Our President’s secret relationship with Russia is in the process of being revealed to the world. Step by step, puzzle piece by puzzle piece, that revelation will eject him from office and expel him from public life.
As with all scandals, it won’t be the actual content of his relationship that brings him down - as breathtakingly criminal as that relationship is likely to be. It will be the secrecy that does him in. The cover-up. That’s what gitscha here, in the US of Puritanical A.
He will continue to deny everything for as long as he possibly can, which probably means forever. We’re never going to get that contrition moment we’re all fantasizing about - that Law & Order slow-dolly-in-on-the-witness confession, the John Edwards-Jimmy-Swaggart biting of the lower lip: “I have sinned before you.”
As my good friend Michael likes to say, NGH.
Why not?
Because. He. Can. Not. Feel. Shame.
That is his superpower.
What’s going to happen instead is that his employees will begin to bail on him. I fully acknowledge that I’m a bit out over my skis on this, but I am beginning to suspect Mr. Pence may not be much longer for this world. Now, Pence is no hero. And his positions re: basic human equality may be even more loathsome than his boss’s.
But unlike his boss, Pence is capable of feeling shame. He has values (as retrograde as they may be), and, to quote my buddy Michael again (we’ve been texting all morning about this shit, like a couple of gossipy seventh-grade girls): Pence is a patriot.
I think deep down Pence understands what a dangerous man Vladimir Putin really is. And once the truth about his boss’s actual relationship with Putin begins to rise to the surface, Pence will start to do the upside/downside math. My guess is he’s already doing it.
Much more to come this week.
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