Donald Trump is falling to pieces in real time
“President” Donald Trump met with North Korean President Kim Jong-un in Vietnam last week, and the summit broke up suddenly and quickly. Trump is now making an effort to discredit Michael Cohen, as well as to deflect blame from himself for not being able to effectively have any art to his deal making.
On Sunday evening, Trump took once again to Twitter, and tweeted: “For the Democrats to interview in open hearings a convicted liar & fraudster, at the same time as the very important Nuclear Summit with North Korea, is perhaps a new low in American politics and may have contributed to the “walk.” Never done when a president is overseas. Shame!”
Trump is wrong about this, as it’s previously happened to Richard Nixon. And in this case we have never had a sitting president accused of crimes and obstruction that involved his personal lawyer who also happened to be the Deputy Vice Chair of his party’s finance committee. His tweet is preposterous. Trump has no basis to suggest that somehow the hearings impacted the ability to get a deal done.
First, number one of deal making is, until you have a signed deal or agreement, you don’t announce that a big deal signing ceremony will be held. It deleverages your position and enables the other side to seek additional concessions and benefits. Second, the likelihood of reaching an agreement on denuclearization, when the two countries did not have an agreement as to what that term means, was little to none.
Trump in his mind can do no wrong, and can never be on the bad end of a transaction or interaction. But like with much of his seventy-plus years on this earth, he did not achieve what he bragged he could. Now, he wants to blame hearings in the United States, which had absolutely zero to do with the failure to reach a deal. Like most in the Trump repertoire, it another example of a non sequitur.
Daniel is a lawyer writing and teaching about SCOTUS, and is the author of the book “The Chief Justices” about the SCOTUS as seen through the center seat.