Mueller Is Closing in on Trump - The Atlantic - 0 views
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In their hearts, of course, most of them know it’s bullshit. But Trump world and its media ecosystem are an intellectual monoculture that demands this. There’s no room around this particular campfire for a plucky commander to speak the truth—which is that Birnam Wood has, indeed, come to Dunsinane while the mad king is busy tweeting about witch hunts.
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It’s easy to understand why nobody is willing to approach the mad king and describe honestly the situation he faces—indeed, why Fox News can’t even deal candidly with its viewership on the subject: The situation is dire and it is worsening, and saying so would require very tough choices.
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the United States Department of Justice allowed him to enter a guilty plea whose factual basis was that Trump had directed him in the commission of a crime. That is to say that the significance of the Cohen plea is not merely that Cohen alleges that Trump had him arrange to pay hush money to a porn star and a model in a specific effort to influence the election with illegal corporate contributions. It’s that the Justice Department believes this allegation to be true and is willing to proceed criminally against Cohen on that basis.
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What’s more, this particular front in the war is not under Mueller, who spun it off to the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York. This is not, in other words, a problem Trump can fire his way out of. The SDNY has a lot more than 17 prosecutors; and whether they are angry or not, Democrats or not, they are not going away.
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The situation gets worse for the president—because nobody, including him, has much idea when the next blow is coming or along which of these fronts
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nobody knows how quickly, if at all, the Southern District might choose to move against other Trump-world figures who are mentioned in yesterday’s Cohen plea filings or what they might seek to do with Cohen’s allegations against Trump himself.
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There’s one more reason why nobody will tell the mad king the hopeless truth that he’s surrounded, outmanned, outgunned, and that there’s no telling from where or when the next blow will come: The king is mad and doesn’t want to hear it. And his courtiers, seeking his favor, have either to convince themselves or play along with it. They do this both in talks with him privately and in their public utterances—to show loyalty, or because they are well paid to do so.