Trump and Mueller

I have written at length here about the early contours of the conflict between President Trump and the established norms and organs of government. To be honest, I'm growing somewhat tired of having to write about it so regularly, but the calm efficiency with which longstanding and important checks on personal power are being discarded is horrifying - and the disinterest in or outright ignorance of the process on the part of the public even more so. This week we have learned that the conflict has taken on a more aggressive and very personal form as a direct conflict between Trump and Special Prosecutor  Robert Mueller.

Mueller, a former director of the FBI, universally well regarded public servant, and Republican, was appointed on May 17 as the special counsel to deal with the FBI inquiry into whether Russian interference in the 2016 election extended to direct cooperation with the Trump campaign. This decision, the reader may recall, was taken in the wake of two events - the March 2 decision of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from the investigation after it was revealed he had undisclosed contacts with the Russian ambassador during the campaign, and the shocking May 9 dismissal of then-FBI director James Comey, who had been in charge of the Russia investigation, by President Trump. After Comey's firing, as Sessions had been recused, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein made the call to put the investigation in the hands of an independent figure due to fears of executive meddling.

Since before Mueller's appointment, Trump has been waging a campaign to discredit the investigation. He has attempted to paint it as the revenge of Democrats for losing the election, in spite of the fact that none of the principals involved in setting the investigation up in this way has been a Democrat. He has denied repeatedly that the Russians actually interfered in the election - in spite of his own UN Ambassador and Director of National Intelligence openly contradicting him - because he cannot abide anything that raises questions about his razor-thin margin of victory in the election. He even attempted to warn Comey off of the investigation on several occasions before abruptly firing him.

This week, however, it was revealed that the White House's campaign to fight the investigation has been far more aggressive than previously reported. The Trump team is apparently investigating not only Mueller, but the political and personal backgrounds of his entire team in an attempt to mine information that can be used to discredit the investigation in the eyes of the public. In addition, they are looking at ways to deal with potential criminal indictments, including a examination of the power of the president to pardon his family, close aides, or - astonishingly - himself.

Behind the scenes, Trump aides are defending the move by noting that the Clintons used a scorched-earth public relations strategy against congressional Republicans and special prosecutor Kenneth Starr during the Lewinsky scandal. The ad nauseam and apparently compulsive transference of every questionable action by Trump or his team to the Clintons notwithstanding, it bears notice that when Bill Clinton approved this strategy of defense he most certainly did have something to hide. Declaring political total war on an investigation as increasingly damaging revelations about what has been found dominate the press does not build a credible case for one's innocence.

I have seen it insinuated by a number of news outlets and close friends who tend to be left-leaning that Trump is desperately trying to cover up obvious malfeasance and is crassly lying to the public about his efforts. None of the known facts, inasmuch as I am aware of them, directly contradicts that view. But I see it as being incomplete without a serious picture of the psychology of the Trump family. 

Donald Trump is not a person for whom norms, convention, loyalty (to one other than himself), or conventional standards of right and wrong bear serious weight. He was taught by his hardscrabble father, and has in turn taught his own children, that the only arbiter of right is success, that winning is all that matters, and that one either takes advantage of this world or is taken advantage of by it. We know that at minimum the Trump family and campaign were aware that the Russians were trying to help them. Anything on the spectrum from that to outright collusion, whatever actually occurred, was I am sure viewed by the Trump family as an opportunity to have an extra weapon with which to bludgeon their enemies in the struggle for survival.

Trump's fight with Mueller, by extension, does not for him have anything at all to do with right or wrong, good or bad, legal or illegal. It has everything to do with a direct and very serious challenge to his authority. Trump believes that the world is ruled by the strong, and the strong destroy their enemies by using whatever means are required. He sees himself as a strong man. In the bleak social-Darwinian world the Trumps inhabit, as for Plato's Thrasymachus, "justice is nothing else but the interest of the stronger."

With this knowledge in mind, it is possible to make sense of Trump's actions and gain a plausible picture of his future dispositions. This investigation is an existential threat to his power and, as he sees it, his inevitable greatness. If there is a tactic he can use to discredit it, he will use it. He sees the probe as the attempt of his vanquished enemies to bring him down at what should be his moment of triumph. For someone as preoccupied with his self-image as Trump, such naked aggression must be met with overwhelming force. As he himself told Greta Van Susteren during the campaign, “If somebody hits me, I have to hit them back. I have to. I’m not going to sit there and say, ‘I’m wonderful, I’m a president.’ I want to win."

Even the most casual student of the American revolution will note that this mindset is precisely the one that gave the Framers nightmares. They desperately feared that the powerful executive office they had created would one day be occupied by an unscrupulous self-seeker with populist instincts and insatiable ambition. I can think of no more apt description of the president. While he hasn't lead a coup or executed any of the more outlandish fever-dreams of his opposition, he has done something no less pernicious in steadily undermining or openly ignoring the restraints on the exercise of his personal authority, not as President of the United States but as Donald Trump. It is safe, I think, to say that Trump does not see those two descriptions as distinct.

I've said it here a number of times already, and I am resigned to saying it a number more before all is said and done, but there is absolutely nothing more dangerous for separation of powers or truly democratic government than the removal of restraints on personal authority. It is a sign of our deep partisan divisions that we have not yet realized as a nation that we are ruled by a man who will take every possible opportunity to empower and enrich himself. Perhaps a number of us know and don't care, provided he suitably punishes the other side. Regardless, the structure of our government is in a precarious position.