Sorry, Donald, that’s not how any of this works

| 9:35 pm EDT September 7, 2018
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Donald Trump’s prospects have sunk to the point where just about all the news is bad news for him. There’s no longer anything he can grab onto in the hope of convincing himself that he might have any chance of surviving this, or that history will remember him as anything other than a monster and a cautionary tale. He’s also reached a point (anomous… anomanous…) where he can barely speak. This leaves us with a fundamental question.

Is Donald Trump so far gone that he doesn’t understand how anything works, or is he merely putting a brave public face on his own impending demise? For instance, former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos – who had already cut a plea deal against the campaign – managed to get his prison sentence whittled down from six months to two weeks simply by telling the judge that Trump has repeatedly committed felony obstruction of justice. Trump’s response on Twitter: “14 days for $28 MILLION – $2 MILLION a day, No Collusion. A great day for America!”

Uh, no. This was the worst possible outcome for Donald Trump. Not only was it another nail in the coffin of his own criminal guilt, it also sent a clear signal to Trump’s own people that they might be able to get off surprisingly leniently if they cooperate in taking him down. Just hours later we learned that, after some previous fits and starts, Paul Manafort is now indeed negotiating a plea deal. He won’t be the last.

Then there’s Donald Trump’s decision to ask Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate which member of the Trump White House wrote this week’s blistering New York Times op-ed. If Trump considers the op-ed to be an instance of employee misconduct, then he’s welcome to have one of his own people try to identity and fire the author. But you can’t ask the Attorney General to investigate the matter, because that would make it a criminal investigation, and there is no underlying crime here. Sessions can’t, and won’t, play along. Does Trump not get that, or is he merely beating his chest for show, as the walls cave in on him?