Trump taint

The debate over William P. Barr’s future as attorney general is unfolding in an alternate reality.

[...]

In this magical place, Barr’s loyalists can leak word that, by golly, Barr just might quit if Trump keeps publicly trying to manipulate ongoing cases. This is meant to insulate Barr from Trump’s taint.

But in the real world, here’s what’s staring us in the face: For Trump, the very public nature of his efforts to corrupt law enforcement is a key feature of those efforts, not a byproduct of them that he pathologically can’t control.

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Trump “has told those around him he is not going to stop tweeting about the Justice Department." [...] According to officials, “Trump considers highlighting what he sees as misconduct at the FBI and Justice Department as a good political message.”

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[T]he public and unabashed declaration of the power to confer impunity on the guilty — to declare the guilty innocent simply because they were investigated for wrongdoing just as he was, meaning he is one of them — is the whole point of it.

[...]

He has continued publicly attacking the whole process surrounding the [Roger Stone] case, justifying this by claiming he is the “chief law enforcement officer” of the United States and as such is “allowed to be totally involved.”

Trump is appropriating for himself the power to render any effort by our system to parcel out justice to his cronies to be illegitimate simply by declaring it so. The public flaunting of this power — the power to corrupt, while pretending to be doing the opposite — is a key feature of it.

[...]

Trump has put on the table a radical departure from the orthodox understanding of the proper role of the president’s political preferences in law enforcement investigations and prosecutorial decisions. Whether Trump’s conduct ultimately reinforces the orthodox understanding, erodes it, or upends it entirely will be largely a function of the extent to which the political system tolerates or punishes him for it.

  WaPo

So far, it looks like it's going to be tolerated.

[I]t’s only going to get worse — and more public — from here on out.

Yep.

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