The thing everyone is missing about Donald Trump’s Russia confession
Donald Trump’s ABC News interview is widely seen as a disaster, because he admitted that he has no problem with taking campaign help from foreign governments. Pundits and most Democratic politicians assumed Trump had made a mistake. This theory seemed to be confirmed when Trump’s surrogates and then Trump himself, tried to walk his confessional statements back.
There are two important things people are missing. First, Trump is becoming increasingly comfortable and confident that there will be no immediate consequences for making confessional statements or for bringing his criminal activity into the open. Donald Trump is a career criminal who seems to thrive when he is actively trying to keep one step away from being caught. He clearly enjoys feeling as if he is outmaneuvering law enforcement. Breaking laws “out in the open” is one of his standard defensive tactics, and he believes it is working for him.
More importantly, Donald Trump clearly knows he has to win the 2020 election in order to avoid prosecution for financial crimes and obstruction of justice; and, he knows he is losing “bigly” in all of the current polls.
Add those two points together, and you get Donald Trump going on air to ask any and all interested foreign powers to help him out in 2020. Donald Trump knows he will be prosecuted for his crimes if he is out of office in 2020, and he believes he is not likely to face consequences for cheating, or getting election help from foreign powers. That is what we all witnessed in Donald Trump’s ABC News interview, and the governments of Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates all witnessed it too. This is a very dangerous combination. I just hope someone at the FBI is paying attention.
Cheryl Kelley lives in the DC area with her husband and young son. She is active in government and politics.