In “Drip, Drip, Drip” Mr. Blow says what we know about Russia only makes what we don’t know more ominous. Mr. Kristof has a question: “What Did Trump Know, and When Did He Know It?” He says dots involving Russia are begging to be connected. Ms. Collins says “Well, Trump Watchers, Things Could Be Worse,” and that on the plus side, we’re not in Pyongyang. Here’s Mr. Blow:
Every day there is a fresh outrage emerging from the murky bog of the Donald Trump administration.
Every day there is a new round of questions and a new set of concerns that raise anxieties and lower trust.
Every day it becomes ever more clear that it is right and just to doubt the legitimacy of this regime and all that flows from it.
The latest round involves the former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, who this week was forced to resign following disclosures about his communications with the Russian ambassador on the same day that then-President Obama announced sanctions against Russia for its interference in our election to help Trump and damage Hillary Clinton.
The official reason given for requesting Flynn’s resignation was, according to the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer: “The president was very concerned that General Flynn had misled the vice president and others.”
Spicer continued later, “The evolving and eroding level of trust as a result of this situation and a series of other questionable instances is what led the president to ask for General Flynn’s resignation.”
Spicer further stated, “The White House counsel reviewed and determined that there is not a legal issue, but rather a trust issue.”
If you are thinking, “Something about this just doesn’t smell right,” you’re right; it stinks. This doesn’t add up and it leads to a multiplying number of questions to which we don’t yet have answers.
The president was made aware of Flynn’s communications weeks ago, and apparently didn’t think it prudent to alert the vice president or to correct the record when the vice president said that Flynn had not discussed the sanctions with the Russian ambassador, when indicators pointed to the fact that he did.
Flynn lied. Trump knew Flynn lied. But Trump kept Flynn in his circle of confidence and apparently left the vice president out of the circle of knowledge. Why?
In tweets the president has posted since Flynn’s resignation (or firing — you choose how you want to cast it), Trump has seemed more upset by the fact that Flynn’s lies were leaked and reported than by the original transgression.
Furthermore, the president’s tweets and limited public pronouncements on the matter would lead reasonable readers and listeners to conclude that Flynn would still be on the job if his dealings had not become public.
This is an office culture issue. If the boss — in this case Trump — is a pathological liar who forces underlings to repeat and bolster his lies, what signal does that send to everyone else who works in that environment? That lying is not only accepted but also valued, that lying is simply a rhetorical device, a propaganda tool that is inexcusable only when not exercised with skill.
Trump knew exactly who he was getting when he hired Flynn, who had been fired by the Obama administration. Flynn is a habitual liar who lied so much when he ran the Defense Intelligence Agency that, according to The New York Times, “subordinates came up with a name for the phenomenon: ‘Flynn facts.’ ”
Trump doesn’t mind a lie if it serves him; he does apparently mind if the liar is intentionally, maleficently trying to deceive him.
But even here, there are questions. It’s not clear whether Trump was aware of Flynn’s conversation with the Russians when it happened, or that he didn’t in some way direct it or receive a report of the call from Flynn himself after it happened.
Furthermore, Flynn’s communications with the Russians are not the only calls of concern. The New York Times reported Tuesday:
“Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.”
What was the nature of these calls? Why were they made? Was anyone in the Trump orbit aware of Russian plans to hack the Democratic National Committee or the Clinton campaign? Were they made aware in any way of when emails would be leaked?
Two things bear repeating ad infinitum:
In July, at a televised campaign event, Trump said: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Then in October, an hour after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tapes of Trump boasting about sexually assaulting women, WikiLeaks began to dump the Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s hacked emails on the internet.
Coincidence? Maybe. But that would be one hell of a coincidence, considering all the other reinforcing “coincidences”: Trump’s inexplicable, inexhaustible praise of Russia and Vladimir Putin; Putin’s failure to respond to Obama’s sanctions; an explosive report last week from CNN that read: “For the first time, U.S. investigators say they have corroborated some of the communications detailed in a 35-page dossier compiled by a former British intelligence agent.”
What we know only makes what we don’t know feel all the more ominous. But I believe that facts are forthcoming. Reporters are digging like a crew of coal miners hopped up on a case of Red Bull, and sources in Washington are leaking to anyone with a press credential.
Drip, drip, drip it goes until the dam breaks and the truth spills.
Next up we have Mr. Kristof:
During the Watergate scandal, until now the most outrageous political scandal in American history, the crucial question was drawled by Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”
Today the question is the same.
This is not about Mike Flynn. It is about the president who appointed him, who earlier considered Flynn for vice president. The latest revelation of frequent contacts between the Trump team and Russian intelligence should be a wake-up call to Republicans as well as Democrats.
When Vice President Mike Pence was asked by Chris Wallace of Fox News on Jan. 15 if there had been any contacts between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, he answered: “Of course not. Why would there be any contacts?”
Great question, Mr. Vice President.
Look, there’s a great deal we don’t know, but Russian interference in our election is potentially a bigger scandal than Watergate ever was. Watergate didn’t change an election’s result — President Richard Nixon would have won anyway in 1972 — while the 2016 election was close enough that Russian interference might have tipped the balance.
We don’t know whether the Russians had domestic help in their effort to steal the U.S. election, but here are a few dots that are begging to be connected:
First, the American intelligence community agrees that the Kremlin interfered during the campaign in an attempt to help Donald Trump. This isn’t a single agency’s conclusion, but reportedly a “strong consensus” among the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the director of national intelligence.
Second, the dossier prepared by a former MI6 Russia expert outlines collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. CNN reports that American intelligence has communications intercepts corroborating elements of the dossier, and the latest revelation of repeated and constant contacts between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign give additional weight to the dossier’s allegations — although it’s also important to note that officials told The Times that they had seen no evidence of such cooperation in election manipulation.
Third, President Trump has been mystifyingly friendly toward Russia and President Vladimir Putin. As Jeffrey H. Smith, a former general counsel to the C.I.A., puts it: “The bigger issue here is why Trump and people around him take such a radically different view of Russia than has been the case for decades. We don’t know the answer to that.”
Fourth, Flynn, before taking office, discussed Obama administration sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador. Flynn has now resigned, but he was steeped in the principle of a chain of command; I doubt he made these calls completely on his own. Daniel Benjamin, a former counterterrorism coordinator at the State Department who has known Flynn for years, says it would have been out of character for Flynn to do so. So who told Flynn to make these calls? Steve Bannon? Trump himself?
We’re back to our question: What did the president know, and when did he know it?
The White House hasn’t responded to my inquiries, and Trump lashes out wildly at “the fake news media” without answering questions. He reminds me of Nixon, who in 1974 said Watergate “would have been a blip” if it weren’t for journalists “who hate my guts.” Soon afterward, Nixon resigned.
Trump supporters say that the real scandal here is leaks that make the administration look bad. A bit hypocritical? It’s dizzying to see a president who celebrated the hacking of his rival’s campaign emails suddenly evince alarm about leaks.
Sure, leaks are always a concern, but they pale beside the larger issues of the integrity of our leaders and our elections. Published reports have quoted people in the intelligence community as fearing that information given to the White House will end up in Russian hands, even that the “Kremlin has ears” in the White House Situation Room.
I referred to Trump last year as “the Russian poodle,” and we’ve known for years of Trump’s financial ties to Russia, with his son Donald Jr. saying in 2008, “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” It’s all the more important now that Trump release his tax returns so that we can understand any financial leverage Russia has over him. Yet the same Republicans who oversaw eight investigations of Benghazi shrug at far greater concerns involving Trump and Russia.
“I’m just appalled at how little people seem to care about the fact that Russians interfered in our presidential election, clearly, unequivocally, on the part of one candidate,” Michael McFaul, a former ambassador to Russia, told me. “What’s more important than that?” To which I add: Only one thing could be more important — if the Russians had help from within the U.S.
As I said, there’s a great deal we don’t know. But we urgently need a bipartisan investigation, ideally an independent panel modeled on the 9/11 Commission. It must address what is now the central question: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”
And now here’s Ms. Collins:
I know a lot of you were saying in December that this administration wouldn’t last a month. But I’ll bet you didn’t actually have “worry about collapse of the government” written down on your schedule for February.
Americans who went into a state of shock after the election are now floating in new, hitherto-uncharted realms of worry. We’ve learned that Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, talked with the Russians before the inauguration. And, sources told The Times, other Trump associates also talked with Russian intelligence officers during the campaign.
What about Trump himself? Any chance that he encouraged Flynn to chat with the Russian ambassador about policy before he was president? Wouldn’t that be, um, super-illegal?
Wow. If you thought a successful President Trump was the worst possible scenario, imagine an egomaniac who feels threatened with being a “loser,” back to the wall. In the interest of public tranquillity we will not dwell on the nuclear codes in his office.
From the start, the Trump administration was a dark combination of mean and inept. But it was, on occasion, at least sort of mesmerizing. For instance, on Wednesday the nominee for secretary of labor went down the drain. Because somebody thought it was a good plan to go for a cabinet member with a history that includes employing an illegal immigrant housekeeper and an ex-wife who once went on “Oprah” to talk about spousal abuse.
Things are so dire, people are feeling sympathy for Kellyanne Conway. Did you see that poor woman trying to answer questions about Flynn on the “Today” show? She looked as though she’d been hit over the head with a skillet.
Back in the good old days last week, Kellyanne was in trouble for violating the rule against federal officials giving endorsements. (“I’m going to give a free commercial here: Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.”) It was a pretty good crisis, actually. The kind of thing we could have complained about at dinner parties for a month without losing our appetites.
The majority of American voters who didn’t support Donald Trump used to watch him on TV with a kind of cynical amusement as he bragged about fake election results and crowd sizes. Now every time it happens you can’t help thinking — wow, is this guy really unhinged? On Wednesday, in the middle of a press conference with the prime minister of Israel, Trump responded to a question about anti-Semitism in America by immediately pointing out he had won 306 Electoral College votes. (“We were not supposed to crack 220.”)
And the president was so out to sea he couldn’t come up with a consistent cover story for why Flynn left. His press secretary said Trump had requested Flynn’s resignation due to a “trust issue.” But when Trump showed up in person, he seemed to believe the whole thing was orchestrated by “the fake media” and a different chief executive from another planet.
“It’s really a sad thing that he was treated so badly,” the president told the press conference. “People are trying to cover up for a terrible loss that the Democrats had under Hillary Clinton.”
Being stuck with a loony, unqualified president seemed less threatening when we were under the assumption that he’d be surrounded by at least some people who knew what they were doing. Now, the more of them we meet, the less secure we feel. Trump has a senior policy adviser, Stephen Miller, who sounds like a really unpopular college sophomore complaining about his grades. He had a national security adviser who said he couldn’t remember for sure whether he talked with the Russian ambassador about American sanctions before the inauguration.
Well, at least the National Security Council still has Steve Bannon.
So how do we keep our cool when our world is overheating? Try reminding yourself that there are things in this world that are not Donald Trump’s fault:
A) Beyoncé losing the Grammys.
B) Collapse of Chipotle stock.
C) Playboy half brother of North Korean dictator murdered in possible assassination by poison-needle-wielding women.
Life could always be worse. You could be related to supreme leader Kim Jong-un. And you can’t pin North Koreans on the Trump administration yet. Except for the part where our president dealt with the crisis over their new ballistic missile while dining at Mar-a-Lago in front of throngs of resort guests and their Facebook friends.
It is true that Trump and Kim Jong-un both share an affinity for peculiar haircuts and public shows of adoration. And if the North Korean press were allowed to actually report stuff, the people there would undoubtedly also be holding their heads in their hands and moaning, “Oh God, what next????”
But let’s dwell on the positive. At least Trump doesn’t have any half brothers. And did you hear the German shepherd won the Westminster dog show? How about that “La La Land”?
No fair mentioning there are only three years and 44 weeks to go.
