The Year Justice Caught Up With Trumpworld
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Erin Schaff for The New York Times
Ever since the 2016 election, it’s been common for some people to refer to whatever year we’re in as a synonym for dystopian weirdness. (Last year, for example, CNN’s Jake Tapper tweeted “Peak 2017” about a headline saying, “US ambassador denies own comments, then denies denial.”) The world has felt continuously off-kilter, like a TV drama whose writers developed a sudden fondness for psilocybin. Last month astronomers at Harvard wrote that a strange oblong space object “may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization,” and it barely made a ripple in the news. There was simply too much else going on.
Amid this ceaseless barrage, things many of us have taken for granted have been called into question, including the endurance of liberal democracy, the political salience of truth and the assumption that it would be a big scandal if a president were caught directing illegal payoffs to a pornographic film actress. Often it feels like in American politics, none of the old rules still apply.
But in 2018, they did. (At least some of them.) Alien probes aside, this was a year in which things started to make sense again. The Democratic landslide in the midterms proved that the laws of political gravity haven’t been suspended; Trump’s incompetence, venality and boorishness had electoral consequences. Further, it was a year of justice and accountability for at least some of those who foisted this administration on the country. An awful menagerie of lowlifes was swept into power by Trump’s victory two years ago. In 2018, at least some of them started to fall back out again.
At the beginning of 2018, Michael Cohen was still Trump’s loyal personal lawyer. Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was sleeping in his own bed at night. Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy, had not yet made a plea deal with Robert Mueller, the special counsel. Mueller’s investigation hadn’t yet sent anyone to prison. The Dutch lawyer Alex van der Zwaan, who pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about work he’d done with Gates for the former Ukrainian president, became the first, in May. He was followed by Richard Pinedo, seller of fake IDs and fraudulent bank accounts, and former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos.
When this year began, Scott Pruitt was still indulging in spectacular corruption as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Omarosa Manigault Newman had just been fired from her senior administration job and had not yet revealed her stash of secret recordings. Rob Porter, who has been accused of abuse by two ex-wives , was still White House staff secretary. David Sorensen, accused of abuse by one ex-wife, was still a White House speechwriter.
At the start of 2018, the casino mogul Steve Wynn was the Republican National Committee’s national finance chairman. He resigned after The Wall Street Journal reported that he’d been accused of committing multiple acts of sexual harassment and assault . (Wynn denied assaulting anyone.) Elliott Broidy, owner of a private security company, was an R.N.C. deputy national finance chairman. He resigned after The Journal reported that he’d paid hush money to a former Playboy model who said she’d had an abortion after he got her pregnant. (Cohen was also a deputy chairman; he resigned in June.)
As this year began, the white nationalist Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign head and chief White House strategist, was still running Breitbart News . He’d not yet burned his bridges to Trumpworld with his comments in Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury,” which was published in January. Since then, Bannon has lost considerable pull. He most recently made headlines after he was scheduled to speak at a conference on sex robots ; a backlash to his invitation led to the conference being postponed.
In January, McClatchy reported that the F.B.I. was investigating whether Russia funneled money through the National Rifle Association to aid the Trump campaign. Throughout the year, as evidence of sketchy connections between the N.R.A. and Russia kept emerging, many on the right poo-pooed it . (“This attempt to turn the N.R.A. into another cog in the Russian conspiracy is laughable, but the mainstream media apparently still find it deeply compelling,” wrote Breitbart editor Joel Pollak in March.) On Thursday, Maria Butina, a Russian who’d nurtured ties to N.R.A. leadership and to Trumpworld, pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as a foreign agent. The plea described how, after arranging a junket to Moscow for a “Gun Rights Organization,” she wrote a message to her handler that was translated as, “We should allow them to express their gratitude now, we will put pressure on them quietly later.”
If Trump opponents had known a year ago that 2018 would bring so many revelations and comeuppances, we might have assumed that the Trump administration would be entering its terminal phase. But living under Trump has inured many of us to shock; momentous developments, like Cohen being sentenced to three years in prison, end up feeling anticlimactic, particularly with most Republicans refusing to act.
Still, when you consider the events of the last 12 months together, it becomes clear how relentlessly justice has ground forward, and how much Trump and his flunkies have lost. As I was writing this, news broke that federal prosecutors have started a criminal investigation into Trump’s inaugural committee, adding to inquiries into his business, foundation, campaign and presidency. America is still in a perilous place, and even a weakened Trump can torment migrants, pack the courts, wreck the environment and suck up to tyrants. Nevertheless, this is the first year since 2015, when Trump rode down that cursed escalator to launch his bid for office, that is ending more hopefully than it began.
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I remember Watergate, and the joy of watching America's criminal justice system dismantle Nixon's thugs' operations.
Will we soon have something similar, but even more massive?
Trump and his most devoted cult followers are about to learn that Bible passage for reals.
The media is filled with new stories of how the walls are closing in around Trump, and in the past week or so there does to be a realization that all his barrage of lies has at long last caught up with him. Now comes the process of putting all the pieces together and ridding the world of this plague.
2019 will likely make 2018 look like a Sunday school picnic though.
Hopefully Trump will be removed, asap. I wish it were today. He's not qualified to be president of the United States, has never for one second been qualified, and brings disgrace on this country every single day.
Trump should have been disqualified from being president FOREVER , just because he was the king birther in 2011. That one title should have disqualified him in people's minds forever. But, we did have "deplorables" in 2016 so Trump's racist wild goose chase in 2011 was overlooked by GOP voters. They also overlooked the fact that he is a fraud, and paid 25 million dollars to victims of one of his cons. Why in hell did we elect a pathological liar, crook and conman to the presidency?
This was NEVER going to end in any other way but Trump leaving in disgrace. Try and learn the lesson not to support a pos like this for high office any more.
The sad part is that the combination of the Electoral College plus just the right amount of uninformed and unsavory Americans put such a worthless piece of shit in that position once, and it could turn around and do it again, until the EC goes away forever. The framers of this nation’s political system are spinning in their graves over how their logic was twisted into a way to nullify everything they were trying to achieve.
What manner of fool would take "I could go out of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone … and never lose a vote," as a tribute to loyalty … when in reality, it is a testimony to blind loyalty and the ignorance of a base that sees its utterer as a "savior" from irrational resentment that needs scapegoats to blame for life not going its way?
This might help.
Don't worry, myself and about 70 million other Americans already know how to "De-Trump" our lives. If the Mueller investigation fails to turn up the smoking gun tying Trump to Putin and he actually makes it to the next election, he's going to lose the Presidential election by margins never seen before in history with Democrats winning both a landslide electoral win (and that's for pretty much whoever runs against Trump, it doesn't really matter since Trump is so unpopular with the majority) and an even larger popular vote win than 2016.
Yes, we heard that in 2016 and don't forget about the blue wave in 2018.
SMMFH
So there was no blue wave. Got it!!! But you knew that already.
Huh?
Democrats gain 40th seat in US House
Republican David Valadao concedes in California
Admirable, but not a wave. Now, a wave is this, but the color is not blue
In the link also...
Democrats got shellacked in 1994, losing 54 seats in Bill Clinton’s first midterm
Democrats got millions more votes – so how did Republicans win the Senate?
Senate electoral process means although Democrats received more overall votes for the Senate than Republicans, that does not translate to more seats
Among the most eye-catching was a statistic showing Democrats led Republicans by more than 12 million votes in Senate races , and yet still suffered losses on the night and failed to win a majority of seats in the chamber.
Constitutional experts said the discrepancy between votes cast and seats won was the result of misplaced ire that ignored the Senate electoral process.
Because each state gets two senators, irrespective of population, states such as Wyoming have as many seats as California, despite the latter having more than 60 times the population. The smaller states also tend to be the more rural, and rural areas traditionally favor Republicans .
An outdated system in which 30% of the people control 70% of the vote … and visa versa.
So, AMac, you prefer to have Ancient Athens all over again, where in the end they elected a dictator, then were conquered, got it.
Republicans got their asses handed to them in the midterms. Where was that red wave trump was screaming about?
Good God....You do realize that Senate seats are won by popular vote in each state, right?. You want the presidency to be decided by popular vote, but now libs are screeching that the popular vote lost them the Senate.
Maybe this will help you....There are millions more people in NYC alone than there are in the entire state of Montana. New Yorkers do not vote in Montana Senate elections.
And, it really had nothing to do with the Democrats. The Republican House and Senate leadership failed to do anything under Trump. McConnell could have changed the rules of the Senate back to their original rule of "Moving The Previous Question" instead of maintaining the Cloture rule. That would have meant that all business in the Senate would only require a simple majority vote instead of 60 votes to end debate and to pass. Ryan could have made more effort in passing the President's agenda, instead he only seemed to be focused on spending like a drunk Democrat and passing a tax cut. The only reason that Republicans kept the Senate was due to how the Democrats treated Brett Kavanaugh, had they been civil and respectful during his hearings, then it might have been a clean sweep for the Democrats.
I love how they call this "justice," as if the country or even a single person in the United States has a legitimate reason to feel victimized by Donald Trump paying old mistresses (i.e. consenting adults) to be quiet about their alleged sexual trysts from over a decade ago.
That's because, among other things, you fail to consider the implications regarding a POTUS who could be blackmailed!
Blackmail from where? There's no reason to think he's being blackmailed. You need a reason to investigate something. You're talking about investigating something you have no specific reason to believe has occurred. You want to go sifting through his tax returns, but apparently not his financial disclosure paperwork? It's 92 pages long and chock-full of information! If you're worried, look there.
My most charitable view of this is that Democrats may be looking for some little morsel to craft into a controversy even though there's no actual problem happening. But I don't think it's even that productive.
I think this is really just about forcing Trump to expose something he didn't want to expose. They hate that Trump does things his own way and won't be controlled by them. They probably hate that they had to release their own returns to get elected but he didn't.
It drives them nuts that Trump is 1) not a politician (i.e. not one of them), 2) flamboyantly rich 3) in the other party for now, and 4) (the biggie) gets away with doing things differently than they do and he still got elected. I see tribalism and jealousy. I don't see the interests of the country being supported.
Why? After all, Donald Trump, who has withheld his tax return, recently claimed that you could learn more about him through his financial disclosure.2
But the fact is, tax returns are very different from the FEC’s financial disclosure—and provide very different information about a candidate. Specifically, here are six things tax returns show that financial disclosures do not:
And now you know WHY!
Check the Dow since Trump fucked up with China, tariffs and his bullshit stories regarding the economy.
The market did well after THE TAX BREAKS TO CORPORATIONS … BECAUSE THEY UDED THE BREAKS TO BUY BACK THEIR OWN STOCKS causing share prices to rise; YOU AND I will, going forward, pay more in taxes and possibly get fucked on Social Security and Medicare to pay for the deficit it ballooned … AND THE STOCK MARKET RALLY THAT HAS GONE TO HELL!
It's tiring educating [deleted] loyalists to a con man who has lied to them as well as to the rest of us.
Do your damned homework on this fraud-huckster.
So, you're accusing the president of a crime based solely on the grounds that "it can be done?"
You don't think there are penalties for lying on the forms he has already submitted?
Is there anything in Trump's 278e that hints at a conflict of interest? If so, that might be worth investigating. Demanding his tax returns because possibly a person could learn something from them is the very definition of a fishing expedition .
Don't put words in my mouth; you mad an uniformed statement and I educated you as to why a tax return is different from a tax return and financial disclosure; if you want to have a discussion with me, address what I actually post without creating a straw man.
You don't think there are penalties for lying on the forms he has already submitted?
If you don't like me responding to your words, try using different words. When you give a reason for looking at a tax return, that tells me you think it's relevant. You didn't say we should look at the tax returns because you have reason to believe Trump is hiding offshore accounts. You said they were worth looking at because a person could do that. I have not misrepresented you at all and that is still not a valid reason for launching an investigation. That's the central point that you seem to be "tap dancing around."
What don't we know? That there are penalties? I quoted the penalties to you directly from the instructions for filling out the form we are discussing.
Or are you saying we don't know if he's lying? You are aware, I assume, that the responses on these forms are investigated. You should also be aware that as a rich businessman personally operating his own privately controlled company, Trump has been subject to fairly intense scrutiny from government watchdogs his whole adult life. Do you really think they missed something critical all these years?
And, yet, Hillary had far more to be blackmailed about and most of the people on this site wanted her to be President instead of Trump. Let's see: The Clinton Foundation being used as a "Pay-To-Play" scheme, her emails that contained classified information and stored in a server in Bill Clinton's offices, emails sent to Huma that ended up being on Anthony Weiner's laptop, her lack of effort to stop Russian meddling in the Crimea, etc. But, OH MY GOD, TRUMP HAD AFFAIRS BEFORE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT! We can't have him be President...(despite already having a President that had sex with interns in the White House and sexually harassed women before becoming President in 1992)...
Do not be surprised when Cohen under oath, testifies before Congress and states that some of his illegal behavior was, in part, because he "feared for the safety/well being of himself and his family," either by implicit or explicit attribution to the "dangers of a Donald Trump" (especially with the powers of the POTUS)!
Why would he testify to anything now? He's already made his deal and been sentenced.
Why would he testify to anything now? He's already made his deal and been sentenced.
• Because he'll be subpoenaed
• Because he already lied to Congress and is trying to now do what is right to mitigate his reputation
• Because he wants to try and explain some of his illegal behavior
• Because he has not told everything and may yet be able to do so in an immunity agreement with the SDNY and TAKE SOME TIME OFF OF HIS 36 month sentence.
The level of misinformation among Trumpians is galactic!
You really believe he suddenly wants to walk the straight and narrow path, atoning for his sins? You have a very generous opinion of him.
Individuals will often do the "right things" for the "wrong reasons." Don't you think for his family's sake he might want some degree of redemption?
My opinion is not "generous" as much as it is based on years of experience having represented many dozens of individuals cited in adverse actions … an accused, guilty individual who shows no remorse (sincere or faked) is not likely to get any leniency from a sentencing body.
I have not been given a specific reason to think that, no. I am also mindful of the fact that the special prosecutor is disappointed in the level of cooperation they have received from him.