rival that his personal lawyer came
across on a 4chan message board. Of
course he thinks he can ask other
governments to investigate his enemies.
He will never not think this. He wasn’t
joking when he asked Russia to meddle
in the U.S. election, or when he scoffed
at George Stephanopoulos, asking
if he’d inform the FBI if another country
came to him with dirt on an opponent.
One, because he has the sense oftheir requests for information will
be “regarded as further evidence of
obstruction,” which itself could be
the basis for an article of impeachment,
but it’s clear that Trump and Co.
don’t care. While we’d never accuse
the presidential brain trust of having
a plan—Jared “You should totally
fire James Comey, Dems will love
it!” Kushner is, after all, advising
his father-in-law on the matter—the
strategy sure sounds like it boils
down to stonewalling Congress and
stepping up the rantings, ravings,
and deranged gibberish of a man whose
title should probably be changed from
commander in chief to chairman and
CEO of the Shithouse Mouse Brigade.
One day he suggested that Big Pharma
might be behind the impeachment
push; next month, it’ll be the cast of
Morning Joe, working together with the
Ne w York Times and Rosie O’Donnell,
underwritten by Denmark. “I wasn’t
going to talk about the obstructionist
Dems who are trying to illegally seize
the White House,” he’ll tell the crowd
at a rally in Florida or Pennsylvania or
Wisconsin. “They said, ‘Talk about the
best economy ever. Don’t talk about
Schifty Schiff and Nervous Nancy.’ How
about it folks? Do you think the kids
watching at home should hear about
how Schiff paid a migrant caravan
to infiltrate the CIA and file a whistle-
blower complaint against me?”What comes next? As the White
House made clear in early October, the
administration has zero plans to
cooperate with the House investigation,
instructing key witnesses not to appear
for interviews and calling the wholeIt’s not so much that he doe sn’t
understand the difference between
right and wrong, it’s that corruption
is his first instinct, and the only
course of action in his mind.
humor of a litter box, and two, the part
about him being not smart, not sane,
and having the morals of Don Jr.’s
undercarriage. Likely, he believes it’s
his “right” as president to have people
killed if he thought it’d help his
chances in Ohio and will probably tell a
fictional story about this at his next
rally. (“They came to me and they said,
‘Sir, would you like us to take him out?’ ”)thing an “illegitimate” and “partisan”
attempt to “overturn the results of
the 2016 election.” (It feels beside the
point to note that the White House
seems to believe an inquiry is the same
thing as being impeached and removed
from office, or that the latter would
result in Hillary Clinton becoming
president.) Democrats responded by
warning that failure to comply withHEAR NO EVIL
Finnish president Sauli Niinistö and
Trump at a joint news conference at the
White House on October 2.60 VANITY FAIR DECEMBER 2019PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES