If we’re in the midst of a political crisis, then Donald Trump seems to be doing a maximal amount to feed it. Simply put, he’s acting like someone who has something to hide. He either fails to recognize the seriousness of the questions that have been raised — the central one being, was there collusion between members of his presidential campaign and the Russian government? — or he recognizes the seriousness, and does nothing to address it. Instead, as was on full display at his press conference today, he deflects all legitimate issues back onto the media and his enemies, who he claims are lying or purveying fake news.
As TPM notes in this must-read piece, the leaks, and the questions, are actually of the utmost seriousness, as surreal as they sometimes seem. I particularly wanted to flag this article because Josh Marshall broaches a topic that’s been part of the strangeness of the whole Russia imbroglio: the fact that where we currently are involves the U.S. intelligence community leaking information. He addresses the narrative that seems to have been fully embraced by Donald Trump (at least in his public pronouncements) that the intelligence community is conducting a sort of war on him. While Marshall disagrees that such a war on Trump is actually being waged, he identifies the deep seriousness of asking the question — because if such a fight were being waged, it would be a deep attack on our democratic form of government. Marshall draws a crucial distinction between such a concerted effort against Trump, and the intelligence community’s leaking of information that it wants to move into the public realm, coming down in favor of the existence of the latter but not the former.
But I do think matters might not be quite so cut and dried as that. If indeed members of the intelligence community are leaking information that they consider vital to understanding what they consider to be the threat that Donald Trump poses to our national security, then no matter how civic-minded those leaks are, and no matter how important they might be for the public to be aware of, they do inevitably constitute an attack on the president. Now, it may be that Marshall is making the case against an institutional attack against Trump, in which case I gladly concede his refutation of such an attack. But the leakers themselves are indeed in conflict with the president.
Which leads me to this point: I think all of us common citizens need to be as conscious as possible over how profoundly undemocratic this phase of the Trump crisis is. Whether or not the leakers believe they are serving the public good, we are in an awkward in-between place, being given glimpses of a larger reality, but absolutely without a clear picture. This, of course, is where Trump’s own behavior enters the story in force, because he vehemently insists that there is absolutely nothing amiss. As just a single, telling example: at today’s press conference, the president denied that Michael Flynn had spoken to the Russian ambassador about the sanctions that president Obama was at that time imposing on Russia in retaliation for Russia’s election interference. Moreover, Trump added that even if Flynn had done so, that would have been all right. WHAT WHAT? It’s already been reported that U.S. intelligence has recordings of such a conversation, and that Donald Trump was informed of this conversation. But from today’s press conference, you’d get the impression that Flynn was fired not by Trump, but by the U.S. media! Trump asserts that the information in the leaks is lies; but if they are indeed lies, they aren’t really leaks, are they, just misinformation. He simply makes no sense. As I said at the start, Trump is acting like someone with something to hide.
But back to the leakers — we are in an untenable, undemocratic place right now. If there is vital information that the public needs to know that speaks to Donald Trump’s fitness to carry out his duties as president, then those who possess that information should make it public. The other way through this juncture, of course, is for Congress to investigate, to do its job on behalf of the American people. But so far, the Republican Party has not been able to move out of its defensive crouch; and so we are left in this place of insufficient knowledge.