Meet the New Swamp, Same as the Old Swamp

Tuesday afternoon ended with two of President Trump’s men, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen, guilty on eight felony counts each, in two different cases and two different courtrooms. Manafort was convicted by a jury—and the president came to his defense.

Cohen, by contrast, copped to his crimes, telling a judge that he helped orchestrate a hush money scheme during the presidential campaign to buy the silence of two women who alleged having affairs with Trump, and did so at Trump’s direction. So the president came down on his attorney.

By now, this is tedious: Demonstrate fealty to Trump and he will show mercy at the bang of a gavel, with kind words or, in the cases of Joe Arpaio and Dinesh D’Souza, presidential pardons. While those two men are merely couriers for the cause, Manafort was a top lieutenant—who knows if the president would take the audacious step of excusing a person so close to him. “People don’t dare to do it because of the laws of political gravity. Trump is not immune from them,” former White House ethics lawyer Norman Eisen told the Wall Street Journal.

But flinching before prosecutors wouldn’t seem to help a guilty man’s chances. “President Trump’s legal team plans to cast former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn as a liar seeking to protect himself if he accuses the president or his senior aides of any wrongdoing, according to three people familiar with the strategy,” reported the Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig in late December, a few weeks after Flynn reached a plea bargain with special counsel Robert Mueller.

Then there’s the case of Cohen. “‘Justice’ took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on [Manafort] and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break’ – make up stories in order to get a ‘deal,’” added Trump on Wednesday. When asked if the president was considering a pardon for Cohen, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani told the Journal, “Not that I know.”

Later on Tuesday, early Trump endorser Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr. and his wife were indicted by a grand jury for allegedly using $250,000 of campaign expenses for personal use, and filing false campaign finance records with the Federal Election Commission. As the Post’s Amber Phillips highlighted, the topline figure doesn’t tell the whole, shameful story—the allegations include purchases of $200 tennis shoes marked as a donation for wounded warriors, and makeup from Nordstrom designated as “gift basket items for the Boys and Girls Clubs of San Diego.”

Two weeks prior, another leading Trump acolyte in Congress, Rep. Chris Collins, was charged with securities fraud. He pleaded not guilty and initially vowed to remain in the House. A few days later he announced the suspension of his campaign.

The president hasn’t commented on either man—then again, there’s been a lot going on.

It’s become clear over time that Trump wanted the swamp drained only so he could refill it himself. While integrity is usually a secondary concern in politics no matter the era, in this one, it is noticeably far down the priority list from loyalty, either to a party or a man. (House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi waffled on Rep. John Conyers last year; so, too, did Democrats with Al Franken, using the same reasoning to defend him that loyalists used to defend Bill Clinton a couple of decades ago.) But part of Trump’s charge was to clean up the nonsense in Washington. “Drain the swamp” was a call to undertake specific reforms: to establish congressional term limits and impose new lobbying restrictions. The phrase, though, like “throw the bums out,” implied a broader ideal: to end “business as usual,” that being the business of corruption.

One would think that the president’s supporters would be up in arms, since he has failed to follow through. But they aren’t. Go beyond Twitter for the tribal talking points and pay attention to the folks still enlivened at Trump’s rallies—a Charleston, W.Va., woman named Dee Dotson, who was quoted Tuesday night by NBC News, is doubtless a representative example. “I just don’t care about that stuff … As long as the economy keeps doing good and Trump keeps bringing coal back, I’ll keep voting for him.”

Of course, it does matter when the shoe is on the other foot, just as it was in the 1990s with Republicans and President Clinton. But as former congressman turned conservative radio host Joe Walsh argued to me this summer, that ugly experience desensitized Trumpists to crime in their ranks. He gave me an example of a construction worker on his building’s grounds who once asked him the rhetorical question, “What politician doesn’t lie?”

“Look, if you had—I’m trying to think of the most honest politician ever,” he said, holding one hand far out wide, “and then over here, you had Trump, the Clintons are closer to ‘over here.’ We’ve never had anybody like [Trump]. But that construction worker, he doesn’t see the difference, because they all do it. And so when I’m on the radio or I’m on TV and I try to get into the difference, boom, I’ll just get caller after caller, ‘Joe, I love ya, but they all lie.’”

We now know this: Trump has not cleaned up the streets of official Washington, and his supporters largely don’t care. Someone of his kind—the “outsider businessman”—proved no sure bet to be the face and facilitator of an anti-corruption effort in the nation’s capital. Younger faces have never been any sure bet, either: It was only three and a half years ago that a promising 33-year-old congressman named Aaron Schock resigned in scandal from misuse of taxpayer funds. Draining the swamp is hard work—work that is perhaps best undertaken by prosecutors and not politicians.