The Big Trumpers Still Dont Get The Trouble Theyre In

[n2doc]

By JOSH MARSHALL Published JULY 12, 2017 12:49 PM


One issue I’ve touched on here and there in my posts on the Russia probe is my abiding sense that especially the younger generation of Trumpers: Kushner, Don Jr., et al. just don’t seem to grasp the magnitude of the trouble they’re in, or at least the magnitude of their legal exposure. I can’t point to any one piece of evidence. It’s more like every piece of evidence. The signs I’m going on are a mix of public evidence, things we see unfolding in the newspapers, and my own reporting. They just don’t act like people who get what they’re dealing with and are acting accordingly.

The abiding sense I get is not simply that they don’t know the magnitude of the legal threat but that they don’t understanding the nature of the threat either. Again and again they seem to think the legal vulnerability can be trumped by good news cycles or getting the press to focus on some other individual. They don’t seem to get that a big, sprawling federal investigation like this, untethered from the political chain of command and led by one of the top law enforcement professionals of his generation, trundles onward with a perfect indifference to whether you win the morning or kill it in 10 or a 100 different news cycles. Those things just don’t matter. And yet my sense at least is that Jared Kushner thinks he is helping himself by knifing his brother-in-law – as though if Don Jr is at the center of a media firestorm for a few days, Mueller will just forget about him.

Here is an example of what I’m talking about. This is from Mike Allen’s morning Axios email.


The view in Kushner’s orbit is that the brutal new revelations are more P.R. problems than legal problems. And if he makes progress with his Middle East peace efforts, perceptions would be very different.



Again, this strikes me as a profound and dangerous naïveté. These are certainly not PR problems. Prosecutors, meanwhile, really don’t care how well you’re doing on the policy front. But even if you grant the nonsensical premise – that grave legal problems can be managed with good PR or even substantive policy successes – this is an inane statement.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-big-trumpers-still-dont-get-the-trouble-theyre-in

[GeorgeGist]

1. They expect to win.

[Wounded Bear]

2. They've never been in a situation they couldn't buy their way out of...

or somehow cheat the system. One way they've always gotten away with things is by stonewalling and outlasting opponents with less financial resources. Currently, though, time is not on their side. The longer this goes on, the worse it gets for them. And the US Gov't has basically unlimited resources.

[leftstreet]

3. Yep, everything for them is about managing perceptions

They should have stayed in private business, not gotten into government