Anyone who pays attention knew a Friday morning twitter tantrum was imminent. For while Trump prides himself for his ability to use the element of surprise, there are two things for which he is so predictable it must sting his fragile ego.
Trump will obsess over media coverage of him and when the coverage isn’t favorable he’ll tweet that it’s fake news. In Trumpland, the emperor decides what is true and what isn’t. Anything that makes Trump look good is “true†anything that shows him how he really is, is not.
…Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future "press briefings" and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017
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It isn’t like things like transcripts, video recorded by countless media outlets will get in the way of a lie to rehabilitate the image Trump wants the little people to see – an image of a benevolent dictator who tells it like it is.
It isn’t limited to the Russia question, though frankly that would be enough. As Sarah Jones reported, the Trump’s own lawyers admitted Trump does have business dealings with Russia – which contradicts Trump’s prior statements.
Trump has so many official versions of the Comey firing. It was because Comey was mean to Hillary. It was on the advise of Jeff Sessions who said he recused himself from all matters related to the Russia investigations, one of which was led by former FBI director Comey.
That brings us to the second thing. When the public record presents facts that make Trump look bad, he’ll threaten the messenger via twitter be it the former FBI director
James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017
… or the former Attorney-General, Sally Yates.
Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017
These threats when taken within the time and context of events are an obstruction of justice – the first offense in the articles of impeachment against Nixon.
Trump twitter threatened Yates just before damning testimony by her and James Clapper before a Senate Sub-Committee – this past Monday. Trump threatened Comey – days he fired Comey which was days after the former FBI director sought more resources to investigate the Trump campaigns alleged collusion with Putin during the 2016 election.
When both things happen in tandem, you get what happened today – a twitter tantrum where Trump makes his war on America and the Constitution public via Twitter. A big part of me wishes this is just melodrama – something we could dismiss as the musings of a senile former reality TV star.
In an opinion piece published in USA Today, Laurence Tribe, Richard Painter and Norman Eisen wrote:
“If President Trump’s shockingly sudden firing of FBI Director James Comey had violated some statute or constitutional provision, our judicial branch could easily have remedied that misstep. What the president did was worse. It was a challenge to the very premises of our system of checks and balances precisely because it violated no mere letter of the law but its essential spirit.â€
In short, Trump is on public record saying he is above the law of the land because he is president. And as Tribe et all point out, this goes beyond breaking a law or an ethics violation.
If only advising Mr. Trump that this is America, not Russia or a country ruled by the handful of dictators he praises for their “strong leadership†could solve this.
But it has gone beyond giving Trump some basic instruction on the U.S. constitution because Trump is at war with the very spirit of our constitution.
This week alone he threatened the former acting Attorney-General and the former FBI director – both of whom were fired from their positions because they wouldn’t drop the investigation of the nature of Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin. He threatened both should they go public with what they know.
Trump went on to compromise the Deputy AG’s integrity, and that’s after he got advise from the AG who supposedly recused himself from all matters related to the Russis question. In Putin’s Russia the emperor’s roar would be enough to silence questioning.
But this is America. The drumbeat of calls for a Special Counsel is getting louder. The FBI’s wrath over the firing of Comey is surpassed by the ethics of career professionals – who swear their loyalty oath to America, it’s constitution and law.
Republicans are running out of time to choose America and the Constitution over the dictatorial aspirations of an orange, intellectually challenged version of Nixon.
Former contributor.
