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It's been yet another week of life so bizarre it'd be hard to even imagine it as satirical art. Who would best be able to capture the lunacy and doublethink emanating from Trump's White House? Joseph Heller? George Orwell? Douglas Adams? Or perhaps Dr. Seuss? In other words, just another glorious week in Trumpland, folks.
What does "co-equal" really mean? That is a basic constitutional question that has never adequately been answered. We are supposed to have three co-equal branches of government in the United States, the legislative (Congress), the executive (the president and all executive branches), and the judicial (the Supreme Court and all other federal courts). Theoretically, none are supposed to be held above the other, hence the co-equal designation. But what does that really mean?
Most Fridays, we tend to focus on President Donald Trump's flailings and failings on domestic issues, but this week his buffoonery on the world stage was really what was front and center. Sure, there's an ongoing constitutional crisis between the White House and the House of Representatives, but this week in particular seemed to be "foreign policy mishap week" for Team Trump.
Congressional Democrats, especially those in the House (where they enjoy a majority, and can thus get things done), should counter a recent Trumpian dodge by taking up his challenge and drafting some very specific bills dealing with presidential and campaign ethics. Not only will this head the false GOP talking point off at the pass, it will also add to the developing Democratic platform for the 2020 elections (both presidential and congressional). A win-win situation, in other words.
Former Vice President Joe Biden entered the 2020 Democratic presidential field as the clear frontrunner, which is a new experience for him. In his previous two runs for president, he never got to where he is now: comfortably leading the entire pack. Biden is polling ahead of the previous frontrunner Bernie Sanders by anywhere from a few points to a healthy margin of 10 or more, and both men are far out in front of all the other contenders, who are all struggling to even manage to break into double digits in the polls.
The use of the word "begins" in that headline might be a bit puzzling, since President Donald Trump has pushed back on any number of things during the course of his presidency, most often on Twitter. But today we're not talking about exchanging schoolyard insults with his political opponents, but actual legal pushback from the executive department. Which is somewhat new, and can be expected to grow over the coming months.
Yesterday, Robert Mueller's investigative report on Donald Trump was made (mostly) public. Today, Trump and his cheerleaders are insisting that he has been totally vindicated and exonerated, while some Democratic candidates for president are demanding that impeachment proceedings be launched in the House of Representatives. That's a pretty wide gulf in perception, but at this point it was to be expected.
Even though most of the political media refused to acknowledge it until after the fact, one big political issue emerged during the 2018 midterms that turned out to be a real winner for Democrats: protecting people's healthcare. This was really nothing more than a self-inflicted wound by the Republicans, since the voter backlash had been growing ever since the GOP tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with absolutely nothing. Democrats merely pointed this out in their campaigns, and the voters backed them overwhelmingly on the issue. And now it seems that Donald Trump is doubling down on this losing strategy in preparation for the 2020 campaign. Democrats, meanwhile, are moving forward on healthcare in a positive and constructive way, which paints the starkest of differences between the two parties' political attitudes, right at the start of the campaign season.
Robert Mueller has now finished his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump, and he has handed in his final report on both to Attorney General William Barr. While others are commenting extensively on Barr's summary letter, which was made public over the weekend, instead I would like to draw attention one final time to the most extraordinary thing about the entire Mueller investigation. Because during the entire two-year scope of his investigation as special counsel, Mueller and Mueller's team set (and achieved) an absolute gold standard that, as far as I am aware, has never before been managed in the hotbed of Washington politics: Mueller didn't leak. At all. Ever. Not even once.
President Donald Trump, as we all know, is a big fan of walls. Big, beautiful walls, according to him. But although he's never gotten Mexico to pony up a single peso for his border wall, and is still having trouble convincing Congress that it's the right thing to do, when future historians look back on this week, they might mark it as when Trump began constructing a metaphorical wall between his administration and Congress. Because the first big block of stone was just deposited on the White House lawn -- with 81 more big stone blocks waiting in the wings.