There's a thought we should all bear in mind regarding conspiracy theories in general--the likelihood that a truly large and pervasive conspiracy could persist undetected for any great period of time is small, because the result of collective action is peculiar enough to attract attention, and the individual people making up the collective action are diverse and self-motivated enough to eventually fuck up and unravel it. Writing these TrumpWorld Grab-Bags is about watching things fall apart. There has been a few recent developments that strike me as interesting, but it's the fails that fascinate me.
You know who always looks like a smooth character? Paul Manafort. It could be wigs and plastic surgery, but I don't know. He has the Teflon look of the prepaid funeral and self inscribed epitaph that you see on folks who know how they made their bones and have already been temperamentally pre-embalmed because they know where this timeline goes. They don't get the wrinkles one gets from regular emotive wear and tear on the face because they have one expression in this world--over it. Anyhow, he almost had a nice bail deal for the holidays and oops, he had to write an editorial with a Russian contact about how whatever he did, it was great. This was not his smartest moment.
But this story has been full of not-smart moments, take Michael Flynn. He texted, allegedly, a friend to tell them that now that Donald Trump was in office, sanctions against Russia were basically ripped up. Those sanctions keep coming up, you know? Natalia Veselnitskaya says she was asked point-blank by Donald Trump Jr. about the dirt she was supposed to have on Hillary Clinton, and Don Jr. is also supposed to have brought up sanctions in the same meeting.
But Don Jr. is getting excellent advice about everything. He cited attorney-client privilege to try to avoid talking about a conversation with his dad. Sure, neither of them are lawyers....but they were lawyer-adjacent.
It looks like Manafort partner Rick Gates could be in more trouble. But Jared Kushner, who might have directed at least one of Flynn's contacts to the Russians? Yeah--he has nothing to hide, he's just very forgetful.
All in all, um. Yeah. This is some kind of TrumpWorld Grab-Bag, all right.
But this story has been full of not-smart moments, take Michael Flynn. He texted, allegedly, a friend to tell them that now that Donald Trump was in office, sanctions against Russia were basically ripped up. Those sanctions keep coming up, you know? Natalia Veselnitskaya says she was asked point-blank by Donald Trump Jr. about the dirt she was supposed to have on Hillary Clinton, and Don Jr. is also supposed to have brought up sanctions in the same meeting.
But Don Jr. is getting excellent advice about everything. He cited attorney-client privilege to try to avoid talking about a conversation with his dad. Sure, neither of them are lawyers....but they were lawyer-adjacent.
It looks like Manafort partner Rick Gates could be in more trouble. But Jared Kushner, who might have directed at least one of Flynn's contacts to the Russians? Yeah--he has nothing to hide, he's just very forgetful.
All in all, um. Yeah. This is some kind of TrumpWorld Grab-Bag, all right.
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