Lawrence O’Donnell showed the Michael Cohen raid was totally avoidable if Trump would have done the smart and obvious thing of dropping the NDA with Stormy Daniels.
Video:
Lawrence O'Donnell shows how Trump's stupidity caused the avoidable Stormy Daniels scandal that could bring him down. https://t.co/TvRaVoRTwH #TheLastWord pic.twitter.com/bnIADSz0UJ
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) April 19, 2018
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
O’Donnell said, “The legal quicksand that Michael Cohen is drowning in and dragging Donald Trump into was avoidable if Michael Cohen and Donald Trump followed my suggestion on this program several weeks ago and made the obvious choice to drop their civil case against stormy Daniels. As the “National Enquirer” showed today, a civil case is something each side is in control of. At any moment, each side can decide to quit and let the other have its way. That’s what the “National Enquirer” did today. Better late than never…Because Michael Cohen and Donald Trump couldn’t see that, they have continued to try to put toothpaste back in the tube. Continued to pursue the stormy Daniels case long after she had publically told her story. And they provoked the FBI raid on Michael Cohen that has Donald Trump’s most trusted lawyer, Jay Goldberg, now telling him, he has more to fear in the Michael Cohen case than in the Robert Mueller investigation.”
Any person who is a president or not should have been able to calculate and see that Trump was in a losing situation. The smart thing to do was to waive the NDA, let Daniels tell her story, and the news cycle would move on in a few days to something else.
Since Trump is a small and petty man who has gotten his ego boost from threatening people who don’t have the resources to stand up to him for decades, his mindset was never to do the politically smart thing. Trump had to fight with Daniels to prove to himself that he is a big man.
Of course, he was always going to lose, and now the situation has gone in a direction that could destroy his business and his presidency.
None of this had to happen, but it did happen because Donald Trump is destined to self-destruct.
For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
