According to a new report by Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair, Donald Trump is pretty worked up over the recent direction of the Mueller probe, what with his recent tweetstorm after finding out that the Special Counsel wanted to ask him about obstruction of justice. But he’s even more upset, ironically, about what’s happening to his longtime aide and confidante Paul Manafort.
The reasoning behind that, though your humble author is not a White House insider, feels strikingly plain to me: He knows that Manafort is guilty, and he knows that the public will inextricably link Manafort’s guilt to his campaign for the presidency.
That’s not unfair, actually. I can say without hesitation that I agree, in fact, with the President on this. People absolutely will conflate Manafort’s corruption/fraud/money laundering trial with his time as Trump’s campaign manager. What IÂ can’t say is that it upsets me in the slightest.
You see, Trump’s fury over knowing that his former campaign manager is going to be found guilty after proclaiming his innocence so loudly and defensively for nearly a year now is driving the President to distraction, and that’s a good thing. The more distracted he is, the less he will try his hand at further presidenting us into a trade war or a nuclear conflict or god forbid some kind of arms-sharing agreement with the villain countries around the world he seems to be aligning his policies with.
More importantly, the more distracted he is, the more likely it is he’ll make a mistake and start just heading up his own defense.
That, according to Vanity Fair, is exactly what Trump is up to.
After tweeting what most legal scholars considered to be outright public obstruction of justice in saying Attorney General Jeff Sessions “should” end the Mueller probe, Trump’s handlers were quick to clarify that it wasn’t an order per se, but rather his opinion that the “Rigged Witch Hunt” should be quashed.
But Sherman’s source inside the White House says that’s not the case at all:
This person added that Trump appears to be in earnest about his desire for Sessions to end the Mueller probe, and spoke of a timeline of a couple of weeks. Otherwise, Trump has threatened to fire Rosenstein himself.”
That would certainly be something to see, with as many Republicans — who otherwise seem perfectly content to give Trump the longest leash any rabid dog has ever had — as have publicly declared that the President prematurely ending the probe by firing those in charge of it would be tantamount to an impeachable offense.
It would be just fine with me, as your DC Tribune correspondent, if Trump decided to just burn the whole thing down. My fingers might get tired, but I wouldn’t stop writing for a month.
Featured image via screen capture
