There is one guy in the United States who has to be
absolutely ecstatic that Donald Trump
is President of the United States.
His name is Brian Cullinan, and he is the guy who was
tweeting photos of Emma Stone when he was supposed to be double- and triple-checking
to make sure that he didn’t screw up when handing the envelope containing the
global reputation of Price Waterhouse to Warren Beatty. Geez, did we really
need a second example of the dangers
of late night out-of-control tweeting?
You see, back when America was normal, Cullinan would
have endured months of nonstop television and tabloid humiliation over what was
indisputably the dumbest move in Hollywood since Mars Needs Moms.
But Cullinan lives in the age of Trump, when Andy
Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame must be compressed to fit within the brief slivers
of media oxygen not voraciously devoured by the President. The biggest screw-up
in the history of television awards shows? Brian Cullinan is soooooo last Sunday.
Cullinan’s trauma was also mitigated by the fast action
of PWC’s U.S. Chairman, who did not waste a news cycle gathering opinions from
highly-paid consultants, did not send out a smokescreen hypothesizing
alternative explanations, and did not waste a breath talking about what
reliable employee Brian Cullinan is. He just owned it. There was a full admission of responsibility on the wires
before the morning news shows kicked in. He knew enough to realize that
appearing to hide from responsibility makes you look weak and cowardly.
So by Tuesday, we were back in alt reality, with Donald Trump shoving Oscar back to the newsroom B
blocks after making a splash in his nationally televised address to Congress. To
hear the news coverage on Wednesday, you’d have thought he was Cicero and Demosthenes
rolled into one. According to most news services, Trump’s speech was a big win.
The Bloviater-in-Chief appeared measured and thoughtful, lofty and principled,
and even called for government to rise above bipartisan squabbles and unify to
make America, well, you know…
It is perhaps the definitive comment on President Chaos
that when he is able to modulate his tone for a full hour and discipline
himself to simply read from a teleprompter, the media is suddenly convinced of
a conversion rivaling Saul’s on the road to Damascus. Fox gushed that we may
have finally witnessed the long-awaited “pivot,” as in, when Donald Trump pivots from behaving like a twelve-year-old with ADHD denied his Ritalin and suddenly projects the majesty and aura
of Presidential gravitas. Poor Fox failed to savor the irony that the reason
the “pivot” is perceived as “long-awaited” is because it was predicted after
Trump was nominated, after Trump was elected, and after Trump was sworn in.
“Waiting for the Pivot” may as well be the long awaited Samuel Beckett sequel,
which, coincidentally, also features two hopeless and desperate characters, one named Vladimir.
Indeed, Trump’s Prelude
in Quaalude tonality was actually the only
news about Tuesday’s speech on Tuesday. If you read the text, it was standard
issue on the substance – or lack thereof.
The sound byte of the evening was Trump’s emotional
tribute to the Navy SEAL Ryan Owens, who was killed in the first military
mission ordered under Trump’s watch. It was hard to take this spectacle in and
not be reminded of Trump’s brutal disrespect for Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the Gold Star parents of
the Muslim U.S. soldier Humayun Khan, who was killed in the line of duty in
Iraq. But perhaps even more significant
was the interview Trump had given earlier in the day, in which he sloughed off
responsibility for Ryan’s death on to his generals, which gives us a sense of
where the buck actually stops in this White House. It was a sharp contrast to
John F. Kennedy’s unalloyed acceptance of responsibility for the botched Bay of
Pigs invasion just months after his inauguration. Kennedy owned it:
“There's an old saying that victory has 100 fathers and
defeat is an orphan...I've said as much as I feel can be usefully said by me in
regard to the events of the past few days. Further statements, detailed
discussions, are not to conceal responsibility, because I'm the responsible
officer of the government.”
The "responsible officer of government." Trump
authorized the raid that cost the Navy SEAL his life while supping in the White
House, suggesting his customary lack of appetite for details, and a thoroughly
cavalier attitude toward the grave act of sending soldiers in to harm’s way.
And when time came to take responsibility for that decision, he disowned it.
The other “must see tv” moment of the speech was when Trump
lectured the Congress that now it was time to end all this partisan bickering
and work together. Perhaps Trump was backstage with Miss Universe aspirants the
day that Mitch McConnell stated his goal as a leader of Congress was to make
Barack Obama a one-term President. Funny how that “we have a responsibility to work together to serve the people”
thing looks so different when the eschewing
is on the other foot.
The media bought it all. Gone was their memory of Trump
announcing The New York Times was an “enemy of the people,” the botched de facto Muslim immigration ban, the
President’s accusation that all negative stories are “fake news,” his tirades
against leaks from government officials, his insults to foreign leaders, his
policy flip-flops on China, Israel, and NATO, and his daily 5:00 a.m. vowel movements on Twitter. All magically
forgotten: most media outlets were calling this one a big win for the
President. Fox also cited a poll that said that 70% of the people who heard the
speech felt “more optimistic.” That sounds pretty darn good, but it is probably
the same answer a starving man might give if you fed him a Tostito. By design, the question seeks only a relative comparison,
and therefore may only be measuring just how badly Trump was regarded before.
Chalk it up to the “the soft bigotry of low Presidential
expectations.” Trump reads from a teleprompter for an hour, manages to avoid
heinously insulting a valued ally, a significant segment of the population, an
important news organization, or a respected member of the opposition party, and
all of a sudden people feel that he’s finally going to behave like the
President of the United States. People think that he has changed. Let me take out my stop watch to see how long it takes for
all those people to be proven wrong.
Of course, Brian Cullinen was probably sweating that the
Low-T performance by Trump might turn the bright glare of the media back on his
deleted tweet of Emma Stone and re-ignite the question of whether Warren Beatty
chickened out by pawning the faulty envelope over to Faye Dunaway.
No worries, Brian. This White House makes so many
shit-storms that they should start naming them in alphabetical order,
alternating gender. “And now for today’s White House storm report: Tropical Shit-storm Alexei
is still stuck in an ongoing low pressure pattern directly over the West Wing,
while Tornado Betsy has been downgraded to a threat to public education, and
the heaviest rains from Typhoon Conway appeared to have passed through the
Capital region…”
But in six short weeks, this White House has already
named enough storms to reach the letter “J,” as in Hurricane Jeff. By Wednesday night, Trump’s speech was a vague and
hazy memory with the sudden arrival of a storm-of-the-century blowing Hurricane
Sandy-grade gusts that were visible from a Russian weather satellite.
Jeff Sessions, Attorney General of the United States,
lied under oath in his confirmation hearings, claiming that he had had no
contact with anyone in the Russian government during the election campaign. In
fact, Sessions had had not one but two meetings with the Russian Ambassador
Sergey Kislyak.
Hey, what’s the big deal? We’ve got a Director of the
Environmental Protection Agency who does not want to protect the environment, a
Secretary of Education who does not know anything about public education, and a
Secretary of Energy who occasionally can’t remember the name of the Department
he runs. I could make a strong argument that for consistency’s sake alone, Trump’s Attorney General should have
no respect for the law.
The call to jam Sessions began minutes after The
Washington Post broke the story Wednesday evening. Democrats called on Sessions
to resign, and a line-up of big-name Republicans called on him to recuse
himself from the looming investigation of contact between Trump’s campaign
organization and the Russian government. Trump, lacking the manufactured
gravitas of the teleprompter, returned to prior form, saying that there was no
need for Sessions to recuse himself. I can practically hear Trump defiantly
protesting: “It’s all fake news… Jeff Sessions has not been recused of
anything!!”
So let’s examine this:
- Trump aide Flynn lies to the FBI -- technically not under oath -- about a meeting with the Russian Ambassador, and is summarily fired.
- Trump aide Sessions lies under oath to the United States Congress about multiple meetings with the Russian Ambassador, and Trump feels that there is no problem whatsoever.
Once Sessions had been outed, Trump staffers seemed cured
of their collective amnesia, and there were enough sudden recollections of cozy
Russian encounters to make the Republican convention in Cleveland sound like
one big Kislyak flash-mob.
It all seemed eerily reminiscent of the steady
drip-drip-drip of revelations that kept Watergate on the front pages long
before anyone asked to see a smoking gun. Back then, there were also the
periodic bombshells that put huge dents in the ongoing credibility of Richard
Nixon’s White House.
Now, only six weeks into Donald Trump’s presidency, there
is already the disturbing sense that a wide array of seemingly disparate pieces
are beginning to come together in a Watergate-grade narrative. Did Donald Trump
refuse to release his taxes because they would show evidence of vast illegal
financial dealings with Russia? Did all of his staff members meet with Russian
officials in an attempt to exchange information about how to damage the Clinton
campaign? Is Trump obscenely obsequious to Putin because he knows that Putin
has the video and taped phone conversations that would prove Trump’s collusion?
Does Trump advocate for policies that are helpful to Russia because he knows
that if does not, Putin can leak those tapes and end Trump’s presidency?
On MSNBC’s All in
With Chris Hayes – the best journalism on tv today, in my view – Howard
Fineman, Global Editorial Director of The Huffington Post – made this extremely
insightful point, and it is something no one is talking about. While the U.S.
investigations into Trump’s ties with Russia slowly gear up, and various
governmental organizations attempt to uncover who knew what and when they knew
it, there actually is one entity that knows exactly who talked to who, when
they talked, and what was said: the Russian government. Right now it is a
virtual certainty that Vladimir Putin knows more about the involvement of
Trump’s staff in the hacking operation than Trump does.
For all we know, Putin has Trump by the balls as we
speak.
What we do know is that there is already way too much
smoke for there to be no fire.
With all that I have said about Donald Trump in the past
two years, you’ll find no quotes from me accusing him of being stupid. Which is
why I cannot understand why he is being so foolish about this now.
In the end, there is only one history lesson: George Santayana’s
grand observation that “those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat
it.”
And the grand lesson of U.S. history is that high crimes
and misdemeanors don’t actually get Presidents impeached; cover-ups do.
Donald Trump’s biggest problem is that in surrounding
himself with amateurs and toadies, there is not even a John Dean who despite his own flaws at least had the perspective to walk
into Nixon's office and tell him that there was a cancer growing on his Presidency.
Right now, this minute, as we speak, Trump still has a chance to say, “Ok, enough is
enough. Let’s get to the bottom of this. Right now. Investigate it fully. Go
wherever it leads. If someone on my staff tried to collude with the Russians to
fix the election, let’s find out and get it settled.” If he takes that tough
stand, he will be perceived as a truth-seeker, a fearless champion, a true
leader.
But here’s the real issue. Every day that Trump
stonewalls on this issue is another day that he could later be perceived to have part
of the cover-up.
God strike me dead, friends, but I have to do it. I have to give Donald Trump some really excellent
advice.
Mr. President, go look at
Kennedy’s speech after the Bay of Pigs. John F. Kennedy owned it. In the following
weeks, his approval rating would shoot up to an astonishing 90%.
And, hey, Donald, if that’s too much work, then just go
on Youtube and check out what happened last Sunday night, right there in La La
Land. Watch the producer of La La Land,
Jordan Horowitz, take control of the show and graciously tell the world that an
error was made. Then go read about what happened in the Moonlight hours: learn about the Price Waterhouse CEO who took full
responsibility before the morning sunrise. The CEO of Price Waterhouse owned it.
What is it that we noted above about the CEO of Price
Waterhouse? “He knew enough to realize
that appearing to hide from responsibility makes you look weak and cowardly.”
Mr. President, every time you assert that Russia is “a ruse,” or “fake news,”
that is exactly how you look. And when you resort to absurd accusations that Barack Obama tapped your phone, you sound downright frightened of the truth.
Mr. Trump, this is no time
to defend the gaggle of Brian Cullinans you’ve surrounded yourself with. It is
time for you to jam Sessions right where you flung Flynn. It is time for you to
take the lead. Time for you to insist that thorough investigations be mounted.
Because if you don’t, it may simply be a matter of time before you are trying to explain an eighteen minute gap
in a recording, and when that happens, you’ll be praying that the voice that
was erased wasn’t yours.
Where there is smoke, there
is fire. Where there are smoking guns, there is an impeachment trial. But if there was a cover-up, then the house has already burned down.
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