Donald Trump is trying to finish the job
Yesterday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller filed joint criminal charges against Donald Trump’s campaign chairman and a Russian government spy. This finally legally establishes Trump-Russia collusion and conspiracy, and it’s the first of what will be dozens if not hundreds of such charges against Trump’s advisers, associates, and family members. It represents, in short, the beginning of the end. So how did Trump respond?
Try imagining that you treasonously conspired with a foreign enemy to rig the election in your favor, and everyone around you is now being destroyed over it. You know it’s only a matter of time before this lands squarely on your own head. You have two options. The first is to try to distance yourself from the whole mess, in the faint hope that you can sell the notion that the evil plot was playing out without your knowledge. The other is to accept that you’re going down, and try to use your limited remaining time to carry out your top priorities.
Yesterday, Donald Trump chose Option B. He marched into the G7 summit, where every other participating nation already despises him, and promptly announced that he wants Russia added to the G7. This would be like a bank employee getting caught conspiring with a known criminal to rob the bank, and responding by demanding that the management hire the known criminal as a teller. Trump knows he now has a limited amount of time left, and he’s trying to hurry up and finish the job – for Putin.
Richard Nixon used every dirty trick in the book to try to stave off his criminal scandals. But once he realized he was about to be ousted, he resigned graciously in the hope that it might bring him some mercy. Now that Donald Trump has realized he’s going down, his endgame doesn’t involve trying to save himself, but instead trying to please Vladimir Putin. Whatever Putin is holding over Trump, it’s so ugly that Trump is still focused on keeping Putin happy, right down to the final moments of his failed presidency. Contribute to Palmer Report
