So GOP lawmakers are "befuddled" by Donald Trump's decision to not impose additional sanctions on Russia. They can't understand why he threw his U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley under the bus for announcing on Face the Nation that Treasury Secretary Mnuchin was all set to impose those sanctions.
Really? You're befuddled? Befuddled by what? A president who has publicly attacked just about everyone on the planet who publicly criticized him, yet for some reason has heaped all kinds of praise on the one man the entire intelligence community has concluded interfered with the 2016 presidential election? That president? I submit that if you can't understand what's going on here, why a president - any president - would deliberately cut the legs out from their own U.N. ambassador and leave her out to dry then you and I must be living on a different planet.
I'm not one to go gutter with this president. There are more than enough legitimate reasons to criticize Trump without sinking to that level. But I'm starting to believe that, apart from the potential money laundering charges that Mueller must be working on, there might be another, far more embarrassing, scandal that Trump would just as soon not be made public.
The infamous pee tape, loath though I am to bring up, has got to be real. Think about it: this is a guy who cheated on his first wife with his second wife; then cheated on his second wife with his third; then, while his third wife was pregnant, had an affair with both a porn star and a Playboy bunny. And yet it's an "alleged" pee tape that's got his panties all in a bunch?
You know Trump is sweating this one out. Ever since his conciliary's office got raided, he's gone to a whole new level of unhinged. Michael Cohen may not have that tape, but I'll lay odds the two of them talked about it on more than one occasion. If those conversations were ever made public, that orange face of Trump would turn a permanent shade of red.
And here's the thing: Putin knows he's got Trump by the balls. Screw the oligarchs, anytime old Vlad wants to get the attention of his apprentice all he has to do is threaten retaliatory measures and the great deal maker folds like a cheap deck chair. And what were those retaliatory measures? Putin threatened to ban some U.S. exports. The moment Trump caved, old mother Russia "delayed" the ban. See how that works? We say we're going to punish Russia, Putin says "I don't think so" and Trump has a change of heart.
Remember that SNL skit with Putin in the audience holding up a tape marked "Pee Pee" after Alec Baldwin's Trump said Russia probably meddled in the election? Remember how quickly Trump changed his tune once he saw the tape? Yes, it was funny, but it was also very alarming. We've had a lot of comedy sketches over the years on presidents from Nixon to George Bush, but we've never had one in which a foreign adversary was actually blackmailing him. This is truly historic.
What we are witnessing here is a compromised president in the Oval Office and a hostile government with absolutely no compunction whatsoever about exerting every bit of leverage it has over him. The time for laughing is over; the time for action is at hand.
Comments