GOP elephants need tougher hides
The most perplexing questions on the minds of Washington’s formerly hawkish Republican leaders are the ones they now hope you’ll never even catch them whispering about on some open mic.
Republicans who once gleefully called Democrats soft on Russia, but now have developed political laryngitis, have spent the past year asking each other:
What’s the real reason President Donald Trump has been so reluctant to combat with tough talk and actions Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attacks (from cyber to chemical weapons) against America and the West?
Does Putin have something on Trump? Something lurid? (Perhaps, but that’s probably not it, since Trump seems unembarrassable.) Something financial? (That’s more likely given Trump’s history as a debt-distressed billionaire who scored timely investment deals with Putin-connected Russian oligarchs who may or may not have been linked to Russia’s mafia.)
Still, Republican congressional leaders and luminaries, and, in fact, all the rest of the capital cognoscenti, kept telling each other we’ll probably get the answers to all the above from special counsel Robert Mueller.
But maybe not. For, on a wacky, whipsawing Wednesday, The Washington Post led its newspaper with a newsbreak that might as well have been spelled as a news-brake: The Post exclusive reported that Mueller had informed Trump’s attorneys that, while he is continuing to investigate and Trump remains a subject of the investigation, the special counsel doesn’t consider the president to be a criminal target of the investigation.
That might seem like a mere nuance—but it rocked the capital city like an earthquake. Soon everyone was all a’Twitter. Talking heads were all over cable TV explaining that was lawyer-talk for saying there isn’t sufficient evidence— at least so far!—to bring any charges against Trump. And even talking heads figured they could calculate the math: No charges = No impeachment.
But again, maybe not. Because a smart special counsel might well be low-balling for now, depending on what his probers turn up. And lo, even as the heads were talking, special counsel’s apparatchiks were at a couple of private plane airports. CNN reported Mueller’s team stopped two private planes owned by Russian oligarchs and subpoenaed documents. CNN speculated it might be about illegal campaign contributions from foreigners; but it could be about business investments in Trump golf courses and condos.
Meanwhile, this week also produced yet another eye-opening news juxtaposition. And it should remain a riveting reminder about what is of prime importance. For the day before, on Tuesday, we witnessed two events that emphasized the importance of the Republicans’ still-unanswered questions.
Rewind to noon Tuesday: In the White House Cabinet Room, Trump and leaders from three Baltic nations met the press. In his opening remarks, being Trump, the president rambled and wandered. His first 468 words were indeed about the Baltics. But he wandered into Mexico in his next 819 words, talking about a caravan of wouldbe immigrants wandering north from Honduras. (His guests seemed bewildered.)
Then came reporters’ questions. And after his obligatory riff on “crooked Hillary Clinton,” Trump emphasize one thing: “We’ve been very tough on Russia, frankly … nobody has been tougher on Russia.”
Trump Tough: After Russia’s chemical weapon assassination attempt in Britain, the U.S. expelled 60 Russian intelligence agents; so Russia expelled 60 U.S. agents. Then 30 countries expelled Russians and Russia expelled a like number of each country’s agents. Bottom line: Russia did something horrible; the U.S. and others didn’t—but all faced equal reprisals.
The U.S. pointedly didn’t follow Russia’s money— didn’t freeze the money Russian oligarchs (and probably Putin) have secreted in the U.S. and the West.
Just hours later, Trump’s freshly fired national security adviser, Gen. H. R. McMaster, made sure his last official appearance was an exercise in tough-truth-Tuesday night, McMaster outlined to the Atlantic Council’s elite diplomats “Russia’s so-called hybrid warfare, a pernicious form of aggression that combines political, economic, informational and cyber assaults against sovereign nations.”
And just hours after Trump’s boast about being tough-on-Russia, the threestar general declared:
“So for too long some nations have looked the other way in the face of these threats. Russia brazenly and implausibly denies its actions. And we have failed to impose sufficient costs.”
That, most of all, is the point that should have led patriotic GOP leaders to be boldly and openly demanding that their party’s president must finally get tough with America’s attackers.