Friday, July 21, 2017

Its the Money, Honey

[T]he outline of the essential corruption never has been clearer. The Trumps needed money and the Russians needed to clean a lot of it. Cui bono? Res Ipse loquitur.

[...]

This is how it could have happened: The Trump Organization, reportedly deeply in debt, needed money and couldn't get a loan from a U.S.-based bank. Meanwhile, the vicious Russian kleptocratic elite had a lot of dough it needed cleaned and was washing it through Deutsche Bank and through banks in Cyprus, an underrated spot for such enterprises. It was a profitable relationship for both parties: Both of the older Trump boys boasted in the past about how important Russian investment had been in maintaining the Trump Organization. Then Dad ran for president. Then he won. And then, by all indications, the bills came due.

[...]

Would the revelation that he's not as rich as he pretends to be really have sidetracked his campaign? Would it have cost him votes? That's an interesting question for which we never may know the answer. However, wide public knowledge of that fact might have destroyed his self-image, which might have been all it took.

[...]

His entire presidency has been an exercise in playing chicken with the other institutions of government, and, by and large, because they are controlled by his own party, which is composed now of the most conspicuous public cowards in the history of the Republic, he's won every time. Why wouldn't he try it again?

[...]

Right now, we are stumbling in the dark into a constitutional crisis. [...] In this one, the legislative branch of the government has withdrawn disgracefully from the fray, so the fight is carried on anonymously between factions of the executive who are trying to save themselves. Mueller's investigation exists outside of the three formal institutions of government, but it is hostage to one of them anyway. When Richard Nixon fired Archibald Cox, which caused the instant decapitation of the Department of Justice, it was a bolt from the blue, but pressure inside and outside the rest of the government forced Nixon to appoint Leon Jaworski, who finally got the tapes and ran him to ground.

[...]

Of course, the White House will attack Mueller.

[...]

Of course it will be obvious and clumsy. This is the Gilded Commode Presidency, after all. But when the smoke clears, it's going to be about the money, the way it always was with this presidency.

  Charles P Pierce



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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