Former White House Counsel Bob Bauer presents a nice summation of President Trump’s paucity of appropriate tools on Lawfare:
The clinching case against the political ethics of Donald Trump may be these and any disclosures to come about his and his campaign’s readiness to strike a bargain with a foreign government for help in his campaign and its resistance to an honest public accounting. But at least we Donald Trump, Jr.’s suggestion of motive. For the Trump campaign, dealing with Russia was business, and for Mr. Trump, that means it was personal—in his own interest. He has wound up in this position because, lacking a conception of political ethics, he has been guided instead by the recipe for success he took with him into politics from a career of business deal-making. And this is not just what moved Donald Trump, Jr. and senior campaign personnel. His father, falsely presenting it as “standard” politics, agrees that “anyone would have taken that meeting.”
A political partnership between Russia and the Trump campaign would have nothing to do with politics as a craft or vocation. Politics ain’t bean bag, but it is also not this.
Again, illustrative of Trump’s intellectual limitations – the idea that there is a different set of ethics applicable to business vs government is beyond him.
I really have to wonder if he’d realize the question, What should be the profit margin of government? is a trick question?
