This week’s column: what Trump could’ve done, and didn’t

Undersell and overperform.

Those of us who had the honour and privilege of working for Jean Chrétien knew that aphorism well. It was his mantra, and therefore ours, too.

It worked. Chrétien was never once defeated in his 40 years in the political game. He won three back-to-back majorities, and he was the most popular Prime Minister in the history of polling. He repatriated the Constitution, he defeated the separatists, he kept us out of Iraq. He did okay, you might say. A proof is a proof.

And the reason why he was so successful, politically? Along with being a regular guy, along with being likeable, along with having an innate understanding of what Canadians wanted? Because he undersold and overperformed.

He didn’t brag a lot. He didn’t take credit for the achievements of others. He didn’t make everything about him. He kept quiet when he should, and he stayed out of the papers.

Donald Trump, now under criminal investigation for obstruction of justice, could have benefitted from following Chrétien’s example. He could have survived if he’d kept his mouth shut, just once. But he didn’t. He couldn’t.

Trump’s presidency is now measured in months, not years. Because, as the Washington Post has reported, special counsel Robert Mueller is conducting a criminal investigation into Trump’s conduct on two fronts. One, whether he obstructed justice when he fired former FBI director James Comey. And, two, when he earlier told Comey to “let go” of a criminal probe into the connections between Russia and his campaign team.

When did the Washington Post discover that Trump was under criminal investigation by Mueller’s FBI team? Well, just a day or two after Trump surrogates darkly warned that the Unpresident was seriously contemplating firing Mueller, that’s when.

Cause and effect. Action, reaction. Trump just couldn’t keep his sphincter-like mouth shut – he just couldn’t keep his stubby little thumbs away from Twitter – and he made things markedly worse for himself by threatening Mueller. Now he couldn’t fire Mueller if he tried: it would be a stronger admission of guilt than a signed confession and videotape of the crimes being committed.

Same thing happened with Comey. Trump just could not keep keep quiet. He. Could. Not. Shut. Up.

So, not long he after he fired Comey – because Comey, he knew, was getting perilously close to finding out the truth about the Trump-Putin pact to subvert US democracy – Trump tweeted that Comey better hope “there are no tapes” of their conversations at the White House.

With that, Agent Orange bought himself a world of hurt, on two fronts. One, it prompted Comey to release a highly detailed account of a previously-secret meeting with Trump – a meeting in which the FBI director was directed to drop the Russia inquiries. And, two, it spurred Congress to demand the tapes. (And the disclosure of Oval Office tapes, historians will note, are what brought down Richard Nixon.)

But that is not all. Trump’s mouth and tweets have gotten him in plenty of other messes. To cite just one example: executive privilege. Comey was a federal employee when he met with Trump. Their discussions entirely dealt with sensitive matters, most relating to national security.

Trump, therefore, could have easily invoked executive privilege – a presidential prerogative that would have effectively silenced Comey, and prevented Congress from questioning him on Trump-Comey interactions.

So what did Trump do? He tweeted about his meetings with Comey. A lot. He himself disclosed what was not supposed to be disclosed – thereby giving Comey the pretext for doing so, too. And he eliminated any credible argument for the invocation of executive privilege. How, everyone wondered, could executive privilege happen when the most senior member of the executive has personally violated it?

It goes on and on. His Muslim ban, defeated in serial lawsuits in the Ninth Circuit courts because of Trump’s own words. Lawsuits by two states, in which they claim that Trump has violated the Constitution by benefitting financially from his position – all because he loudly refused to withdraw from his Trump business empire. And, of course, the millions of women (and men, like this one) who marched against Trump the day after his inauguration – because we objected to the foul, feral things that he says and tweets.

All of Donald Trump’s political wounds are the worst kind: they are self-inflicted. Those are always the ones that cut deepest, and are the ones that are usually fatal. He is unlikely to see the inside of a jail cell – his sycophantic Vice-President will pardon him for his crimes, naturally – but he is certain to be drummed out of office. How can it be otherwise? How can it be avoided, now?

It could have been different. It could have been avoided. If Donald Trump had kept his mouth shut – if he had stayed away from Twitter – he could have dramatically improved the odds.

Most of all, if he had simply undersold and overperformed – as Chrétien did – it would have all been so, so different.

He didn’t. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

He’s done.


Rebel Media on Finsbury: we’ll let the neo-Nazi speak for us

Robinson is a long-time white supremacist. He’s also a Rebel Media correspondent. The “English Defence League,” which he founded, has always been unashamedly neo-Nazi.

Why do Andrew Scheer’s senior people have anything to do with this insanity?



Trump is the illegitimate president

Not merely because of what he has done since he became president. But also because of what he did during the election.

It has amazed me, for months, that millions of Americans agree that Russia hacked the 2016 US election – but those same Americans somehow believe that the hack was ineffective.  I think that is stupid, basically. If Trump won the presidency with less than 80,000 votes spread over three states, it is frankly idiotic to believe that Russian hacking did not affect the outcome. It did. 

Thus, this Esquire piece. Read it. Key excerpt:

In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data. The hackers accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and in at least one state accessed a campaign finance database. Details of the wave of attacks, in the summer and fall of 2016, were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter. In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states, one of them said. The scope and sophistication so concerned Obama administration officials that they took an unprecedented step — complaining directly to Moscow over a modern-day “red phone.” In October, two of the people said, the White House contacted the Kremlin on the back channel to offer detailed documents of what it said was Russia’s role in election meddling and to warn that the attacks risked setting off a broader conflict.

The Obama people, for reasons known only to themselves, did not take any concrete action.  That would turn out to be a fatal error.

There was a massive, coordinated, highly-sophisticated hack. Everyone agrees with that. 

Soon enough, people will also come to believe that the hack worked. 



Accident victims 1, greedy trial lawyers 0

This is a huge decision, with historic implications. For usurious trial lawyers, it is an unmitigated disaster: they now face the realistic prospect of class action lawsuits by clients they have manipulated and ripped off.

Meanwhile, anyone seen Ontario’s Attorney General? He’s been as invisible on this file as he has on a neo-Nazi rag attacking minorities right here in the GTA and making death threats.

A possible 6,000 accident victims can now band together to try and get their money back from a law firm alleged to have double dipped from their settlements.

Ontario’s top court ruled Thursday to uphold the class action certification for a case against personal injury law firm Neinstein & Associates LLP that is accused of taking more fees from its former clients than Ontario law allows.

The hotly anticipated ruling by the Ontario Court of Appeal could have wide-ranging ramifications for personal injury lawyers in the province because it shines an increasingly glaring spotlight on Ontario’s contingency fee system — “you don’t pay unless we win.”

In simple terms, lawyers working on contingency cannot take a sum of money called “costs” in addition to an agreed-upon percentage fee they take out of a final settlement. The court ruled that the case against Neinstein can move forward as a class action.

The court, drawing on information presented to it during the hearing earlier this year, stated there appears to be “widespread” non-compliance in Ontario with the Solicitor’s Act when it comes to protection of contingency fee clients and the allocation of costs.


Trump is under investigation for a crime – finally 

From the Washington Post:

The special counsel overseeing the investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election is interviewing senior intelligence officials as part of a widening probe that now includes an examination of whether President Trump attempted to obstruct justice, officials said.

The move by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to investigate Trump’s conduct marks a major turning point in the nearly year-old FBI investigation, which until recently focused on Russian meddling during the presidential campaign and on whether there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Investigators have also been looking for any evidence of possible financial crimes among Trump associates, officials said.
Trump had received private assurances from then-FBI Director James B. Comey starting in January that he was not personally under investigation. Officials say that changed shortly after Comey’s firing.