The Week in Washington: “It’s All Coming Home to Roost”
“I blame myself for the conduct which has brought me here today,” Michael Cohen, the president’s former attorney/fixer, said at his sentencing hearing last Wednesday, explaining why he spent more than a decade doing the dirty work of his boss. “…and it was my own weakness and a blind loyalty to this man that led me to choose a path of darkness over light.”
That path, which has been pretty dreary these last 23 months, is finally lightening up a little. President Trump is now at the center of at least three serious investigations: the feds are looking into whether foreigners illegally funneled donations into his inauguration, in order to curry favor with the new administration; at least two women who allegedly had affairs with him were paid to keep silent, reportedly at the president's behest; and of course there is also that pesky Mueller investigation, which refuses to go away. Yesterday saw a presidential tweetstorm flinging dopey invective at the usual targets —Lisa Page, Hillary, et al, from a guy who appears increasingly cornered. According to one Republican source cited in the Washington Post: “[The president] has never been in a position where he can’t shuck and jive and work his way out of things… Well, it’s all coming home to roost.”
Roosting chickens did not provide the week’s only wryly amusing moments. At quarter to four in the morning on Monday, the Trump tweeted, “Democrats can’t find a Smocking Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James Comey’s testimony. No Smocking Gun...No Collusion.” The onslaught of smocking mocking has not yet resulted in a correction. And doesn’t it raise a chuckle to contemplate all the people who have turned down the formerly plumb job of White House chief of staff? Nick Ayers, who works in Mike Pence’s office (oh, that must be fun!) was the first to say thanks but no thanks, reportedly followed by Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s Treasury Secretary, and former Senator Rick Santorum. Even Chris Christie demurred after meeting with the president on Friday. Did the fact that Chris put Jared’s dad in prison in New Jersey prove an unsurmountable hurdle? And speaking of Kushner—his name was actually floated for Chief of Staff, but on Friday it was finally announced that Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Budget Responsibility, has been corralled into taking the job—at least temporarily. It’s an interesting choice: Not only did Mulvaney describe the president in 2016 as a “terrible human being,” but he has purported insisted that the title be termed “acting”—and he wants to hold on to his old job, too, just in case.
In other news: on Wednesday, the president televised a meeting between him, the Senate minority leader, and the presumptive next speaker of the House—who he likes to refer to as Chuck and Nancy. After a particularly patronizing comment to the latter, Pelosi replied, “Mr. President, please don’t characterize the strength I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats, who just won a big victory.” For his part, Schumer got the president to admit that if there is a government shut down over that infernal border wall in the next week, blame will land solely at Trump’s feet. “You want to know something? I’ll take it,” the commander-in-chief said. “Yes, if we don’t get what we want one way or the other, whether it’s through you, through military, through anything you want to call—I will shut down the government. I am proud to shut down the government. I will take the mantle.” And yet another flipper! On Thursday, Russian agent Maria Butina pleaded guilty to a single charge of conspiring to act as a foreign agent, in a deal that will have her blabbing to federal prosecutors. Yesterday, Ryan Zinke, the embattled, scandal-riddled interior secretary, announced that he is stepping down.
And on Friday, it was reported that Jakelin Maquin, a seven-year-old Guatemalan girl who came to this country via Mexico with her father seeking asylum, died in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection last week, after waiting an hour and a half to receive emergency medical care.
