Hope springs (somewhat feebly)
While Trump is doing his darnedest best to destroy the American system, the system is resilient enough to strike back and grab hold of, if not him, those around him.
Convictions and guilty pleas are starting to litter the White House, a very ominous signal for pretty much everyone working for the Trump presidency. If they had thought cozying up to power and landing coveted positions of trust with the madman was enough to shield them, well, think again.
Indeed, if I were a functionary, strategist, undersecretary, or aide my goal right now would be to cover my tracks. Any hint that what I’m doing is improper, even if not illegal, and my career could be shot. I would take care to keep my nose clean and documentation, pristine! (I wonder if that’s what the Ambassadors of the US are also thinking right now).
Because who knows? The next turncoat a.k.a. Omarosa could expose participation in a cover-up or scam. The next whistler a.k.a. Cohen could unearth trash guaranteed to ruin careers, and even land one in jail. And the next convict scored by Mueller, a.k.a. Manafort, could lead to more volunteers for info in exchange for immunity.
As what happened in the case of David Pecker, president of the media company that owns the National Enquirer. Pecker just agreed to warble and trill to the tune required by federal prosecutors to escape landing in the same situation as Cohen over hush money payments to Trump’s mistresses.
And not just that; the same immunity deal has apparently been extended to Trump’s finance chief, Allen Weisselberg! Oh boy, I smell trouble. The finance guy is someone you have to keep on your side forever, until the grave, even! Because moneybags can provide the money trail that’s going to give the smoking gun to prosecutors.
So this turn of events is sure to give a turn to bad baby Trump. And all else who ever fed that flow of funds, or became a recipient of the tainted cash.
For everyone who has been obsessively tracking the disaster of a presidency by checking on “trump news” almost every single day on Google, and hoping fervently for a miracle, for some sign that the world is not continuing to be ripped into unrecognizable pieces (I wonder how many we are), this moment seems like the beginning of hope.
Will the Democrats win a majority of Congress this mid-term elections? Will they get the numbers to force an impeachment? Will Trump even wait for an impeachment? Maybe he can just resign gracefully (the only graceful thing he ever did in his entire presidential career thus far)?
What a wishful thinking weekend this is turning out to be. And while we’re at it, perhaps we can wish for the same gumption from our own government instruments, that they can stand up to political pressure and the desire to fawn over those in power, and deliver results and work products expected of upstanding civic servants.
To be more precise, hopefully our prosecutors and judges write a finish to the Ampatuan massacre that killed 58 journalists regardless of the fact that a wedding of the clan drew representatives of the powerful Marcos, Binay, and Duterte clans. Hopefully, judges will declare the arrest of the three lawyers in the Makati drug raid as baseless. Hopefully, the erring cops who murdered innocent teens like Kian Loyd delos Santos will be convicted.
So many things to hope for. And to think at some point, I had thought my wish list was shrinking.
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