Last week, I compiled a list of 40 significant ways that Trump has behaved like no other modern president. Yesterday, Trump added two more potential items.
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The president of the United States accused one of his congressional critics of treason yesterday morning and said that the critic should be arrested. And yet it might not even have been the most outrageous thing that the country learned about President Trump yesterday.
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That distinction could also belong to the news, broken by Times reporters, that during a phone call with the prime minister of Australia, Trump pressured him to produce information discrediting Robert Mueller’s recent investigation. White House aides took the unusual step of restricting access to the transcript of the phone call, in a sign they believed it was problematic. It was the same step they had taken after Trump’s July call with Ukraine’s president.
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The Australia call is part of the Trump administration’s attempt to shift attention away from Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, on Trump’s behalf, and instead to suggest that American intelligence agencies did something wrong by investigating Russia. Alarmingly, William Barr, the attorney general, appears to be overseeing the effort, meeting with foreign officials to ask for help.
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The mere fact that the Justice Department has asked for foreign help with an investigation isn’t the problem. That’s routine, as some conservatives pointed out. In this case, however, the attorney general is involving himself, personally, to an unusual degree — and he’s doing so to advance a farcical idea meant to sully American intelligence agencies, all on behalf of Trump.
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As The Washington Post reported: “Current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials expressed frustration and alarm Monday that the head of the Justice Department was taking such a direct role in re-examining what they view as conspiracy theories and baseless allegations of misconduct.”
On its own, either the “treason” accusation or the conspiracy mongering is an impeachable offense. One involves baselessly accusing a political rival of a crime punishable by death. The other involves sublimating American foreign policy to the president’s personal interests. Last week, I compiled a list of 40 significant ways that Trump has behaved like no other modern president. Yesterday, Trump added two more potential items. It’s frightening stuff. The only good news is that Trump seems to be unable to control himself, which increases the chances that Senate Republicans will finally abandon him or that the American public will reject him in 2020.
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