Donald Trump’s Twitter feed was oddly silent as the news came that his former campaign manager and his former lawyer were going to jail. Perhaps his staff have finally seized control of his phone. Perhaps his lawyers have convinced him that every time he tweets on anything relating to the Russia investigation, he is dancing on a precipice, with special counsel Robert Mueller just waiting to push him off.
Whatever the reason, this was the equivalent of Trump entering a stunned, catatonic state, while his world spins out of control around him.
The President merely tweeted to note that he was going to a Make America Great Again rally in West Virginia, slipping into a warm bath of affirmation from his most loyal supporters: ‘Thank you West Virginia!’
Here he was guaranteed an uncritical audience for his familiar arguments — more slogans, really — that the whole Russia thing is a ‘witch hunt’, a ‘hoax’, a ‘deep state conspiracy’. He did not comment on the terrifying news that Michael Cohen, his former lawyer and consigliere, may have flipped, accepting a plea deal. On the way to the rally, he did tell reporters that his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was ‘a good man’ and: ‘This has nothing to do with Russian collusion.’
In a narrow sense he is right about that. Manafort made tens of millions of dollars representing thugs and thieves around the world but then somehow forgot to tell the US taxman about it. He was not convicted for buying a $15,000 ostrich skin jacket of staggering vulgarity— though the prosecution did their best — but for bank fraud and tax evasion. What has this to do with Russia?
On the face of it, nothing. But in Ukraine, the money came from oligarchs who ultimately worked for Vladimir Putin.
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