Unlike Donald Trump, who never acknowledges his lies, thus refusing accountability for the constant stream of fiction he spews, Roger Stone proudly owns his falsehoods. From the beginning of his professional life Stone has created a brand around the certainty he was willing to go lower than anybody else. If you were ready to contract with the devil to get elected, he was your man. Nothing was beneath him, no dirty trick too nasty, no scurrilous innuendo off limits. Since at least 1980 this has been his mission statement. Karl Rove on steroids.
In fact, it is fair to say, any determination that a candidate even met with Stone was more than enough proof they were going low and the campaign was going to get ugly. In retrospect, Stone’s close association with Trump for President is more than adequate to raise crimson flags concerning impropriety and justify getting at least cursory investigative wheels rolling. Of course, Trump couldn’t have cared less what incriminating optics his campaign sent forth, the better for post-election publicity after the defeat he never imagined was anything but certain. Who would really care, and after all, it would be wonderful fodder for the daily attacks he would bestow on President HRC from a comfy perch Fox was already preparing for him. Stone, too, surely banked on the certainty of a Clinton rout when making his post-election plans; he would be able to proudly add the plethora of his Wikileaks hijinx and grubby dark web activities to a resume any soulless GOP House hopeful would gladly write a check for…. before taking a long shower.
But then the impossible occurred. Hell did freeze over. Seditious collusion with foreign actors gets a lot more attention in the service of a POTUS than in the rear view mirror of a decisively vanquished nominee. Wendell Wilke was an obscure footnote, defeating FDR would have made him American history. And from the moment Wisconsin and Michigan came in for Trump, Roger Stone was royally screwed. Precisely how bad was clarified last night in a seven count federal indictment. Charges ranging from obstruction to multiple counts of lying to investigstors to witness tampering add up to the 66-year old Stone, who never met a garish double-breasted suit he didn’t want to wear, spending a sizable slice of his golden years in a federal-issued one-piece.
Mueller took his sweet time, but it’s a lock he now has Stone nine ways to Sunday, and it’s doubtful Old Roger has much Gordon Liddy in him. Is Stone the smoking gun that finishes Trump? That depends on just how criminal the GOP has become. All Mueller needs, it would seem in a world that still makes any kind of sense at all, is a clear connection between Trump’s campaign inner circle and Stone’s activities with Wikileaks to portray a vivid picture of collusion. The notion of plausible deniability with this President left the port long ago. Nobody accepts that sycophants Trump surrounds himself with get a ham and rye without telling him. Of course, the sad reality of our current state of affairs is that even wrapping that damning conspiracy with a bow won’t be enough to get 2/3 of the Senate to issue the nihilist-in-Chief his walking papers, rendering him fully vulnerable to criminal prosecution, or at least forcing his resignation.
Sadly, tragically, it’s very easy to imagine the GOP rank and file falling in line with Fox/AM universe talking points that dirty tricks are nothing new in American politics. False equivalence is what got us to this crisis point and it’s surely a bridge too far to hope it won’t continue to bedevil as dominoes fall around Trump. The coming narrative is as predictable as rush hour gridlock. Sure, there was some tomfoolery, but look at Hillary’s campaign, which the FBI and DOJ are covering up! Look at what JFK did in West Virginia! It was common knowledge LBJ cheated his way into Congress. The whole of US electoral history will be employed by the legion of Trumpie “contributors” to drive home one point: while unsavory, it wasn’t our definition of collusion. Politics in America has always been a dirty business; the left just can’t stand this President did it better than everybody else! His crap doesn’t stink anymore than the rest of them!
Stone, released on 250K bail, swore to reporters he would fight the charges in court. We’ll see. Mueller’s team is sure to sit down with Mr. Dirty Trickster and show him their cards. Does anybody really think Mueller would have finally gone after an indictment if he harbored any doubts the case was a slam dunk? Of course it’s possible our sugar daddy President has promised Stone a pardon, but the better one knows Trump, the less faith they put in his word. Stone knows him as well as anybody. Even if Trump does keep his word, legal fees and the stress a trial promises can’t seem appealing even to a relentless self-promoter. Besides, Stone is just one of a steadily growing list of indicted bottom feeders with goodies to offer; Mueller will surely aver he can get the Donald without him, leaving Stone a chump with a patron unable to rescue him even if he wanted to.
In other words, yet another chapter of our President’s seditious corruption appears likely to be fully fleshed out. Whether it will be enough to create a tipping point for GOP Senators heretofore determined to carry Trump’s water is unclear. Surely, they have no warm and fuzzies for the guy who just put them through more than a month of political hell because Rush and Ann Coulter called him a wimp. But we’ve been down this road too many times. This is a group of pols uncanny in their suffering of the fool who somehow consumed them when they weren’t looking. Assuming all Democrats voted to impeach, not a sure bet with Joe Manchin and Doug Jones in the caucus, 19 Republicans would have to do the dirty deed. Hard to envision right now.
Perhaps there simply is no threshold Mueller’s investigation and Trump’s hourly unhinged ineptitude can meet that will make his removal a likelihood. That distinct possibility punctuates a nation circling the bottom of the bowl. It was clear to anybody who paid attention to Trump’s campaign, and undertook even a cursory look at his personal history, electing Trump POTUS would be a national catastrophe. Now, more than 8000 lies, countless international embarrassments and complete abdication of US leadership, a needless 35-day government shutdown, $2 trillion in useless debt, and most depressing, an unfolding, meticulously investigated trail, that seems increasingly to underscore the most stunning web of traitorous intrigue in our nation’s history later, the American people still can’t rely on the majority party in the US Senate to look past their next primary cycle. What’s that a wise old man once told me? Son, bad to worse is never a direction you want to travel. BC