Trump playing king, surrounded by generals
There was a scary scene in the TV news on Monday. During one of those meetings where he loves to be seen on television, there sat the president surrounded by an array of his top military officials at a table while he played king. Trump was complaining to the press. He was not happy because of the treatment he was receiving (nothing new). He claimed that “attorney-client privilege is dead!”
As described by The New York Times: He “launched unbidden into a tirade against the top American law enforcement officials — officials of his own government — accusing them of ‘an attack on our country.’”
Why is Trump complaining — now, again?
By now most everyone knows that the FBI raided the office and home of Trump’s long-time personal attorney Michael Cohen. As described by CNN, “they were after documents related to the hush agreement Cohen cut with porn star Stormy Daniels 11 days before the 2016 presidential election.”
The New York Times also claims that “the investigation poses a legal threat to Mr. Cohen — and possibly his client. Few people closer to Mr. Trump have more knowledge of what the president has been involved with over the years.”
So there was Trump being Trump and calling it a witch hunt against him, blah, blah, blah.
But the scary part, I thought, was the imagery.
Trump surrounded by generals and claiming that “American law enforcement officials — officials of his own government”, in other words, those who raided his lawyers home and office, and accused them of “an attack on our country.” And he was surrounded by generals…
There is a fine editorial in The New York Times, “The Law is Coming, Mr. Trump,” worth the read. It describes our president, who seems to act more like a ‘Don’ in one of the Godfather movies.
It begins by asking: “Why don’t we take a step back and contemplate what Americans, and the world, are witnessing?” It is followed by the news of the most recent raid and then this:
“Oh, also: The Times reported Monday evening that investigators were examining a $150,000 donation to the president’s personal foundation from a Ukrainian steel magnate, given during the American presidential campaign in exchange for a 20-minute video appearance.
“Meanwhile, the president’s former campaign chairman is under indictment, and his former national security adviser has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators. His son-in-law and other associates are also under investigation.
“This is your president, ladies and gentlemen. This is how Donald Trump does business, and these are the kinds of people he surrounds himself with.
“Mr. Trump has spent his career in the company of developers and celebrities, and also of grifters, cons, sharks, goons and crooks. He cuts corners, he lies, he cheats, he brags about it, and for the most part, he’s gotten away with it, protected by threats of litigation, hush money and his own bravado. Those methods may be proving to have their limits when they are applied from the Oval Office. Though Republican leaders in Congress still keep a cowardly silence, Mr. Trump now has real reason to be afraid. A raid on a lawyer’s office doesn’t happen every day; it means that multiple government officials, and a federal judge, had reason to believe they’d find evidence of a crime there and that they didn’t trust the lawyer not to destroy that evidence.”
And if this were not enough, The Times, in the same editorial, later states that:
“This wasn’t even the first early-morning raid of a close Trump associate. That distinction goes to Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman and Russian oligarch-whisperer, who now faces a slate of federal charges long enough to land him in prison for the rest of his life. And what of Mr. Cohen? He’s already been cut loose by his law firm, and when the charges start rolling in, he’ll likely get the same treatment from Mr. Trump.
“Among the grotesqueries that faded into the background of Mr. Trump’s carnival of misgovernment during the past 24 hours was that Monday’s meeting was ostensibly called to discuss a matter of global significance: a reported chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians. Mr. Trump instead made it about him, with his narcissistic and self-pitying claim that the investigation represented an attack on the country “in a true sense.”
“No, Mr. Trump — a true attack on America is what happened on, say, Sept. 11, 2001. Remember that one? Thousands of people lost their lives. Your response was to point out that the fall of the twin towers meant your building was now the tallest in downtown Manhattan. Of course, that also wasn’t true.”
Let us hope that the authorities catch Trump before he does something crazy. And that image of him surrounded by generals still scares the shit out of me.
