Day 184: Donald Trump is Panicking

On the heels of a truly terrible week, Hurricane Trump blows hot air.

Donald Trump just finished what could be — after all, there’s a ton of competition — the single worst week of his presidency.

To recap:

1. Trump branded the week “Made in America,” yet tried to hire 70 foreign workers for Mar-a-Lago.
2. Trump gave a wide-reaching, mostly incoherent interview with The New York Times where he blasted his attorney general, confused health insurance and life insurance, and threatened special counsel Robert Mueller not to expand his Russia probe into Trump’s personal finances.
3. The next day, news out of Mueller’s team was that they were expanding their probe into Trump’s personal finances.
4. Trump’s approval rating hit historic lows.
5. Trumpcare had another stake driven into it, as it failed to get even close to the necessary 50 votes needed to pass the Senate, despite Republicans holding 52 seats.
6. Trump threatened that — as opposed to a repeal and replace vote — the Senate just repeal the Affordable Care Act, a thought that got less support than Trumpcare. Furthermore, straight repeal is impossible to entirely do as part of the reconciliation process.
7. News emerged that Trump had a private, undisclosed additional meeting with Vladimir Putin, where no other Americans were present.
8. Reports indicated that Trump is thinking about pardoning numerous people within his administration, and his lawyers are trying to determine if Trump can pardon himself.
9. Trump’s embattled press secretary, Sean Spicer, abruptly resigned after Trump hired a new White House Communications Director.
10. Former campaign manager Paul Manafort and son Donald Trump Jr. are being compelled — if they don’t appear voluntarily, they will be subpoenaed — to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding Russian contacts and their June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with numerous Russian contacts.
11. Finally, last night, The Washington Post broke a story that Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ meetings with the Russian ambassador last year were about campaign-related issues, despite Sessions’ numerous promises that they were not. (Of course, those promises followed Sessions’ initial statements that he never had any meetings with Russian officials. However, it turned out he met with the ambassador shortly before Trump’s first major foreign policy speech and again at the Republican National Convention.)

Russia’s ambassador to Washington told his superiors in Moscow that he discussed campaign-related matters, including policy issues important to Moscow, with Jeff Sessions during the 2016 presidential race, contrary to public assertions by the embattled attorney general, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Ambassador Sergey Kislyak’s accounts of two conversations with Sessions — then a top foreign policy adviser to Republican candidate Donald Trump — were intercepted by U.S. spy agencies, which monitor the communications of senior Russian officials in the United States and in Russia. Sessions initially failed to disclose his contacts with Kislyak and then said that the meetings were not about the Trump campaign.

The Post further noted that Kislyak’s reports home during his time as ambassador tended to be truthful.

But U.S. officials with regular access to Russian intelligence reports say Kislyak — whose tenure as ambassador to the United States ended recently — was known for accurately relaying details about his interactions with officials in Washington.

Trump is in full-fledged panic mode, firing off a tweetstorm that was more like a tweethurricane this morning. He seemed to try and cover every possible piece of news.

For instance:

He refers to the Times as failing, but voluntarily sat down with three Times reporters for an on-the-record interview just days ago. As for the actual substance of this one, no one has any idea what he’s talking about.

Trump refuses to fight the veracity of the report — that Sessions committed perjury (at the very least) and possibly conspiracy (or worse)—and attacks leaks to reporters. There’s no national security leak involved in this. The Russians already know the Americans are listening to their calls just as the Americans know the Russians are listening to theirs.

Interesting use of “so far.”

1. There’s already been an investigation and Hillary Clinton has already been cleared of criminal wrongdoing.
2. James Comey revealing the contents of a non-classified memorandum is still not a crime, as much as Trump wants it to be.
3. It’s “Special Counsel” not “Special Council.”

Actually, Junior changed his story about his Trump Tower meeting a half dozen times. Then, when the Times reached out for a comment and told him they had his emails and were publishing them, he chose to preempt them.

It’s been six months and, inexplicably, the Republicans are somehow farther from each one of these goals than they were in January.

Apparently Trump doesn’t believe that Obamacare counts as an idea. He also discounts that Democrats have tried to engage with Republicans to fix the popular law with bipartisanship support only to be continually rebuffed.

Republicans control the presidency, the Senate, the House, and have total control of 60% of individual states’ governments (control of both the state legislature and governorship), yet somehow Donald Trump wants to blame Democrats.

It’s been a very bad week, and Trump knows it.

184 days in, 1278 to go

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