If President Trump thought the last 22 months of investigations into possible campaign collusion with Russia has been unpleasant, the next two years could turn out to be the toughest period of time the president has experienced in his entire life.
Democratic lawmakers in the House are preparing to launch multiple congressional investigations against every aspect of Trump’s life. The House Ways and Means Committee is in the process of drafting a request to the Treasury Department for the president’s tax returns. The House Oversight Committee has expressed an interest in acquiring the testimony of Donald Trump, Jr., and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., told ABC News on Sunday that he will be issuing requests for documents to key players in Trump’s world. All of this heat, of course, is coming after Michael Cohen unspooled a decade of alleged Trump-directed dirty deeds to lawmakers last week, including an exhibit of a $35,000 check signed by Trump to repay Cohen for hush-money payments to women who supposedly had affairs with the president a decade ago.
“We are going to initiate investigations into abuses of power … into corruption and into obstruction of justice,” Nadler told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
For Democrats, all of these inquiries are about holding accountable a president who believes the power of his office protects him from the law. They are about uprooting corruption and lawlessness from the beating heart of constitutional government. Democrats look at the Trump administration and see a panoply of misdeeds, conflicts of interest, spite for the law, disgust for checks-and-balances, and hatred of oversight.
Republicans, obviously, aren’t in the same mindset. What Democrats call a necessary, appropriate, and principled investigation on behalf of the truth, Republicans call a deliberate witch-hunt masked in the guise of democratic accountability. To most GOP officeholders, Democrats are throwing spaghetti at the wall in order to see what sticks. Cast a wide enough net and you are bound to catch a few fish.
The president likes to put up a brave exterior when confronted or instigated by his political enemies. When legal trouble swirls around him, Trump doubles down. It’s the Roy Cohn school of thought: If somebody kicks you in the shin, you punch them in the mouth and break their jaw. Compromise is capitulation, which in turn results in more vulnerability. This is how Trump operated his family business and it’s how Trump has operated as president for the first two years. Retreat is a sign of weakness, even if retreat is what’s ultimately called for.
None of us know where any of these investigations will lead. This is very much the first chapter in a long book that could end in a couple of ways: a muddling through until Election Day 2020; Trump’s impeachment; Democratic Party losses at the ballot box as Americans become disillusioned with the constant hearings and depositions at the expense of kitchen table issues; or bombshells of criminal involvement from some of Trump’s family or associates.
One thing we can be confident in, however, is that the polarization in Washington, D.C., that always seems to get more pronounced will continue to dominate our country. Tribalism will get worse. And people will increasingly run the risk of defining their peers on the basis of their politics.
This is not how the United States should be. Unfortunately, it looks as if this is the road the country will be on for the foreseeable future.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
