Will the links between the US and Russians hit America at its core? Will the compromised material Putin has trigger Trump’s resignation? If so, how can his own team succeed him?
~By Kenneth Tiven in Washington
The present American political tragi-comedy starring Donald Trump, with off-camera support from Vladimir Putin, is strikingly like a Rubik’s Cube. The puzzle seems impossible to solve, then it looks agonizingly close to being finished, but the last few clicks are difficult to accomplish.
This political crisis is not going to end well. It is the biggest US constitutional crisis since 1861. What about Nixon and Watergate, you ask. Because of vice-president Spiro Agnew’s conviction for corruption, America had a non-elected “clean” vice-president in the wings when Nixon walked away from the Watergate impeachment.
If this team in the White House is considered illegitimate, who succeeds a Trump resignation or impeachment? What can this incompetent Congress bring itself to do? All those apocalyptic HBO and Netflix movies about America after the plague, war, mini-revolution, come to mind. Trump has always been willing to bankrupt things when he failed at his original goal. Could America be his closing act?
Trump himself bought a $40 million mansion in Florida as an investment and flipped it to a Russian Oligarch for $100 million. The new owner immediately tore it down.
In a 1978 case involving fairness in a Punjab election, the Indian Supreme Court cited the second president of the US, John Adams, who wrote some 200 years ago: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.”
Instead of medical examiners looking for the cause, what we have at this moment are federal intelligence and investigative agencies, reinvigorated journalists, all examining in detail a campaign timeline and tweets that correlate once seemingly random events with political events.
An evidence trail of cyber political warfare with internet bots and trolls originating on Eastern European ISPs is emerging, plus Julian Assange and Wikileaks. There is boasting in Moscow political circles about the success of this cyber war in electing Donald Trump.
The “Unfairness” of it All
Despite the US president’s hectoring style, some Americans like him as that is what they secretly would like to use against those perceived as luckier than them
Ambivalence is when you have positive and negative feelings about the same thing. The dominant emotion depends on variables. Among Trump supporters, polling in the US suggests there is very little ambivalence. They like what they see on TV and read on the websites they like.
I interact with a Trump supporter who has been one of my closest friends for more than 35 years. We agree on many things. We like literature, smart people, Formula 1 car racing, good food and technological toys and devices. Politics is not something on which we agree at all.
Understand him and maybe you can better understand other Americans. It is not a case of smarts or education. He is brilliant as a writer, though most of his work has been as a photojournalist. He has a tidy video business that supports him in his retirement from mainstream media, along with tax-free social security and military disability payments.
He survived Vietnam and doesn’t, to my knowledge, criticise my military career spent with a typewriter in a stateside office.
I have incredibly rich and successful friends. I know how they live, how they think and what they do with their money, which is mostly to give it away. Trump is the aberration—not bright, not inquisitive, not philanthropic, not actually successful in business. But lucky, yes. Oh My God, lucky.
I think how many of his people feel is based less on conservative political thought than it is on what is actually the life blood of talk radio in America: the Limbaughs’ of talk radio criticise people who are successful—money, better cars, better houses, vacations, security about the future. The con is that they got those attributes by luck or by screwing someone out of the opportunity. The listeners are losers only because of bad luck or timing. This “unfairness” is what talk radio preachers shout. There is a demonisation of the “other”, which by definition, is applied to people of colour and immigrants.
When my friend says he believes the National Enquirer tabloid headline— “Hillary Clinton Adopts Alien Baby”—before he believes mainstream newspapers, I have to ignore it, just figuring he’s trying to get a rise out of me.
It is going to take some seriously incredible evidence, maybe from Putin himself, to convince the supporters that Trump is actually a fraud. The bully tactics and tell-it-like-it-is language are secretly what they would like to use against enemies, real and perceived.
Writers learn three things quickly when becoming journalists: Ask the right questions, you get the right answers. Always follow the money. And thirdly, if you do both of those, be careful because it can get you killed.
Reuters asked: Who bought those expensive apartments in Trump-branded buildings? Combing through real estate records, the news agency learned that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports bought nearly $100 million worth of apartments in seven Trump-branded buildings near Miami, Florida. Because so much real estate ownership is hidden in shell companies, it is impossible to pin down the full extent of Russian ownership.
The respected Guardian newspaper in London, in reporting a series it calls “The Global Laundromat”, notes that Deutsche Bank figures in many money-laundering cases and is also on record as loaning Trump $300 million.
Trump himself bought a $40 million mansion in Florida as an investment and flipped it to a Russian Oligarch for $100 million. The new owner immediately tore it down.
Now comes the information that Paul Manafort, who was for several months before the political conventions the campaign manager for Trump, pocketed perhaps $40 million in four years’ work for a Russian Oligarch. His work was how to influence elections in Ukraine and Europe. This, without registering as an agent of a foreign government as required by US regulations. Much of this apparently was sheltered from tax authorities in Russia and the US.
This scenario is no less improbable than many Bollywood movies. But it is more than an American problem. It is a global problem. The lesson here is that movies and reality television are make-believe and not a reliable guide to leadership, policy, or political performance.
Are we at the point where Manafort tosses Trump under the bus trying to save himself from a lifetime in prison? More importantly, does the Putin government in Moscow declare victory in upsetting America at its core and publicly take credit for winning this cyber war? This is the best way to remind the rest of the world to be nice to the Russian bear.
They could do this with an old Soviet tactic, releasing “kompromat” or compromised material they most probably have on him from his trips to Moscow, or have manufactured for this purpose. If this triggers his resignation, there is an interesting question of succession because if Trump was elected “illegitimately”, how can his own team succeed him?
Or does Trump attempt to do what Mrs Indira Gandhi did in 1975—declare a state of Emergency and rule by decree? For much of the Emergency, most of Gandhi’s political opponents were imprisoned and the press was censored. Several other human rights violations were reported from the time.
This scenario is no less improbable than many Bollywood movies. But it is more than an American problem. It is a global problem. The lesson here is that movies and reality television are make-believe and not a reliable guide to leadership, policy, or political performance.
Game of Thrones. Game of Trump. Less obvious sex and violence. No less riveting.
—The writer has been a journalist in American media for more than 50 years, including stints at The Washington Post, TV network news with NBC, ABC and CNN and was involved in the start up of Aaj Tak and continues to work with several Indian news channels