TRUMP IS BY HIMSELF, ON A SMALL POLITICAL ISLAND

…Trump’s past lying business history has left him alone and isolated

Trump’s past lies are starting to catch up to him

President Trump, is more isolated than at any point in his presidency.  He is currently scheduled to leave Washington at the end of this week for sixteen days at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago.  When he returns in January, he will be heading for what is likely to be the most difficult year yet of his bazaar presidency.

In fiscal 2017, which began in October 2016, 1,522 senior Trump executives had left the government. Per The Post, “That represented 18.6% of the Trump appointees on board at the beginning of the 2017 fiscal year.”  (This of course, does not include those that have left this fiscal 2018.)

As of this week, here is a short list of who are either scheduled to leave, or are anticipated to be leaving soon, even by the end of this month, Homeland Secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, Chief of Staff, John Kelly, Defense Secretary, Jim Mattis, UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley, Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and a number of exec’s that have yet to announcement.

Acknowledging that presidential transitions generally lead to increased departures, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said in an email, “The exodus of senior executives from positions in the Trump Administration is more significant as a result of the Administration’s assault on federal workers, their pay, and their rights. In addition, there have been many reports of administration appointees trying to identify and purge civil servants who are not sufficiently ‘loyal’ to President Trump.  These senior executives have been arbitrarily reassigned and they have gagged those who express any dissent.”

Trump’s approval ratings aren’t much different than they were when he took office, which is at or below 40% in the reputable polls, while his hardcore supporters have barely budged. GOP elected officials remain hesitant to break with him, being afraid of being challenged with a primary election.

However, with the beating that his party took in the midterm elections, and as the legal process continues to move in on the president, (There are currently 14 investigations into the Trump family's and their businesses) and the newly empowered House Democrats are preparing to challenge his authority with a number of hearings and serious investigations.

So far, elected Republican officials have stuck with Trump, as they are mindful of his support among a shrinking number of the GOP rank and file.  But for the first time,  Senate Republicans last week rightly joined with Democrats to deliver a pair of rebukes over the administration’s policy toward Saudi Arabia.  The rebukes were against the president’s unwillingness to condemn Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), whom the CIA has absolutely concluded and sanctioned the murder of the Washington Post contributing columnist, Jamal Khashoggi.

It isn’t yet known if this is a one-off rebuke, or was this the first real crack in Trump’s wall with his party?

Trump’s on-again, off-again search for a replacement for outgoing White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly is a serious example of his dire situation.

The role of Chief of Staff is vital for every presidency.  But for Trump, it could be crucial.  Potential contenders continued to walk away from the job.  That is until the president tweeted on Friday afternoon that he was naming budget director Mick Mulvaney for the job.  But Mulvaney is smart, as he has given himself an out by insisting on being an “acting Chief of Staff”.  But how is Mulvaney going going to do both his Budget job and the full-time Chief-of-Staff job?

It is overwhelming at what Mulvaney is immediately taking on:

There’s the Khashoggi rebuke from both parties.  Then the 6 investigations including Mueller’s investigation, and the Southern District of New York's investigation; then the looking into campaign finance violations, and looking into Trump’s family business; plus Trump’s tax returns, and of course, the issues uncovered by Mike Flynn; Michael Cohen; Paul Manafort; Rick Gates; Carter Page, and others.

As of yesterday, there's now the dissolving of the Trump Foundation for illegal activities going back to 1989.

Even his old pal, former New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie had turned down Trump’s Chief of Staff offer.  Christies decision to withdraw from consideration came at the end of the week that began when Nick Ayers, chief of staff to Vice President Pence, suddenly backed out of the position.  Several additional names were then floated, but none accepted the job.

Christie apparently concluded this was no time to go inside the Trump administration and to work for a president who rarely takes the advice of his advisers anyway.  In addition, Trump’s volatility and unpredictability could prove to be even more detrimental in the months ahead.

The decisions by Ayers, Christie and others underscore the precariousness of Trump’s position. At a time when he will need all the strength, wisdom, firepower and support directly around him.  As of today, there's not much support available.  Trump presides over a White House that is thinning out rather than beefing up.  And those who do seem to be seriously interested, they would be a “B” team at best.

The White House Counsel’s Office is already understaffed heading into a year that could require multiple requests for White House documents from congressional committees and the possibility of impeachment proceedings.  That is, if what special counsel Robert Mueller III ultimately reports, rises to that level.

So far that is an open question. Others already have moved out of the White House to jobs on the Trump 2020 campaign or to the private sector. More will obviously follow in the months ahead.

Some loyalists still remain in the White House, among them are Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Sanders, (who is leaving) and of course, the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

But on the issue of fresh recruits, the question is: Who would want to come to work for a president at this moment, knowing that could result in needing to pay some sizable legal fees as a potential side benefit?  Especially when Trump routinely says things that aren’t true, while today few people believe the president anyway.

For Trump, a group of people he once counted as among his most trusted advisers has been turned into a weapon in the hands of prosecutors. Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime fixer and lawyer who once said he would take a bullet for Trump, has made a 180° turn.  Last week Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for his crimes. He had told the court that he had done some of what he did, including lying to Congress, just to hide the “dirty deeds” of Donald Trump.

In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Cohen repeated what he had said in court, that he had acted at Trump’s direction in paying off two women who alleged they had affairs with the president.

He also accused Trump of being a serial liar.

Another person who once protected the president and is now on the other side, and that is Mr. David Pecker, of American Media, the publisher of the National Enquirer, which had shielded Trump through the campaign by buying and killing damaging stories and through phony stories about Hillary Clinton.  On the day Cohen was sentenced, Pecker acknowledged in a filing that the Enquirer, out of concern that the revelation could influence the outcome of the election, had paid Playboy Bunny, Karen McDougal, $150,000 to keep her story from becoming public.

Equally worrisome for Trump could be the role of Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer and the person who must know as much as anyone about the inner financial workings of Trump’s empire.  He has been granted immunity from prosecution, in return for his cooperation, and he has met multiple times with Mueller’s team.

Meanwhile, Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and has cooperated with prosecutors.  His former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is in prison for crimes, so far unrelated to the campaign.  However, his former deputy campaign manager, Rick Gates, Manafort’s business partner, has also pleaded guilty for his role in the Manafort business.  He has been meeting with Mueller’s team for months.

No one outside Mueller’s circle knows what the final conclusions of his investigation will say: on Russia: on campaign finance violations: on the financial dealings of the Trump Organization: and on any of the multiple threads that exist. The same can be said of the work of federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York (SDNY).

Congress is not likely to impeach the president over violations of campaign finance law, but the congressional machinery is cranking up to investigate the many parts of Trump’s operations that have fallen under the view of federal and state prosecutors.

The president can only wait to see where it all goes, and nervously, to see where it all eventually leads. Oh, Trump will continue to fire back via Twitter, in trying to diminish the work of his prosecutors.

But the president does all of this from a very shaky position.

Copyright G. Ater 2018