{"id":1061,"date":"2018-07-27T09:04:03","date_gmt":"2018-07-27T13:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=1061"},"modified":"2018-07-27T09:04:03","modified_gmt":"2018-07-27T13:04:03","slug":"does-anything-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2018\/07\/27\/does-anything-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Anything Matter?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Does Anything Matter?<\/p>\n

Last night the breaking news slipped out:\u00a0 Michael Cohen was in a meeting with Donald Trump when Trump was informed and gave approval to the June 9th\u00a0<\/sup>meeting between Trump Campaign officials and known Russian Government representatives to get \u201cdirt\u201d on Hillary Clinton.\u00a0 He knew and approved before it happened.<\/p>\n

OK \u2013 I have to do this:<\/p>\n

COLLUSION \u2013 COLLUSION \u2013 COLLUSION \u2013 COLLUSION \u2013 COLLUSION \u2013 COLLUSION \u2013 COLLUSION \u2013 COLLUSION \u2013 COLLUSION – COLLUSION!!!!!<\/p>\n

And even better:<\/p>\n

CONSPIRACY \u2013 CONSPIRACY \u2013 CONSPIRACY \u2013 CONSPIRACY \u2013 CONSPIRACY.<\/p>\n

There, I feel better.\u00a0I\u2019ve waited almost two years to say that.<\/p>\n

Michael Cohen, who was the trusted personal lawyer for Donald Trump, is looking for an \u201cexit strategy\u201d to avoid jail.\u00a0 He is either cooperating, or going to cooperate, with Federal Prosecutors both in his own case in the Southern District of New York and with the Mueller Team.\u00a0As former Federal Prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg said, \u201c\u2026he\u2019s joining Team USA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cohen was, to quote Hamilton,<\/em>\u201c\u2026in the room where it happened\u2026\u201d\u00a0 And, after hearing the tape of Cohen withTrump \u00a0discussing the shell LLC to pay off former lovers, we now know that Cohen had no problem bugging himself and his clients.\u00a0 So there might even be a tape; there are at least one hundred of them.<\/p>\n

The spin has already begun.\u00a0Rudy Giulani, representing President Trump, has called Cohen a \u201c\u2026known liar that cannot be trusted\u2026” \u00a0Trump tweeted that he didn’t know about the meeting. \u00a0The odd thing though, is that Cohen isn\u2019t the one who released the information about \u201cthe meeting.\u201d\u00a0 The best we can currently figure, it was the Trump side that slipped it to the media, in fact, to their favorite media \u2013 CNN.\u00a0 After over a year and a half of denials, of lies, of possible perjury (Donald Jr\u2019s testimony to Congress that he never informed his father) what\u2019s their strategy?<\/p>\n

In the language of nuclear war, this is called a pre-emptive strike.\u00a0 The logic goes this way:\u00a0 Cohen has the information, possibly on tape, and that information will ultimately be revealed, perhaps during a trial.\u00a0 To take the \u201csurprise\u201d value out of the information, and to allow for a concerted effort to destroy Cohen\u2019s reputation and therefore the value of his information, the Trump team decision was to get it out now.<\/p>\n

That this strategy implies destroying a trusted employee (Cohen) and throwing both Donald Jr. and Jared Kushner under the \u201cMueller\u201d bus, shows the absolutely desperate situation of the Trump Team. \u00a0\u00a0If the President really did have knowledge and gave approval to this meeting, he probably has committed conspiracy with the Russian government to illegally interfere with the 2016 election.\u00a0 He also may well have engaged in a conspiracy of theft from the DNC and the Clinton campaign, using the stolen emails.\u00a0 If there\u2019s a tape of this meeting, it would be as powerful as the Nixon conversations in the days after the Watergate break-in.<\/p>\n

We will soon hear the excuses:\u00a0 every political campaign would do the same thing, or, we didn\u2019t know this was against the law, we were novice politicians, or, we didn\u2019t get anything out of the meeting anyway.\u00a0 This meeting has been characterized as a \u201cbust,\u201d where no information, legal or illegal, was presented.\u00a0 Of course, we only have the word of the participants, Donald Jr and Jared Kushner.\u00a0 Others aren\u2019t talking, yet.<\/p>\n

But if the President knew and approved a meeting, with the intent of receiving Clinton dirt from the Russians, it really doesn\u2019t matter what the outcome of the meeting was.\u00a0 If you walk into a bank, pull a gun, and say this is a robbery, whether you get the money or not you have committed a crime.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a great Saturday Night Live sketch\u00a0<\/a><\/em>of the Lester Holt interview with the President, where Trump says he fired FBI Director Comey because of Russia.\u00a0 Michael Che, playing Holt, stops, looks at the camera, and says \u201c\u2026did I get him, is this all over?\u201d<\/p>\n

The answer was that nothing matters.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t over.\u00a0 It will take months, perhaps years to play out.\u00a0But if this piece of information is true, then the President will be forced to ask Congress, and the American people if they are willing to accept his actions; actions that are illegal.\u00a0 And \u00a0then we will \u00a0find out if anything really does matter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Does Anything Matter? Last night the breaking news slipped out:\u00a0 Michael Cohen was in a meeting with Donald Trump when Trump was informed and gave approval to the June 9th\u00a0meeting between Trump Campaign officials and known Russian Government representatives to get \u201cdirt\u201d on Hillary Clinton.\u00a0 He knew and approved before it happened. OK \u2013 I … Continue reading “Does Anything Matter?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nDoes Anything Matter? : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2018\/07\/27\/does-anything-matter\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Does Anything Matter? : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Does Anything Matter? Last night the breaking news slipped out:\u00a0 Michael Cohen was in a meeting with Donald Trump when Trump was informed and gave approval to the June 9th\u00a0meeting between Trump Campaign officials and known Russian Government representatives to get \u201cdirt\u201d on Hillary Clinton.\u00a0 He knew and approved before it happened. 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