Collusion— Or Something Worse?

It would have been-- or at least should have been-- any sentient being to walk away from the Trump NY Times interview without 3 overarching thoughts, listed below in no particular order:

1- Wow, what a liar!
2- Wow, he’s senile!
3- Wow, he is totally obsessed with the Russian collusion!

He’s also out of touch with any semblance of objective reality, but that combines all three of the other thoughts into one less specific trait which most Americans have been watching-- with alarm-- grow over the last year.

I was especially taken with how many times he brought up-- unbidden-- the collusion. If you have watched Trump’s patterns you know what that means: he is so guilty of collusion that he realizes he’s going to have to pick between starting a civil war and going to prison (or making a plea deal that removes him from office but probably seeing at least his son-in-law go to prison). On Friday night, I think Politico writer Jack Shafer noticed the same thing about the collusion, noting that Señor Trumpanzee “said more than a dozen times that there had been ‘no collusion’ between the Russians and his campaign. Of course, Trump has spent much of the past year denying any Russian collusion. What makes this year-end ‘no collusion’ insistence so newsworthy is that, according to the transcript, Schmidt doesn’t even question him on the topic! Bringing up collusion unbidden, Trump returned to it again and again, scratching it like a suppurating wound, probing his own threshold of pain and all but inviting Schmidt to touch the abscess, too. If you witnessed this tic at the movies, you’d reckon that the scab-picker was a little bit nuts. But if the scab-picker got caught searching the face of his interviewer for a reaction, you’d ask yourself, ‘What is the old fox up to?’”

Within hours all the fact checkers were saying Trump had lied 25 times in 30 minutes. But it’s only that few times if the dozen times he said “no collusion” counted as a single lie. Otherwise he really did lie more than once a minute.

“Like advertising writers, sloganeers and propagandists,” continued Schafer, “Trump appreciates the power repetition has on the lax mind. Properly executed, the right catchphrase can work as both setup and punch line and occupy mind-space in friends and adversaries even when spoken out of context. By repeatedly pressing the ‘no collusion’ hotkey, Trump challenges his foes, who believe he has compromised his country, to prove it-- or to shut up.” But that’s Mueller’s job and he’s in no rush to leave any stone unturned as he puts together the case that will help Congress impeach the crazy orange monkey. Dianne Feinstein cleared him, suggest Trump and Schafer. She’s as senile as he is and should have retired years ago. And besides, all she said was that they don’t have the proof yet. Schafer also noted that “the Russia story reduces to three components of which collusion (‘links to Russian officials and intermediaries’) is only one. The scandal’s two other two legs, Russian cyberattacks and alleged acts of obstruction of justice, glow and flash like Las Vegas neon.” As for Trump’s obsession with collusion…

The roster of Trump associates and relatives that made contacts with Russians is as lengthy as it is undeniable, including son Donald Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and national security adviser Michael Flynn, campaign chairman Paul Manafort and others. Flynn has admitted he lied about his contacts. Sessions remembered his contacts only after being reminded. (The Washington Post reported this week that Trump’s legal team plans to brand Flynn, once the president's BFF, as a liar. “Complete nonsense! More fake news," Trump’s outside counsel John Dowd told NBC News of the Post piece.) George Papadopoulos denied his contacts, too, until he submitted a guilty plea to charges of lying. Donald Jr. changed his story at least four times about why he took the Trump Tower meeting with the Russian lawyer and her entourage. Finally, there is the hapless Russophile Carter Page, Trump’s foreign-policy adviser, who took meetings with Russian officials, too.

And that’s only the beginning of the Trump camp’s known mucking about. To paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, if it isn’t collusion, what if it’s something worse?