The fraught road ahead

As the impeachment drama has unfolded over the past week, a series of disclosures has illuminated President Trump’s command over key federal agencies, revealing how he has compelled them to pursue his personal and political goals, investigate his enemies and lend legitimacy to his theories about the 2016 election.

The Justice Department has prioritized a probe that the president hopes will discredit a finding by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help him win.

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The State Department, meanwhile, has been investigating the email records of as many as 130 current and former department officials who sent messages to the private email account of Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and Trump’s 2016 opponent.

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In each of these instances, the president or administration officials have strongly defended their conduct as proper and above board.

But taken together, they illustrate the sweeping reach of Trump’s power and the culture he has spawned inside the government. The president’s personal concerns have become priorities of departments that traditionally have operated with some degree of political independence from the White House — and their leaders are engaging their boss’s obsessions.

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“Authoritarian regimes have this problem all the time . . . when all government activity is the product of the id of the leader[, said Timothy Naftali, a historian and former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.]

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Trump’s moves underscore his transformation as president. He arrived in Washington a neophyte uncertain about how to operate the machinery of government. But now, in his third year in office, Trump has grown confident about exercising power, disposing of aides who acted as guardrails and elevating those who prove their loyalty by following his orders.

As the president said last month after John Bolton’s abrupt exit as national security adviser, “It’s very easy actually to work with me. You know why it’s easy? Because I make all the decisions.”

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“I’m not sure there are many, if any, left who view as their responsibility trying to help educate, moderate, enlighten and persuade — or even advise in many cases,” the former senior official said. “There’s a new ethos: This is a presidency of one.”

“It’s Trump unleashed, unchained, unhinged,” this official added. “He continues to go further and further and further, and now I don’t think there’s anybody telling him, ‘No.’ ”

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“He’s actually very calm,” said one White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly. “He’s not raging. He’s not fuming. He can’t stand what some people write or say on television, sure, but his presidency isn’t consumed by that.”

  WaPo

Yes, we can see. He's not even containing himself in press conferences these days.

Trump’s moves represent a fundamental reorientation of American democracy, said Timothy Snyder, a Yale history professor and author of “On Tyranny,” a resistance guide to what he describes as America’s turn toward authoritarianism.

“Rather than having the boring system we take for granted, where you have laws based on facts, instead you have a personality who makes up his own reality,” Snyder said. “At first, that reality is just confusing and seems to gum up the works, but after a while, the leader starts to draw people into that reality by making them defend it or making them prove it. This is what’s happening here.”

In Trump’s Washington, many administration officials have calculated that if they do not enthusiastically wade into Trump’s riptide of grievances and personal pursuits, they risk being ridiculed or sidelined by the president, as was the case with Bolton, a hawk whom Trump has mocked since his departure as “Mr. Tough Guy.”

The implicit day-to-day charge for many Trump advisers is simple, according to aides and other officials familiar with the president’s Cabinet and West Wing staff: Figure out how to handle or even polish Trump’s whims and statements, but do not have any illusion that you can temper his relentless personality, heavy consumption of cable news or thirst for political combat.

Acquiescence is central to survival. [...] The leading members of Trump’s inner circle dutifully work to address his concerns, sometimes by directing federal resources.

Officials including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, for example, have worked to block Democratic lawmakers and others from obtaining access to Trump’s tax returns, which he has refused to disclose publicly.

The list of Trump loyalists pulled into his maneuvers begins at the top. Vice President Pence traveled to Europe in early September and met with Zelensky and urged him to address “corruption,” seeming to reiterate the message Trump communicated to Zelensky in July about investigating the Bidens. This was before promised U.S. military aid to Ukraine was released.

Impeach that asshole, too. I won't be surprised if, before election day 2020, we see a Spiro Agnew play, but with Trump being the one - pressured by GOP Senators eventually fearing losing their seats - to make a deal. Something along the lines of not being criminally charged for anything after he leaves office in return for stepping aside and letting Mike Pence take over. I'm not saying that WILL happen (and I can imagine letting Mike Pence take his place would be just about the last thing he would go for), but just that I won't be surprised if something like that DOES happen.

Barr’s role in the investigation into the Russia probe’s origins, which is being conducted by U.S. Attorney John Durham in Connecticut, is extraordinary in part because the probe seeks evidence of misconduct within his own Justice Department to support the conspiracy theory — embraced by Trump and advanced on Fox News — that the Russia inquiry was corrupt and predicated on undermining Trump.

Right. So I can't imagine Barr will get the full backing from his department he'll need. Particularly the FBI he'll be smearing.

Barr’s interest in the probe is unsurprising to several of his associates, who said this week he is a headstrong and deeply conservative man who at this point in his career has grown disdainful of the Democratic Party, the federal government and the news media, criticizing them in private as biased and skewed against the president.

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“We have a great attorney general now,” Trump said of Barr in July. “He’s strong, and he’s smart.”

And he can be impeached, too.

In Trump’s Washington, many administration officials have calculated that if they do not enthusiastically wade into Trump’s riptide of grievances and personal pursuits, they risk being ridiculed or sidelined by the president. ...

Acquiescence is central to survival. Trump has bonded with aides who take his running complaints about the “deep state” and “fake news” seriously, along with his embrace of people and positions outside of the mainstream. The leading members of Trump’s inner circle dutifully work to address his concerns, sometimes by directing federal resources.

The deeper we get into the impeachment debate and the more it looks like Trump will not survive the 2020 election, the greater the incentive will be for aides to jump ship. Even if they don’t depart, they’ll have an incentive to go to reporters and spill about what’s going on behind the scenes, in part to protect themselves from their rivals who might do the same. One of the leakiest White Houses in history will probably become even more so.

All of which will lead Trump to even greater heights of rage and irrationality, producing more stories about how unhinged he has become, which will make him angrier still in a cycle that may itself result in the perpetration of more impeachable acts. As crazy as the last week or two have been, it’s only going to get worse.

  WaPo

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