Blog No. 171. Donald Trump: A President AWOL

In a February 18 column that was widely circulated, Thomas Friedman wrote:

President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.

For many of the #NeverTrump persuasion, the Friedman hypothesis is a plausible pair of explanations for Trumpian behavior. Still, there is a third explanation that may be even more plausible: that Trump’s colossal, but fragile, ego simply does not permit him to contemplate anything that might tarnish or diminish in any way his “historic” electoral victory. Whatever the explanation, Trump’s posture affects not only his responses to the Mueller investigation but, perhaps even more dangerously, his failure to respond to Russia’s relentless assault on American democracy

The seriousness and the continuing nature of the Russian threat to our electoral system can hardly be doubted or debated. It was clearly identified and described in unequivocal testimony by the chief’s of each of America’s intelligence agencies at a Senate hearing on February 13. For example, as excerpted by the Atlantic:

“There should be no doubt that Russia perceives its past efforts as successful and views the 2018 US. midterm elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations,” Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, said during the Senate Intelligence Committee’s annual worldwide-threats hearing on Tuesday.

“We have seen Russian activity and intentions to have an impact on the next election cycle,” CIA Director Mike Pompeo said later. Other top intelligence officials, including the FBI Director Chris Wray, agreed.

The director of the National Security Agency, Mike Rogers, emphasized that steps should be taken “to ensure the American people that their vote is sanctioned and not manipulated in any way,” and Coats advocated for as much transparency as possible.

Yet each of the chiefs testified that the President had neither asked their advice nor given them direction as to any action to be taken in response to the Russian activities. Senator Angus King (I-Maine) grew visibly frustrated and urged the intelligence chiefs to persuade President Trump that their findings are correct and Russia indeed interfered in the U.S. election:

“My problem is, I talk to people in Maine who say the whole thing is a witch hunt and it’s a hoax ‘because the president told me,'” King said, arguing that the issues of Russian election meddling and alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia should be separate.

“We cannot confront this threat, which is a serious one, with a whole of government response when the leader of the government continues to deny it exists.”

The testimony by the intelligence chiefs was underscored only three days later by Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russians and 3 Russian entities for an extensive menu of illegal acts taken to interfere in the 2016 election. The detailed 37-page indictment did not allege the knowing participation by the Trump campaign, but did allege the “unwitting” cooperation of unidentified individuals in the campaign. While the indictment did not plead any “collusion” with Russian operatives on the part of the campaign, it by no means ruled out such collusion. Hours after the indictment was returned, the President’s National Security Adviser, General H.R.McMaster, publicly stated at a meeting in Germany, that the evidence of Russian interference with the election was now “incontrovertible.”

For the intelligence community and virtually all outside observers, the evidence had long been incontrovertible, so it appeared that McMaster was speaking, or attempting to speak, to his own boss. For his part, however, Trump was having none of it. While not disputing the testimony of the intelligence chiefs or the facts alleged in the Mueller indictment, he attempted to make light of it all. Indeed, he rebuked McMaster in a characteristically perverse tweet:

General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians and that the only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H, the DNC and the Dems. Remember the Dirty Dossier, Uranium, Speeches, Emails and the Podesta Company!  

McMaster, of course, did not “forget” any thing of the sort. The claim that the Russian interference did not impact the election (an assertion that Vice President Pence also chose to make) has not been established and, realistically, never can be. It is equally true that it cannot be proven that Russian activities did impact the election. On the other hand, given the extent of those activities, and the closeness of the election, it is not an unreasonable hypothesis that the Russian interference may have made the difference in electing Trump. Indeed, it is probable that the reasonableness of the hypothesis is what gives Trump such manifest and acute discomfort.

The significance of Trump’s discomfort is that it may be the source of the paralysis that keeps him from confronting the threat of Russian interference in future elections. Assume, at least for the moment, that Trump’s endlessly repeated mantra of “No Collusion” is true, and also that the outcome of the 2016 election was not affected, the Russian threat for 2016 and 2020 would remain a serious one and one that demands presidential leadership. It is not that there are no solutions. Several steps were outlined in a February 14 op-ed piece in the Washington Post by Mike Rogers, a Republican and former Chair of the House Intelligence Committee and Rick Ledgett, former deputy director of NSA, “Four steps to fight foreign interference in U.S. elections.”

While some steps may be taken by Congress, presidential leadership on a matter of vital national security is essential. The first step called for by Rogers and Ledgett makes that clear:

First, the administration should issue a declaration: “The United States views any foreign attempt to influence our election processes through covert or clandestine means as an attack on the fundamental underpinnings of our system of government. We will not tolerate such activity and reserve the right to respond to such activities.”

The Washington Post also weighed in editorially on February 22, “The Russians are coming.  Republicans need to do something about it.” The editorial began by stating the obvious:

PRESIDENT TRUMP has shown an alarming unwillingness to respond to Russia’s hostile influence campaign during the 2016 election and to counter its effort to interfere in this year’s vote. That means Congress and the states must step in, and soon, to secure the midterms against an emboldened adversary that has already penetrated state election systems once and that continues to wield online provocateurs to disseminate lies and inflame national divisions.

The President, however, remains AWOL, or to use an apt but even more devastating term, derelict in his duty. Meanwhile, Republicans on Capitol Hill have done little to fill the gap left by the President. The Post noted that the Democratic minority has issued a report making specific proposals and the editorial, not unreasonably, asked, “Will Republicans treat the issue with the same urgency?” As the editorial went on to demonstrate, the answer thus far is not encouraging.

At the same time, Trump’s discomfort with the fact of Russian interference may also explain his erratic behavior towards the Russian investigation conducted initially by James Comey and now by Robert Mueller. Without reprising here Trump’s serial contortions and distortions, it is sufficient to note that more than one observer has asked rhetorically why, if Trump has nothing to hide, does he persist in acting in such a guilty manner. (See, e.g., David Von Drehle in the Washington Post, “For an innocent man, Trump sure does act guilty.” and Nicholas Kristof, “President Trump, if You’re Innocent, Why Act So Guilty?”

One answer to this puzzlement may simply be that Trump is in fact guilty: that the relationship of his campaign to Russia was more than grotesque chumminess but involved a breach, or conspiracy to breach, federal statutes such as those cited in the recent Mueller indictment of Russian individuals and entities. Or that Russian influence on the campaign can be traced to leverage from Russian investments on the Trump empire. We will have to await further developments in the Mueller investigation to find out. If Trump is guilty of nothing more than hypersensitivity to the implications of Russian help in getting him elected, he will suffer no legal consequences. He should, however, pay a political price for what he has put the country through.