Trump has no one to blame for his endangered presidency but himself.
The investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia is serious, and becoming more so. But it is not what is imperiling Donald Trump’s presidency. What’s imperiling Donald Trump’s presidency is, well, Donald Trump. Washington Republicans never liked or trusted Trump, but they hoped to be won over by his administration, to be persuaded that he was more disciplined and strategic than he appeared to be during the campaign. Those hopes have been dashed by the lawless, reckless way he has responded to ongoing inquiries. Trump has scared his allies, enraged his bureaucracy, undermined his credibility, and publicly admitted to using the power of his office to obstruct ongoing investigations. In doing, he has reminded Republicans what they feared a Trump presidency would be like — unconstitutional, unfocused, scandal-plagued, and damaging to both America’s standing in the world and the GOP’s brand at home. “Republicans may soon lose a generation of voters through a combination of the sheer incompetence of Trump and a party rank and file with no ability to control its leader, ” conservative radio host Erick Erickson. “ [F] rom the perspective of the Republican leadership’s duty to their country, and indeed to the world that our imperium bestrides, leaving a man this witless and unmastered in an office with these powers and responsibilities is an act of gross negligence, which no objective on the near-term political horizon seems remotely significant enough to justify, ” Ross Douthat in the New York Times. Trump’s relationship with congressional Republicans is best viewed as an uneasy bargain. They support him, despite their doubts, so long as he passes their agenda and controls his behavior enough not to endanger them or the country. Trump is failing on his end of the deal, and he is making it harder and harder for congressional Republicans to hold up their end of the deal. That’s where the sudden talk of impeachment comes from, and the rising comfort with special counsels and independent commissions. On Tuesday, Sen. John McCain that President Trump’s mounting scandals were “reaching Watergate size and scale.” That same night, Carlos Curbelo, a Congress member from Florida, became to use the I-word. “Obstruction in the case of Nixon and in the case of Clinton in the late’ 90s has been considered an impeachable offense, ” he said. Rep. Justin Amash. Asked whether James Comey’s memo would, if verified, be grounds for impeachment, Amash said it would. This is a moment in which the tectonic plates that underlie political opinion in Washington are shifting, a moment in which the unthinkable is being thought, announced, and perhaps even hastened. As recently as two weeks ago, Republicans thought it safer not to know the crimes Trump may have committed or the lines he may have crossed. Today, the GOP is facing the grim reality that Trump is not disciplined enough, and the bureaucracy he leads is not loyal enough, to keep his misdeeds hidden. Key Republicans are concluding that the truth will emerge, and so they may as well be the patriots who uncovered it, rather than the hacks who suppressed it. A sign of the times: I spoke on Wednesday to a top staffer in a conservative Senate office. What did he think of Vice President Mike Pence these days? I asked. “You mean the next president of the United States?” he shot back. He was joking, kind of. But no one was making jokes like that two weeks ago. Investigations — and calls for investigations — have swirled around Trump since the start of his administration, but congressional Republicans found it reasonably easy to ignore them. What they couldn’ t ignore was what Trump did in to the investigations launched by then-FBI Director James Comey. So, first Trump asked Comey to collude with him in obstructing justice — thus giving Comey the ammunition to torch Trump if he was ever crossed. Then Trump publicly fired and humiliated Comey. Then he publicly admitted he did it to quash the Russia investigation, which in turn primed the public to believe Comey when he said Trump also asked him to end the Flynn investigation. Then he bragged about it to Russian officials, because… I don’ t know. I honestly don’ t know what would possess a human being in Trump’s position to do that. Some things cannot be explained. The remarkable thing, looking back on the timeline, is that none of it was necessary. Trump could have simply treated Comey well and tried to win him over as an ally while offering bland statements of support for his work. It wouldn’ t have taken a political genius to choose another path here. The obvious counterargument to all this is that Trump may believe Comey’s investigation posed an existential danger to his presidency. He may have felt his hand forced. But if so, he failed to extinguish the threat — in fact, he made it worse. None of this was a necessary consequence of Comey’s investigation. This is Trump recklessly, impulsively endangering his own presidency. Again and again, Trump has taken small problems and, in his fury, turned them into huge problems. A partial list: And then there’s the story that dominated the news mere days ago, and that served as the backdrop for exhausted Republicans absorbing the new information about Comey’s dismissal: Trump disclosed classified Israeli intelligence in a conversation with Russia’s foreign minister. In a bombshell report, revealed that Trump gave Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov classified intelligence that had been provided to us by a third country (now believed to be Israel) . As best anyone can tell, Trump’s actions were motivated by insecurity rather than malice — the context appears to have been Trump bragging about the quality of the intelligence he receives. But the details Trump gave Lavrov were sufficient to endanger “a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State, ” according to the Post. That means that whatever Trump said made it possible for the Russians to figure out where the intelligence was coming from, which in turn means it’s possible that Israel will lose a key source of information on ISIS because of Trump’s actions. If that happens — and even if it doesn’ t — this will severely damage Israel’s incentive to share sensitive intelligence with the United States, which could in turn put American lives at risk. It is hard to overstate how much this gaffe horrified the foreign policy community. “On a scale of 1 to 10 — and I’ m just ball parking here — it’s about a billion, ” Stanford professor Amy Zegart wrote in. Zack Beauchamp does explaining why: The disclosure was damaging enough that someone else present during Trump’s conversation with Lavrov reported the breach to the intelligence agencies. It is believed, though not confirmed, that the leak revealing Trump’s comments subsequently came from one of those intelligence agencies, perhaps in an effort to embarrass Trump, or perhaps in an effort to that he has to be careful going forward. Trump (probably) didn’ t do anything illegal in revealing this information to the Russians. The president can declassify what he wants, how he wants, when he wants. But that power is predicated on the idea that presidents won’ t misuse it. The fallout is enraging not just to our allies abroad, but to Trump’s allies at home, many of whom would like the commander in chief to be sufficiently competent and careful that he doesn’ t jeopardize our intelligence sharing agreements while offhandedly bragging about himself to the Russians. Congressional Republicans never liked Trump. I’ ve told this story before, but back during the primaries, I published — and recorded a video — calling Donald Trump’s rise a terrifying moment in American politics. The analysis was unsparing. « Trump is the most dangerous major candidate for president in memory, » I wrote. « He pairs terrible ideas with an alarming temperament; he’s a racist, a sexist, and a demagogue, but he’s also a narcissist, a bully, and a dilettante. He lies so constantly and so fluently that it’s hard to know if he even realizes he’s lying. » After the piece published, I got a call from a very conservative Republican member of Congress. He wanted to talk about the article, his office said. I figured he’ d be angry. Instead, he congratulated me for speaking out. That member of Congress subsequently endorsed Trump. He did it because he felt he had no choice. Trump was going to be the Republican nominee, and the Republican base loved him, and so this official, who thought Trump a disaster, decided to get on the train. This same story was repeated across almost the entirety of the GOP’s congressional wing. Sometimes, it even played out in public. Rand Paul Trump a “delusional narcissist.
