With the election coming up, I decided to finally read "A Very Stable Genius," by Phillip Rucker and Carol Leonnig. I've had it for a while, but kept from reading it until now.
That's because, as the Wall Street Journal said ironically the other day, that 45's performance as president should be taken as a whole (in response to his awful comments to Bob Woodward, as if somehow pasting over it would work--a surprisingly supportive comment). Granted, this account does not because of the sheer amount of abuse and miscreance that 45 has committed from his inauguration through July of 2019, the time expanse of the book.
But reading it now serves to remind us of the totality of 45 improprieties and illegalities, and our misfortune at the naïveté many of us have expressed about his limitations. To summarize, he has none. Only now do we realize that this monster will do anything to hold on to power--and as we speak, his sycophants are now making frenzied plans to help him.
Yet, going back over everything allows memories to freshen. To convince the otherwise rational people to vote for him--I'm not sure how many are left--45 must make them live in the moment, to create a misleading reality about a country about to go into the tank, and make it be someone else's fault.
I'm here to warn not to do that. People really should take a step back and remember what he has done to us. This is not a game of 'got-cha.' This is the real deal. We have the worst possible person in the worst possible office at the worst possible moment. We have one, exactly one, chance left to do something about it.
Bob Mueller passed on his chance because of his obsessiveness with form and protocol. As thorough as his Office of Special Counsel staff was, he avoided admitting the emergency and facing it, and with that went any hope of removing 45 from office. He was a gentleman dealing with others who were clearly not. He thought he could trust Bill Barr, but we now know that Barr entered the Attorney General's office with an already twisted view of what he could do for 45 to help his seizure of power--instead of clear-headedly seeing that this seizure did not have the best interests of the country in mind. But then, 45 would probably have found someone with Barr's thought process to replace him. He wanted not the lawyer to represent the country, which is what was supposed to be true of an Attorney General, but someone to represent him.
There were other places in which Mueller did not pursue issues with sufficient intensity, writes Andrew Weissmann, Mueller's front man of the OSC, in a new book about to be published. 45's pardon powers and the ever-looming threat of Mueller being potentially fired, writes Weissmann, led Mueller to take a more measured approach.
There's no real way to summarize all of the abuses, and Rucker and Leonnig avoid that in their work. It is masterful reporting and sourcing of those who desperately needed to tell their parts of a story that, as opposed to someone who keeps telling us that he'll make America great again, contribute strongly to America's demise in serving the interests of him alone.
So I thought I'd just go through a small part of the ground that Rucker and Leonnig turn up again, to get you to remember what he's done to offend many of us and undermine just about all of us, whether we realize it or not, and/or act with incredible cluelessness. All I will do is write incidents in a way that, as I read them myself, afforded me the opportunity to say to myself, "Ohhhh--that's right! I remember that!"
(Get ready. This will take a while.)
From Chapter 1: "Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor who had endorsed Trump and was the chairman of the presidential transition, was flabbergasted when the president-elect told him he would name (Michael) Flynn his national security adviser.
"You can't do that," said Christie. "First, you have to have a chief of staff in place and let your chief of staff have input on that because the security adviser's going to be reporting to the chief of staff. And Flynn's just the wrong choice. He's just a horrific choice."
"You just don't like him," (45) replied.
"Well you're right," Christie said, "I don't like him. Do you want to know why?"
"Yeah," (45) said.
"Because he's going to get you in trouble," Christie said. "Take my word for it."
Chapter 2: "On January 27 (2017), without consulting his Justice Department or fully briefing his homeland security secretary, (45) issued a travel ban barring citizens and refugees from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States. Chaos reigned at large international airports, and immigration lawyers filed emergency petitions asking federal courts to intervene to half enforcement of the ban, arguing that it was unconstitutional.
"The ban was drafted in secret by (Steve) Bannon and Stephen Miller, (45)'s....policy adviser and a hard-line opponent of illegal immigration. They didn't consult (White House counsel Don) McGahn or (acting Attorney General Sally) Yates about its legal framework. Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, whose department had to enforce the ban, never got to see the final version until after (45) issued his executive order."
Chapter 3: 45 is asked to contribute to a documentary called 'The Words That Built America,' ironically directed by Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of Nancy, for HBO...."With LED lights on stilts in front of him, (45) took his seat. "You're lucky you got the easy part," Pelosi told him cheerfully. "It gets complicated after this." But the president stumbled, trying to get out the words in the arcane, stilted form the Founding Fathers had written. (45) grew irritated. "It's very hard to do because of the language here," (45) told the crew. "it's very hard to get through that whole thing without a stumble." He added, "It's like a different language, right?"
Chapter 4: "News of (FBI Director James) Comey's firing broke at about 5:48 p.m., and all bedlam broke out....at this moment Rosenstein was floored. It had never occurred to him that Comey would be executed in so haphazard a way.
(45), meanwhile, sat in front of the television...He was getting crushed rather than cheered....Exasperated, (45) called on Chris Christie.
"What the hell is going on? I'm getting my ass kicked on this," (45) told his friend.
"You've created a shit storm," Christie told him. "And what about the worst staff work ever? You didn't fucking know (Comey) was in Los Angeles? You sent Keith Schiller with a letter for a guy who was twenty-nine hundred miles away?"
...."I've got your solution," Christie said. "Get (Deputy Attorney General Rod) Rosenstein out oj TV now. If this is Rosenstein's memo [which Rosenstein never intended would be used to fire Comey; he thought of it as a position paper], have fucking Rosenstein go out and do it."
"That's brilliant. I'm going to call Rod right now...."
Sarah Isgur Flores, the Justice Department's communications chief, received a call from the White Hosue passing along (45)'s instructions for Rosenstein. "They need you to hold a press conference and say the Comey firing is your idea," Flores told Resenstein.
"I can't do that," Rosenstein said. "I can't lie."
"....There would be no Rosenstein TV appearance.....Among his many peers at the Justice Department, there was deep concern that Rosenstein had crossed a dangerous line. (One department veteran said,) 'Either he knowingly helped the president fire the FBI director to try to rid himself of this investigation or Rod was an unwitting tool who got used by the president. Both of them are terrible.'"
And that's only getting to page 61 of over 400. The book is filled, page after page, with horribly embarrassing ethical problems created by a president who doesn't recognize them. The lure of power is intense; Yours Truly knows this, and nobody in power for any appreciable amount of time can remain ethically pure. But most people in power try to adhere to some compass, to some North Star, so they can return to it as soon as possible.
In the meantime, they try to explain the unexplainable in terms of what they used to--temporarily putting it on hold--believe in (Republicans, especially in the Senate, are trying to do that now, but too much time has gone by and too many decisions have had to be made for me, at least, to disregard what they do as anything more than kow-towing to him. Their dignity has been lost long ago.). 45 can't, and doesn't care to. There's no consistency, no guide, no attempt to send a particular message except the most repressive and reactive one.
There are a few, very few, examples of people standing up to 45. When he was Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson was one; he could not, and did not, tolerate 45's trashing of the military in front of it and him. But most people are putting their heads down and hoping that 45 will be ejected this November so they can go on with their careers with some veneer of legitimacy. More publications than this book have recorded that.
One more time: this is the absolutely worst person in the absolutely worst position at the absolutely worst time. It will be a long road back from this, even if Biden hangs on to win. He has ruined so much.
"A Very Stable Genius" is a book well worth reading right now. I'm glad I read it. It reminds us of this president's awfulness. It ends just as Congress considers impeachment, and we know how that turned out. But an accurate recollection of what's gone on still allows us to dominate conversations about it, if we ever get into them, and advance our case. Good journalism still lets us do that, and this is some of the best.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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