The Donald Trump who sued Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance last week is a president facing dwindling options. Trump’s lawsuit comes after Vance subpoenaed eight years of his tax returns, the latest indication that New York prosecutors are counting down the days until Trump’s potential immunity expires (Trump’s claim that he can’t be prosecuted by state attorneys has never been tested).
Trump has reason to worry. The most recent FOX News and ABC News/Washington Post general election polls see the president losing by almost 15 points to Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden. Things aren’t much better if Trump is paired against Republican bogeymen Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren – there, Sanders wallops Trump by 8 and Warren beats him by 7.
Facing a humiliating electoral defeat is a psychological gauntlet for even the most seasoned political warriors. That pressure is amplified when political failure also brings with it the looming shadow of criminal prosecution.
On September 11, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office announced long-time Trump consigliere Michael Cohen was cooperating with an expanding criminal probe into The Trump Organization. As investigations evolve to focus more on financial wrongdoing at the top of Trump’s tightly-held business empire, the president is achieving ever greater heights of cynical theatricality in a frantic attempt to keep reality out of the headlines and off of voters’ television screens.
Trump now faces 29 active investigations – including 10 federal criminal probes and his mounting legal woes in Manhattan. The sheer volume of legal paperwork dedicated to rooting out Donald Trump’s corruption probably runs to millions of pages. It will likely take decades more for government investigators and scholars to piece together the full mosaic of self-dealing and influence-peddling that has defined the Trump Era.
The Donald Trump who casually suggested that America might attack Iran on behalf of the Saudi government because “Saudi Arabia pays cash” offered that comment knowing that it had a massive potential to distract public attention from Cohen’s cooperation. And sure enough, Trump was right – political writers (myself included) turned out dozens of pieces condemning Trump’s unhinged call for war and the Michael Cohen story fell from the headlines.
It took three years, but Trump has finally discovered that as Commander-in-Chief, an American president has near-unchecked authority to govern our nation’s foreign affairs. Mexican walls and Muslim travel bans can be stymied by a defiant Congress or ruled out of order by federal courts. But a slew of federal court rulings from the Bush era, and earlier, mean Trump is a free radical on the international stage.
In the past, Trump has at least been hesitant to lean into the full measure of his international authority. In June, he called off an Iranian airstrike after apparently having second thoughts about the conflict spiraling out of control. Trump also (unsuccessfully) pressured officials in Gibraltar to escalate tensions with Iran by forcibly seizing an Iranian-flagged oil supertanker. The Europeans, looking to avoid another flare-up of Middle East tensions, wisely declined to be Trump’s props.
Trump was once reined in by career voices at Defense and within the National Security Council. With those bodies now gutted of opposition, the White House has engaged in increasingly counterproductive foreign policy stunts: laudatory meetings with anti-democratic goons like North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un, who Trump recently invited to the White House, and an aborted plan to bring Taliban officials to Camp David on the same week as September 11 commemorations.
It shouldn’t need to be said, but most rational world leaders avoid using the threat of war as a distraction for the good reason that threats of war can spiral into actual conflicts. Trump’s newfound interest in military adventurism is so dangerous because it is divorced from any guiding ideology. Foreign policy exists as one more lever to ensure Donald Trump’s political survival. The swings will get worse as the view from Trumpworld darkens.
Trump’s opportunistic, distraction-based foreign policy is more than just a national embarrassment. It threatens American national security. An explosive new whistleblower complaint alleges Trump made inappropriate promises to a foreign leader – accusations serious enough that the Intelligence Community Inspector General found them credible and of “urgent concern.”
Recent leaks suggest Trump attempted to use $400 million in military aid allocated by Congress to pressure the Ukrainian government into fabricating a scandal around Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. If true, this represents an unprecedented deployment of state power for personal gain. That Trump has filled his White House with acting and temporary officials willing to abandon their oath of office to protect the president should concern leaders from both parties.
Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire – a Trump loyalist – instigated a constitutional crisis by flatly refusing to provide any details on Trump’s conversation with the foreign leader. This destructive act bought Trump the distraction he craved, but at the cost of further weakening the institutional supports that keep American democracy in working order.
Matters of urgent national security concern should never be withheld from Congress, even if the individual involved is the President of the United States. Trump’s lumbering authoritarianism forced the Democrats to finally embrace their Constitutional powers this week. Speaker Nancy Pelosi had little choice after telling voters her caucus would be a bulwark between Trump and the subversion of our core national norms.
We can expect Trump to greet his latest major ethics scandal with another turn to foreign policy. The whistleblower scandal, documented in the public record by senior intelligence community officials, will prove more difficult to disappear than Trump’s more complicated offenses. Abroad, the White House has few options for further distraction: the Saudis and Israelis continue to press Trump for a strike against Iran, a sustained pro-democracy campaign challenges Beijing’s power in Hong Kong, and an Afghan war Trump has so far failed to control continues to rage on.
Escalating America’s any one of these risks committing the United States to a costly regional conflict, and there is little evidence the American public are interested in following Trump to battle. Trump is at his most beatable when cornered by events. Unfortunately, Trump cornered is also Trump at his most dangerous. Cynical foreign policies rarely create lasting peace.
Can we risk another tantrum?
Max Burns is a Democratic Strategist and political writer who frequently appears on Fox News, Fox Business Network, and Bloomberg Radio. Follow him on Twitter at @themaxburns.