1. This @adamdavidson piece is getting widely linked to, rightly so, but I have a political proviso: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/michael-cohen-and-the-end-stage-of-the-trump-presidency …
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3. But legal reality and political reality are two different things. Trump's family & cronies might go down but he has a political path going forward.
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4. The best move for Trump is in fact what he's doing: binding himself to the party, keeping the base happy, making it costly for GOP to abandon him. This will insure that even if impeached, he'll not be removed.
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5. Trump could pardon any crony or family member who gets charged. And even post-presidency, Trump can use GOP party loyalty as a shield to protect himself from legal consequences.
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6. If the GOP still loves Trump, that's going to make it difficult to prosecute him after he leaves office. It'll be a political issue & Dems (as with CIA torture) will fall for rhetoric about need for national healing, moving on, etc.
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7. This is the larger reality. American elites rarely if ever pay for their crimes. And Trump, despite his faux-populism, is as elite as they come: a president.
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8. Consider the massive blunders & crimes that have gone unpunished or not nearly punished enough: Vietnam, Watergate (Nixon pardon), Iran/Contra (many pardons), Iraq war, torture, 2008 meltdown. When do elites pay for their crimes?
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9. The GOP might suffer politically, a few underlings might do jailtime before pardons, but we have to prepare for the possibility that Trump will never face a real reckoning. That's the American way.
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End of conversation
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