Trump disdains stories in the media about his being minded by “adults,” but that should be less annoying than the fallout from a plan that any serious lawyer would have warned was a bad idea.
Where’s John Kelly when you need him?
President Trump’s chief of staff, cast aside like so many of Trump’s advisers, irked the president with his efforts to bring some discipline to him and his operation. But if there’s one thing that’s obvious from the Ukraine controversy, it’s that the president could use more “no men.”
During Roman triumphs celebrating military victories, a slave was supposedly given the task of riding behind the conquering general and constantly whispering in his ear, “Remember, you are mortal.” The White House needs someone constantly whispering in the president’s ear, “There’s no freaking way we’re doing that.”
Anyone who had taken Government 101 would have told the president that going down the path of asking for investigations from the Ukraine president in the context of a discussion of military aid would certainly bring more headaches than upside.
If press reports are to be believed, plenty of people in the White House realized this. They tried to keep Trump from doing it but were outmaneuvered by Rudy Giuliani, who volunteered for double duty as an amateur sleuth and diplomat and has honchoed arguably the most harebrained foreign policy scheme since Ollie North delivered a cake to the Iranians.
It’s not that there aren’t legitimate questions about Ukraine and the role of various players there in the 2016 election and aftermath. But they are appropriately handled by the Justice Department, which is currently looking into the sources of the Russia investigation.
As for Hunter Biden, he, too, is a fit subject for investigation and an apt symbol of one of the worst aspects of American life, namely, how easy it is for people with proximity to power to get rich. Hunter had no evident talent worthy of a $50,000-a-month gig with a Ukrainian energy company, except for being the vice president’s son.
There’s a reason, though, that oppo-research firms exist. No one could claim an abuse of power if the Trump campaign hired such an operation to thoroughly vet Hunter Biden’s various ventures, and spread damaging material to media outlets. If the campaign wanted to be just a little clever, it could take a page from Hillary Clinton 2016 and use a law firm as a cut-out.
Did no one think of that? Trump is, obviously, responsible for his own decisions and conduct, but it’s truly bizarre that it was the president’s counsel, of all people, who has his fingerprints all over this.
Several former White House officials told President Donald Trump that a conspiracy theory that Ukraine was secretly responsible for hacking the 2016 US presidential election was false, The New York Times reported on Sunday.
According to the paper, their warnings had little effect on the president, who pursued the theory anyway.
The report backs up a claim by former national security adviser Tom Bossert, who earlier Sunday attacked Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani for keeping the flawed theory alive and said he'd warned Trump that it was groundless.
"It's not only a conspiracy theory, it is completely debunked," Bossert told ABC'S George Stephanopoulos on "This Week."
The elaborate conspiracy theory, long circulated in right-wing media, alleges that it was really Ukraine that was behind interference in the 2016 election and that Ukraine attempted to pin the blame on Russia as part of a secret plot to help Democrats.
Other former presidential aides told The Times that they had struggled to convince Trump that Russia, not Ukraine, was behind the election interference.
The outlet said he "was more willing to listen to outside advisers" like Giuliani "than his own national security team."
One former aide told the publication that Giuliani would "feed Trump all kinds of garbage" that created "a real problem for all of us."
