felony tax and bank fraud charges.
Yet amid all this turmoil, Trump looks straight ahead and denies collusion, a charge that is darn near ancillary at this point.
It makes sense that Trump would deny colluding with the Russian government in exchange for information damaging to rival Hillary Clinton. In order to charge him, special counsel Robert Mueller would have to prove Trump knew details of a pre-election meeting between Trump surrogates and Russian representatives at Trump Tower.
Exactly what Trump knew about this meeting and when he knew it remains somewhat cryptic, yet there is no shortage of other clear evidence that Trump is unfit for office. Exhibit A: Virtually everything out of Trump’s mouth since he took the job.
He lied about not having a hand in Donald Trump Jr.’s statement to the news media after the Trump Tower meeting was uncovered. He lied when he said he had no knowledge of Cohen’s payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. He has bullied and harassed law enforcement officials to get them to stop investigating him and used Twitter to undermine the veracity of the investigation altogether.
And, standing beside Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, he has taken Putin’s word over the word of U.S. intelligence that found Russia had interfered in the 2016 election. Mueller had indicted 12 Russian agents on cyberattack charges by then, yet Trump still groveled at Putin’s feet, claiming the special counsel’s “witch hunt” was straining U.S.-Russia relations. This is like blaming your scale for making you fat.
The irony is that Trump has some facts on his side when he argues he didn’t collude with Russia. It would be an extremely difficult charge to prove, and no one in America would believe he has the discipline or attention span to carry out such a complicated conspiracy. And yet his behavior since the investigations began has lent more and more credence to his possible guilt.
As the “truth isn’t truth” president (a term coined by his latest attorney, Rudy Giuliani), Trump simply constructs his own reality and hopes it takes everyone else too long to catch up. If he is telling the truth when he denies collusion, he would simply be offering a small stream of truth in a swimming pool of presidential mendacity.
“In what way has the president set a high example?” Mark Twain asked about Theodore Roosevelt, whom he reviled as a liar. “Is it a high example for a president of the United States to keep his word? Is keeping one’s word such a very extraordinary thing, when the person achieving the feat is the first citizen of a civilized nation?”
Perhaps Trump is telling the truth and he didn’t strike some deal with the Russians, but he deserves zero credit for the appallingly low example he has set. In the end, the real scandal isn’t collusion. It is Donald Trump himself.