"Put your sword back in its place," Jesus said to him, "for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Matthew 26:52In an almost perfect parable, Donald Trump faces his own political and business weapons on the loose turning against his presidency.
For someone who has mastered the art of riding the news cycles and using tabloid news and obscure websites to spread "alternative facts" and conspiracy theories about his circumstantial rivals -from his own wives to his own party- the turn of events couldn't have been more paradoxical.
Just when a special prosecutor investigates his financial deals in money laundering schemes -from casinos to empty towers from Punta del Este to Azerbaijan-, Michael Wolff, a journalist invited to full access to the campaign and the White House published "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" , a bombshell of a book and made public a troubling storm of taped statements from his campaign strategist and nationalist-populist guru pointing to money laundering as the most likely cause for impeachment.
Civility -the restraint from personal attack or slander- has been absent in Trump's rise to power and from his presidency so far. Moreover, civility of the kind candidate McCain exhibited in 2008
and candidate Romney did in 2012
Or as the ex-presidents have been doing after hard-fought opposition at The President's Club
rejecting personal attacks on his opponent, has been lambasted by Trump and his entourage of Far Right firebrands as "political correctness", the kind of "weakness" that made McCain and Romney lose their elections.
On the contrary, it was electing uncivil team mates -like Sara Palin- or not showing their care for people and family -like Romney-
that they lost their chances.
Incivility, argues Bannon publicly, is the way to wage "war" against a laundry list of enemies lumped into vaguely menacing concepts such as "elites (for college-educated, "Davos" and "Wall Street" types), "establishment" (for the Republican party and its majority leaders in Congress) , "deep state" (for the FBI, CIA and all the career personnel in government) and -more generally "Washington" -for the entirety of the checks and balances established in the Constitution to limit Executive power-.
The book doesn't show anything new about Trump's long-time associates, like Roger Stone or Paul Manafort:
Vulgarity and scandal are not new to this administration. Chaos and backstabbing in public are the norm, as we can recall from the brief summary provided a year ago for the short-serving Secretary of Press Scaramucci:
Whose description of the characters matches very closely those they provide of each other in the book.
The book -and the 200+ hours of tape his author had almost two years to collect in the campaign and the White House- is out as a national best-seller and those named have corroborated the facts and scenes of a dramatically dysfunctional set of staffers, ready for the special prosecution to corroborate. There seem to be no boundaries, no ethical reservations, no friendship to restrain the Bannons and the members of the Trump family -Trump included- to insult their looks, intelligence and accuse each other behind their backs.
Trump's reaction to the book has been also self-damaging: instead of questioning its author, Trump tweeted his fury against Steve Bannon, "ex facto" confirming that he believed Bannon's extensive comments and quotes about Trump, his family and his entire team are true, at least for him. True to form, Trump's tweeting didn't wait for his lawyers or "communication" experts to articulate a defense, much less an offensive.
A day later, they started, trying to prevent the publication of the book (too late; it's already at the top of the book-selling records list) and to attack Wolff's credibility (too late as well, since several of the witnesses of the facts the book describes confirmed the facts and conversations described in the book).
The Mercers, financiers of Bannon and Breitbart, parted ways immediately and Fox News launched Trump's "surrogates" to try to change the subject, then deny its relevance in full evasive mood.
The entire scene described by the book looks like if the Watergate scandal had started by Haldeman and Ehrlichamn publishing the tapes. What Nixon kept out of sight -invective, insults and personal attacks- is precisely what Trump tweets out every day. While Nixon was justifiably paranoid in keeping out of sight, Trump believes and proclaims as good and healthy for his presidency and the country. Or not, as he use to say in mid-sentences after hurling a menace, giving "knowing" wink to the cheers of his unconditional followers.
and candidate Romney did in 2012
Or as the ex-presidents have been doing after hard-fought opposition at The President's Club
rejecting personal attacks on his opponent, has been lambasted by Trump and his entourage of Far Right firebrands as "political correctness", the kind of "weakness" that made McCain and Romney lose their elections.
On the contrary, it was electing uncivil team mates -like Sara Palin- or not showing their care for people and family -like Romney-
that they lost their chances.
Incivility, argues Bannon publicly, is the way to wage "war" against a laundry list of enemies lumped into vaguely menacing concepts such as "elites (for college-educated, "Davos" and "Wall Street" types), "establishment" (for the Republican party and its majority leaders in Congress) , "deep state" (for the FBI, CIA and all the career personnel in government) and -more generally "Washington" -for the entirety of the checks and balances established in the Constitution to limit Executive power-.
The book doesn't show anything new about Trump's long-time associates, like Roger Stone or Paul Manafort:
Vulgarity and scandal are not new to this administration. Chaos and backstabbing in public are the norm, as we can recall from the brief summary provided a year ago for the short-serving Secretary of Press Scaramucci:
Whose description of the characters matches very closely those they provide of each other in the book.
The book -and the 200+ hours of tape his author had almost two years to collect in the campaign and the White House- is out as a national best-seller and those named have corroborated the facts and scenes of a dramatically dysfunctional set of staffers, ready for the special prosecution to corroborate. There seem to be no boundaries, no ethical reservations, no friendship to restrain the Bannons and the members of the Trump family -Trump included- to insult their looks, intelligence and accuse each other behind their backs.
Trump's reaction to the book has been also self-damaging: instead of questioning its author, Trump tweeted his fury against Steve Bannon, "ex facto" confirming that he believed Bannon's extensive comments and quotes about Trump, his family and his entire team are true, at least for him. True to form, Trump's tweeting didn't wait for his lawyers or "communication" experts to articulate a defense, much less an offensive.
A day later, they started, trying to prevent the publication of the book (too late; it's already at the top of the book-selling records list) and to attack Wolff's credibility (too late as well, since several of the witnesses of the facts the book describes confirmed the facts and conversations described in the book).
The Mercers, financiers of Bannon and Breitbart, parted ways immediately and Fox News launched Trump's "surrogates" to try to change the subject, then deny its relevance in full evasive mood.
The entire scene described by the book looks like if the Watergate scandal had started by Haldeman and Ehrlichamn publishing the tapes. What Nixon kept out of sight -invective, insults and personal attacks- is precisely what Trump tweets out every day. While Nixon was justifiably paranoid in keeping out of sight, Trump believes and proclaims as good and healthy for his presidency and the country. Or not, as he use to say in mid-sentences after hurling a menace, giving "knowing" wink to the cheers of his unconditional followers.
Emmanuel Kant explained that the key for judging if an act was moral or not was if it was good to make it universal -in other words, if it is self-destructive or not-. Unfortunately, Trump doesn't seem familiar with Kant.
Trumpism -defined as a style - one based on reality show-like personal attacks and muck racking- rather than a political or government philosophy- demonstrates by way of absurd that it is not, harming itself at a moment of economic and domestic triumph.
Trumpism -defined as a style - one based on reality show-like personal attacks and muck racking- rather than a political or government philosophy- demonstrates by way of absurd that it is not, harming itself at a moment of economic and domestic triumph.
Echoes of 1974's Nixon returning from China and winning reelection by a landslide come to mind.
Civility -paraphrasing Freud's dictum about reason- has a very tiny voice, but very persistent.
Trump may survive this crisis as he did so many others -his entire career is a collection of them-.
Partisan logic narrows the problem to whether Trump can be impeached or not. Either way, partisans on both sides of the question show their typical disdain for civility and care for institutions that must survive electoral terms and supersede political agendas.
Civility will take more time to recover than the economy, domestic or foreign affairs, because what this (and many other) reports show is flagrant and concurrent disrespect for the Constitution and the spirit of the laws of our republic.
The press -partisan or not- is not "the enemy of the people". Bad behavior in office is.
"Fire and Fury" is a good title for the kind of country Steven Bannon and the Far Right nationalists live in.
In Alabama, Republican voters couldn't take it anymore. Now, it was Trump's turn to learn the cost of ignoring the old lesson:
Partisan logic narrows the problem to whether Trump can be impeached or not. Either way, partisans on both sides of the question show their typical disdain for civility and care for institutions that must survive electoral terms and supersede political agendas.
Civility will take more time to recover than the economy, domestic or foreign affairs, because what this (and many other) reports show is flagrant and concurrent disrespect for the Constitution and the spirit of the laws of our republic.
The press -partisan or not- is not "the enemy of the people". Bad behavior in office is.
"Fire and Fury" is a good title for the kind of country Steven Bannon and the Far Right nationalists live in.
In Alabama, Republican voters couldn't take it anymore. Now, it was Trump's turn to learn the cost of ignoring the old lesson:
"A house divided against itself cannot stand."
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