Trump's Helsinki Fiasco

Since Donald Trump became president, I've often reacted to news stories with disgust, anger, frustration, fear, or a combination of the four; but I've only been distressed over current events to the point of losing sleep twice.  November 9, 2016 - the night Trump won the election - was one.  Last night was another.  I have a Chicken Little-type tendency to assume the worst and engage in panicked hyperbole at the earliest sign of bad news, and it's a reflex that I have to work hard to keep in check.  However, in light of recent events, I don't think it's a big stretch to say that the United States is in a bad spot.

On July 16th, in a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Trump rejected the United States intelligence community's conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, instead choosing to take Russian President Putin at his word.  Trump's refusal to acknowledge this conclusion is significant for two reasons.  First, it wasn't one or two intelligence agencies making that claim, it was the entire intelligence community's unanimous assessment.  Second, on June 13, Special Counsel Mueller had indicted a dozen GRU agents for hacking into the DNC's computer networks (among other targets) to acquire information it intended to use to interfere with the 2016 elections.  That second reason is particularly significant because any case that's going to be made in court requires hard, tangible evidence.  This case, especially.  Mueller is accusing foreign nationals of committing a cyber-crime against US government-affiliated institutions.  Even though the best-case scenario is that the dozen GRU agents will be tried in absentia - if there's a trial at all - Mueller's case needs to be as close to airtight as possible, because of the stakes involved.

Taken together, the intelligence community's assessment and Mueller's indictments mean that the conclusion is pretty conclusive: Russia interfered in the 2016 election.  Yet the President of the United States chose to disregard his own intelligence apparatus' conclusion.

Why did he do that? Or, to ask the question another way, why is Trump so quick to believe Putin? Well, there are a couple of different possibilities.  One is that Trump's ego is driving all of this.  If he had to acknowledge that Russia's interference contributed to his victory, it takes some of the glow off of his win.  That would be a crushing blow to his pride.  Another possibility is Trump's well-documented affinity for dictators and strongmen.  Putin isn't the only authoritarian who Trump has fawned over, but he does seem to hold the place of honor in Trump's hall of heroes.  Yet another possibility is that Trump has a relationship with the Russian government that goes back decades.  Jonathan Chait's recent piece about this has been making the rounds, but Sarah Kendzior has a one-year lead on him.  I'd stop short of calling Trump a Russian "asset" (that word has certain HUMINT connotations), but I think "useful idiot" is more fitting.  I think the Russian government saw Trump as an easy-to-manipulate pawn, and they played him like a fiddle. 

And if the Helsinki presser is any indication, Russia is still playing him.  That is about as terrifying as it gets.  It tells all of America's allies that the President of the United States can't be trusted.  It tells hostile nations that the United States won't push back if another cyber-attack happens.  It tells the world that Trump won't do anything to protect America's national security.  And it tells Russia it has unlimited license to do what it wants.  Trump's performance in Helsinki also adds credibility to long-running suspicions that his loyalty is to Russia.

And while Trump has been enabling Russia, the GOP has been running interference for him.  A handful of its key leaders had a reasonable suspicion in mid-2016 that Trump had an allegiance to Russia, but they kept it a secret.  Its Senate majority leader knew that Russia hacked the DNC, but he refused to publicly confirm that information.  The GOP has tried to undermine Robert Mueller's investigation at every turn - by holding dog-and-pony shows like the Strzok hearings; by spreading falsehoods in the news and on social media; and by refusing to act in response to a growing mountain of evidence that Russia tampered with the 2016 election results, and that the Trump campaign was involved in that effort.

So why is the GOP so committed to helping Trump?

Because the party's future has been tied to Trump since 2015, and it will continue to need him for the next few years.  He helped the GOP win it the presidency and both houses of Congress in 2016, establishing a fast-track for the GOP's legislative agenda.  (Although there have been a handful of self-inflicted injuries.) He appointed ideologically sympathetic judges to several courts, including two (pending Kavanaugh's confirmation) Supreme Court Justices, allowing conservatives to interpret the law for a generation.  And possibly most important of all, he brought a political party that looked like it was dying back to life, by hitting all the right notes that resonate with the conservative base: a tough stance on immigration; a strong, fearsome military; law and order with a draconian flavor; pro-business; anti-regulation - all the things they want to hear.  The fact that his actual track record is pretty dismal is irrelevant.  Trump has hit upon a winning political formula that will keep the GOP in the game for several more election cycles.  And all they have to do is turn a blind eye to someone who never bothered to hide his disdain for American and democratic institutions and ideals.


Which is something they will gladly do, if current events are any indication.  That makes them complicit in Trump's war on American security and well-being.  Putting party over country in normal circumstances is, well, politics.  Putting party over country in the wake of a cyber-attack that most likely influenced the outcome of a presidential election is dereliction of duty.  Trump's conduct in Helsinki shows that he represents a danger to the United States, and he has far exceeded the threshold for being removed from office.  And his enablers in Congress - McConnell, Ryan, Nunes, all of them - I don't know if what they did is considered a crime, but if it is, they should all be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

It won't be enough to simply vote them out of office.  Simply voting them out means they become the objects of scorn for a few years, and that's pretty much it. That can't be allowed to happen.  They need to be made into examples, to discourage future of politicians from doing the same thing.  Trials need to be held.  Prison sentences need to be handed down. Safeguards need to be put into place to keep it from happening again. 

Because none of this will simply revert back to normal the day after Trump leaves office.  The damage being done - to our relationships with our allies, to our global reputation, to our citizens' faith in government - will take years to be repaired.  And the longer it goes on, the worse the damage will be. 

The Political Fallout from the GOP Tax Bill

So, Congressional Republicans went ahead and passed their controversial tax bill.  The bill economists overwhelmingly described as a bad idea.  The one that doesn't really do what it claims.  The one that's a massive financial giveaway to the wealthiest Americans at the expense of millions of middle- and lower-class workers.  They even passed it a few days before Christmas, possibly as an added "F.U." to all the people this bill hurts. So why did they do it? Why did they pass such a disastrous, harmful bill? The possibilities are: they don't know how unpopular it is, they think it actually helps, or they don't think there will be political consequences.

I don't think the GOP was blind to the bill's unpopularity, because it was honestly pretty hard to miss.  When was the last time a tax cut was unpopular? People lose their shit over tax hikes, but cuts are generally pretty popular.  Yet this tax bill polled at a 25% popularity rating.  That should tell you something right there.  Now, public opinion isn't a reliable basis for making political decisions, by which I mean a piece of legislation's popularity doesn't tell you a lot about its contents. How much do those poll participants know about the intricacies of tax policy? (Side note: an uninformed and easily swayed electorate was one reason Aristotle opposed basic democracy - which I mentioned before.) Those people probably could not articulate the consequences of this tax bill the way a tax lawyer or an economist could, which is why this bill's popularity rating is somewhat irrelevant.  This doesn't mean the bill's unpopularity should be discounted, because the GOP is pitching a story we've seen before.  We saw it in the 1980s with Ronald Reagan's "Trickle Down" Economics, and we saw it again a few years ago in Kansas.  It ended badly both times, and despite Americans' short memories, we still remember how things turned out.  The GOP is promising things will be different this time, but people aren't buying their bullshit.

So average Americans kinda knew that this bill would be bad for them, although in an imprecise way, which explains its unpopularity.  Maybe they didn't convey those sentiments to their elected officials? It's possible.  Several GOP Senators and Representatives have bailed on townhall meetings with their constituents in recent months, so the chance of having in-person meetings has gone down.  That still leaves phone calls, emails, and social media posts, but I don't know how many Americans reached out to their representatives.  In the past, Congressional offices were flooded with phone calls when the GOP attempted to repeal the ACA.  I don't know if it was the same this time.  I called my representative in the House this morning, and was able to get through easily; my experience is anecdotal, but I think it could've been a sign that not many people were calling.  I honestly would not be surprised: people have had to push back against the GOP's harmful policies a couple times already since January, and fatigue might be setting in.  It's exhausting watching the news like a hawk, waiting for the next shoe to drop, and having to contact your reps to ask them to not strip away programs that Americans depend on for basic needs again and again and again.  It wears you down over time.  That's just a possible explanation, but I don't think the GOP was unaware of their bill's unpopularity.

Could the GOP think it helps? I don't see it.  I've seen GOP figures make statements like these:

• "A married couple earning $100,000 per year ($60,000 from wages, $25,000 from their non-corporate business, and $15,000 in business income) will receive a tax cut of $2,603.50, a reduction of nearly 24 percent." - Texas Senator John Cornyn
• "The typical family of four making the typical family income of $73,000 will get a tax cut of $2,059." - Speaker of the House Paul Ryan 

Cornyn's statements show he has no idea what the average American's financial situation is, so no wonder he thinks this tax cut is helpful.  At least Paul Ryan had a reasonably close idea of what the average American's household income is, he was still a bit off: according to the US Census Bureau via USA Today, the average household income was $74,000.  To break that figure down a bit further, a household filing jointly earns $118,000; and a household filing separately earns $65,000.  Still, he's overestimating the tax bill's benefit by using some clever math.  Specifically, emphasizing the average tax benefit.  Why does "average" matter? Well, did you know that between me and Tom Brady, we've won an average of 2.5 Super Bowls? So, yeah, "average" isn't the best way to determine the tax bill's benefit.  Here's a better one.

 

(Graphic courtesy of NPR and the Tax Policy Center)

Here's a link to the full report, if you want it.  It's pretty easy to see how tilted this tax bill is toward high earners, and it gets even more unequal when you look at how much the bill saves lower income brackets.  If you're in the $40K - $50K range, your annual benefit is a whopping $570.  Divide that by twelve, and the monthly benefit is $47.50.  How far does $48 go? Two tanks of gas? One month's phone bill? That's insulting no matter what your status is. But no, the GOP couldn't stop there.  Did I mention that some of the tax cuts expire in a few years, while the corporate ones are permanent? Yeah, nice.  Maybe they do think it actually helps - see Cornyn's and Ryan's statements earlier - but I think it's more likely they're engaging in some high-level bullshitting.

That leaves another possibility, that the GOP doesn't think there will be political consequences.  They could be banking on Americans forgetting about this tax bill by the 2018 elections, which is a possibility given Americans' short memories.  They could also be underestimating the Democrats, which could be a possibility - the Democrats are still plagued by infighting and aimlessness a year after the Presidential election.  However, the recent Alabama Senate race and the earlier elections in Virginia and other places show that the Democrats have something working, even if they don't know what it is.  The point is, the momentum is in the Democrats' favor, and despite them not capitalizing on the GOP's and Trump's ineptness and unpopularity, they appear likely to win big in 2018.  If that happens, the Democrats will almost certainly repeal the GOP tax bill.

So why would the GOP pass a hugely unpopular bill, that doesn't help most Americans at all, and will probably be repealed in just a few years? There's another possibility, and it kind of ties into the GOP believing there won't be any political consequences.  That is that the GOP expects to lose, and they'll come out relatively unscathed on the other side of the elections.  They'll have cushy jobs or fat retirement accounts waiting for them, and that's a pretty sweet deal for them.  They'll be reviled by many Americans for at least a while, but our opinions don't matter because they don't give a rat's ass about us "commoners".  They probably have their own upscale gated community picked out already, so they won't have to mingle with us. 

Honestly, I'd be okay with that.  It's galling to think they'll get by without facing any serious consequences for treating the people they were supposed to represent with disdain that borders on cruelty, but when you look at it, it's a win all around.  They go away and stay out of our lives, and their obnoxious bill gets repealed in a year or so (as long as the Democrats don't find a way to bungle what should be a legislative rout). 

So, buckle up, I guess.  It's gonna be a bumpy ride for the next year or so, but it should get a bit smoother after that.

PS: Don't screw this up, Democrats.