Adam Schiff and Donald Trump.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images and Molly Riley/Getty Images.
Because I was sentient 100 days ago, Im old enough to remember a time when American presidents were expected, as a matter of course, not to have paid foreign agents among their senior staff. Its hard to imagine what would have happened if Barack Obamas national security adviser were revealed to have recently been on the payroll of Turkeys Islamist government, as Donald Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was. And what if wed learned that a onetime campaign manager of Obama was a foreign agent of pro-Russian political interests in Ukraine, like Trumps former campaign manager Paul Manafort? And that he appeared to have kept this entanglement secret, in violation of the law? How about if one of Obamas foreign policy advisers had admitted to passing documents to a Russian spy, like Trump campaign adviser Carter Page? Wed either have an impeachment, armed right-wing militias marching on the capital, or both. Quotidian political life would, at the very least, have ground to a halt.
Michelle Goldberg is a columnist for Slate and the author, most recently, of The Goddess Pose.
It should be grinding to a halt now. But instead, 100 days into Donald Trumps terrible presidency, a strange miasma has settled over American politics. Its like a nightmare where you know something hideous is happening, but your legs are leaden and you cant scream. Certainly, the anti-Trump resistance is working its heart out, but few talk about avoiding the normalization of Trump anymore. The presidents main 100-day accomplishmentbesides sticking a reactionary on the Supreme Courthas been to make previously inconceivable levels of corruption and staggering breaches of national security appear normal.
On both the left and the right, people discuss the Russia scandal as something that may or may not be proved. Speaking for many left-leaning skeptics, Rolling Stones Matt Taibbi writes, [I]t might be a good idea to wait for evidence of collusion before those of us in the media jump in the story with both feet. This attitude shows how dramatically political standards have changed since Trumps election. Certainly, its true that we dont know if the Kremlin is blackmailing Trump with a tape of a peeing prostitute. Were also far from understanding exactly how many millions of dollars various Russian oligarchs may have funneled to Trump, and what they might have expected in return. We know that Trump publicly urged Russia to hack his opponent, but we dont know if he also did so privately.
But even if we never get to the bottom of the mysteries surrounding Trump and Russiamysteries that will haunt American culture, like JFKs assassination, for the rest of our liveswe already know enough to conclude that the Russia scandal is big. Lets look at what weve learned, over these past three months, about Manafort. We now know, thanks to an April New York Times story, that he went out of his way to insinuate himself into the Trump campaign, offering, for reasons that have never been explained, to work without pay. (Trump, a famous cheapskate, accepted.) And we know that earlier this month, Manaforts spokesman said he would retroactively register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent of proRussian Ukrainian political interests, a tacit admission that hed improperly failed to disclose this connection earlier. Whatever Trumps other ties to Russia, whatever aid he accepted from the Kremlin, he let a paid agent of an unfriendly country run his campaign. That alone should threaten to end his presidency.
Flynn, we learned on Tuesday, may have violated the law in accepting payments from Turkey as well as from Russia. The White Houses failure to properly vet Flynn before giving him one of the countrys most sensitive national-security jobs should, again, be treated as a massive dereliction, and investigated thoroughly.
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We also now know that one of Trumps foreign-policy advisers, Carter Page, has been suspected by American intelligence of being a Russian intelligence asset, and admitted to BuzzFeed that hed given documents about the energy business to a Russian intelligence operative. Yes, Pages influence in the campaign appears to have been minor, but he was privy to internal meetings. A hundred days ago, there was an expectation that American presidents would keep people who might be compromised by Russian spies off their foreign-policy teams. If one managed to slip through, there would be urgent calls to find out who was responsible.
One could list 100 things that Trump has doneone for each debased day of his wretched presidencythat would be enough to impeach a Democrat. (Not all of Trumps violations involve Russia, of course, though a bizarre number of them do.) Bill Clintons entire presidency was haunted by multiple investigations into Whitewater, a 1978 Arkansas real estate deal in which he and his wife lost money, and no wrongdoing was ever uncovered. In 2008, a Russian oligarch massively overpaid for a Palm Beach mansion owned by Trump, and its at best a political footnote.
Thats because Trumps presidency, like his campaign, is a lowlife carnival; there are so many macabre sideshows and freakish violations of normal political behavior that were left stunned and dazed. Much of the mainstream media, and almost all elected Republicans, act as if the horror of this presidency were less than the sum of its parts. The outrages cancel each other out rather than accumulating. This massive inflation in what constitutes a scandal has the potential to be permanently corrupting.
Trump has not created this dynamic on his own. The Republican Party, convinced of its right to rule, has been ethically unbound since Richard Nixon. There is no Democratic equivalent of Watergate, or IranContra, or the deceit of George W. Bushs administration in selling the Iraq war. (The closest proximate thing was Bill Clintons lies about sexual relations with an intern in the Oval Office.) Over the past 50 years, Republican presidencies have been consistently more corrupt than Democratic ones. Yet Republicans have also treated our past two Democratic administrations as illegitimate and have undermined them with endless investigations into phony scandals like Whitewater and Benghazi. The result is that Democrats and Republicans operate under entirely different standards of appropriate political behavior.
Every day, Trump shows us what politics look like when the rules only apply to one party.
This double standard was determinative in electing Trump. On April 22, the New York Times published a long look into FBI Director James Comeys pivotal role in the 2016 election. It explains why Comey broke protocol to go public, just days before the election, with the FBIs decision to reopen its investigation into Hillary Clintons email server, even as he kept the FBIs investigation into the Trump campaigns Russia ties secret. Essentially, Comey bent over backward to avoid any hint of covering for Clinton, because he feared Republicans capacity to create a political uproar. Congressional Republicans were preparing for years of hearings during a Clinton presidency, said the Times. If Mr. Comey became the subject of those hearings, F.B.I. officials feared, it would hobble the agency and harm its reputation. Comey apparently had no similar fear of Democrats, even when he thought that they might control the White House.
Every day, Trump shows us what politics look like when the rules only apply to one party. Already, because of Trump, America is a more cynical, corrupt, lawless place than it was 100 days ago. There is only one way back from this, and that is to make sure that someday, when Democrats retake at least one chamber of Congress, they investigate every shady thing that Trump, his cronies, and his relatives have done either in achieving or using public power, even if it takes decades. We dont need Democrats chanting lock them up at rallies, but progressive activists should demand that politicians hoping to represent them promise to end Republican impunity. And then, when and if Democrats wrest back some measure of power from Republicans, activists should hold these politicians to their promises.
Were going to need a subcommitteemaybe more than oneon foreign emoluments. We should have one specifically devoted to Ivanka Trumps foreign businesses, as well as to the fund shes starting to invest in female entrepreneurs, since unlike her father, shes not exempt from federal conflict of interest statutes. (According to Axios, Ivanka already started soliciting foreign contributions to her funda move thats almost comically hypocritical, given the Trump campaigns attacks on foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation.) Were going to have to understand everything that went on at Mar-a-Lagohow Trump sold access to himself, and to whom, and what sort of security protocols were in place while he did so. Not only do we need a full, comprehensive airing of Flynns ties to Turkey and Russia, we also need to examine what the administration knew about the ways he might have been compromised. Comey should become the subject of protracted hearings over the political calculus that went into his decision-making during the campaign, just like he feared. The Russia investigation alone should dog Trump for the rest of his days.
One hundred days has not been enough time to fully grapple with how much damage Trump is doing to this country, and to figure out how handsomely he and his family are profiting from their rule. It is enough time to know that the project of holding him and his enablers accountable should stretch far into the American future, assuming that, after Trump, there is one.
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