Trump's Worries

By Stephen Eric Bronner, Reader Supported News

08 August 17

onald Trump is neither the first nor likely the last demagogue with a loyal mass base. He is also not the first “man of the people” whom self-styled “pragmatic” elites believed they could control. Such was the case with the arch-reactionary “cabinet of the barons,” whose members believed that Adolf Hitler, supposedly the last bulwark against proletarian rule, would fall into line when surrounded by his betters. Worried Soviet bureaucrats meanwhile thought that they had found the perfect “yes-man” in Stalin, the plodding and provincial general secretary of the communist party, who had stayed in the shadows as his more famous rivals battled one another into exhaustion during Lenin’s terminal illness. Countless other examples come to mind. But then the insiders usually have little knowledge of history. Even when they do, their arrogance lets them think that this time things will be different: that hasn’t turned out very well.

Republican elites never doubted that they could control Donald Trump. Nor did they ever take seriously his promise to “drain the swamp.” Like other demagogues from the past, the new president boasted that he alone could fix things, that he alone stood above parties, and that he alone could “Make America Great Again!” His campaign was not about programs, or ideas, or coherence: it was about him! That’s why he insisted that the citizenry believe him and not think about what he had just said, and why elites assumed that (with a little flattery and indulgence) they could keep him in check. Sophisticated generals and billionaires rolled their eyes at his bullying manner, exaggerated claims, crude lies, and ebullient megalomania. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, and Trump’s humiliated competitors for the presidency obviously couldn’t stand him. Nevertheless, he had orchestrated the biggest upset in American political history (with or without Russia’s help) and the bumbling fool still commanded loyalty from his base.

With off-year elections looming in 2018, Republicans mostly bit their tongues. They needed the president, whatever his faults, and they also felt that he needed them. The newcomer would come to his senses soon enough. He was never a man for the nitty-gritty of programs and legislation; Trump would surely let the insiders run the show from behind the scenes. They possessed knowledge about congressional protocols, obscure rules, and the tricks necessary for passing legislation. They comforted themselves that Trump would come around – except that he didn’t.

Apparently, the president wasn’t quite as charismatic as he thought while insiders and activists couldn’t seem to overcome their ideological disputes. The Republican Party soon found itself in shambles. Its leaders tried to understand what had taken place. But they were not very successful. What so many of them view as the president’s deep flaws are actually traits endemic to authoritarian rule. Consider the embattled White House in which nothing gets done and delineations of authority are lacking. Confusion will inevitably result and endanger the president’s legislative agenda. Increasing chaos, however, might also heighten the president’s capacity to act in unilateral or arbitrary fashion. More important than the passing of this or that bill is perhaps his more general desire to stand above the fray, take credit or shift blame, and foster an image of himself as indispensable for resolving a set of (self-generated) crises.

Creating a cult of the personality has nothing to do with passing successful legislation or programs and, in this vein, Trump’s exaggerated reliance on an inner circle is also par for the authoritarian course. Setting up a shadow government insulates against institutional accountability and it renders the power of any intimate completely dependent upon the leader’s mood at any given moment. Subordinates come and go as the president’s whim dictates, and policies are often decided spontaneously, at the spur of the moment. Bringing in the family is also part of the process, but there are no guarantees regarding the official status of this or that member. The numerous titles heaped upon Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, may flatter the young man’s vanity, but they are ultimately as meaningless as those that were heaped on Hermann Goering (and became something of a public joke) during the Nazi regime.

The shadow government can change in the batting of an eye and, in turn, this complicates any demand for public accountability. Civic agencies are threatened with losing their independence, institutional checks become entangled with one another, and it becomes unclear who is responsible for what. No unaccountable and all-knowing “deep state” is conspiring against the duly elected president and his legitimate advisors; it is rather the other way around. An arbitrarily constructed inner circle, unconcerned with basic norms of political behavior or administrative rules of procedure, is engaged in undermining and circumventing the institutional checks and balances deriving from the separation of powers.

Trump’s reliance on executive orders is therefore not simply the product of his legislative incompetence. Countervailing authorities are obstacles standing in his path, and untrustworthy elites are mired in the swamp that he promised to drain. It only makes sense then that his legislative efforts should fail, in spite of the Republican majorities in the House and the Senate. Only the president can make America great again! His base and the citizenry at large need only believe that the threats to his enterprise are real – and, if they are not real, then they need to be made real. That need is becoming all the greater. In the face of massive geo-political miscalculations, diplomatic blunders, mendacious propaganda, and erratic unilateral initiatives by his administration, Trump needs a win!

Afghanistan is disintegrating; Syria’s opposition lacks even the pretense of a sovereign in waiting; China has not buckled in the face of American economic threats; Iranian policy is in limbo; North Korea is still building its missiles; our Russian policy veers between treating it as a “friend” or an “enemy;” Europe is going it alone; withdrawal from the Paris Agreement has turned into a debacle; and prospects for peace have dimmed even further between Israel and Palestine. The president is facing further rebellion in the Republican ranks in the wake of his failed healthcare initiative, passage of harsh economic sanctions against Russia, public defense of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, and increasingly ominous governmental investigations. There are also unpassed budgets, incoherent tax proposals, racist anti-immigration policies, leaks, purges, and more.

Losing power in the off-year elections of 2018 and his office in 2020 are becoming ever greater possibilities. Should these prospects become real, most likely, the president will go quietly into the good night. But there is another possibility: identifying the national interest with his own, fearing indictments, Trump might feel the need for dramatic action. Either way, he needs that big win – and fast! So the president might feel impelled to create the crisis that only he can resolve: bomb Iran or North Korea, heighten tensions with Russia or China, shut down impeachment proceedings, or engage in a preemptive strike against the elections of 2018. Who knows? There might yet be method to Trump’s madness – and that might prove the greatest danger of all.

Stephen Eric Bronner is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Director of Global Relations at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University. He is the author of more than a dozen works, including The Bigot: Why Prejudice Exists (Yale University Press) and The Bitter Taste of Hope: Ideals, Ideologies, and Interests in the Age of Obama (SUNY Press).

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

'Fake News'? The Russia Investigation Is Getting Very, Very Real.

By Amber Phillips, The Washington Post

08 August 17

resident Trump keeps calling the Russia investigation ‘fake news.’ But with each passing week, the independent investigation into Trump's campaign ties to Russia is getting more real, not less.

Here's how:

It's expanding, both in size and scope. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has built a team of lawyers who have expertise in cybercrime, white-collar crime, the mob, money laundering and Watergate. Together, his team has more than a century of legal experience.

The Justice Department's No. 2, Rod J. Rosenstein, originally appointed Mueller to investigate Trump campaign connections to Russia, but Mueller has wide latitude to look into whatever he wishes. So far, we know that's expanded to: Jared Kushner, Michael Flynn, unspecified financial crimes and very specific accusations by the former FBI director that Trump himself tried to obstruct justice.

It's getting more in depth. As the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, they've set up a grand jury, which can subpoena witnesses and documents and, if need be, indict people. The president's defenders, like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), point out that grand juries are a normal process of any investigation.

But implicit in that statement: It's a normal process of any serious investigation. If there really was nothing to see here, as Trump claims, Mueller's team won't need to keep digging. And it suggests they had enough evidence to convince a federal judge to okay the grand jury.

As Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on CNN on Sunday: “[R]ather than turning that investigation off, rather than concluding, we have looked at this for a year, there's really nothing to see here, as the president would claim, instead, if these allegations are true, it's moving into a new phase.”

Congress is taking it seriously. Republican-led committees in the Senate and the House are leading parallel investigations into Russia's meddling in the U.S. election and have said they'll go wherever the facts lead.

Outside those committees, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Congress are writing legislation to give Mueller room to do his investigation and make sure that Trump can't fire him. It's yet another example of Congress putting its faith somewhere besides with Trump. They forced Trump to sign a Russia sanctions bill into law last week, and the Senate left town but technically stayed in session so that Trump can't fire, then self-replace, his attorney general and reshape the special counsel investigation.

The Trump campaign has a lot of Russian connections. And the more we learn about them, the deeper they seem. Take Donald Trump Jr.'s campaign meeting with a Russian-government-connected lawyer. First, he told the New York Times it was about adoptions. (A narrative The Washington Post reports Trump himself dictated.) But that explanation quickly caved to reveal the truth: It was to get dirt on Hillary Clinton and came after he was told the Russian government was trying to help provide that dirt.

And then you have former campaign aides Paul Manafort, Carter Page and Flynn, all of whom have done business with and have connections in Russia. Others now in the administration, like Attorney General Jeff Sessions and senior adviser Kushner, have not been forthcoming about their Russia meetings, however innocuous they might have been.

As Schiff said in March: “Is it possible that all of these events and reports are completely unrelated and nothing more than an entirely unhappy coincidence? Yes, it is possible. But it is also possible, maybe more than possible, that they are not coincidental, not disconnected and not unrelated.”

Congress, the judicial branch and Trump's own administration have all played a role in expanding the investigation and taking it seriously. If this were a “witch hunt,” as Trump claims, then it's a “witch hunt” the entire political and judicial system is in on. Even the most cynical person has to acknowledge that would be an extraordinary conspiracy the likes of which the United States has never seen.

Now, just because an investigation is indeed very real doesn't mean we know its conclusion. It could take months, even years, to finish, much less come to a conclusion about whether Trump colluded with Russia to win the White House. But with each passing day, it's increasingly clear this investigation is neither made up nor built on fake news.