By William H. Freivogel

Opinion

Almost every day, President Donald Trump behaves the way parents tell their children never to behave. He lies, boasts, berates friends, threatens foes, acts like a spoilsport, blames others for his failings, objectifies women, demands the spotlight and relishes flouting the norms of public behavior.

To many of his supporters, turning the world topsy-turvy is refreshing, even fun.

But Trump’s rude, crude behavior must be jarring to millions of good, decent people who voted for Trump only to find him violating every rule of good behavior.

Trump’s speech to Eagle Scouts in West Virginia this week was a classic. After promising not to be political, he attacked President Obama, Hillary Clinton and the “fake media.” Somehow he worked into his speech a six-minute story of meeting a failed real estate developer at a Manhattan cocktail party — with references to fabled exploits on his yacht.

Bill Kristol, the conservative commentator, tweeted after the speech, “He’s so far beyond the usual bounds of even vulgar politicians’ vulgarity….” Former CIA Director John E. McLaughlin tweeted, “Trump’s Boy Scout speech had the feel of a third world authoritarian’s youth rally.”

Trump’s everyday actions challenge the Scout motto of “trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.” These are not character traits associated with the current president.

Think about the norms parents teach their children.

Don’t lie: This week Trump falsely blamed The New York Times for tipping off the leader of ISIS to a U.S. strike. He also claimed, “So many stories about me in @washingtonpost are Fake News.” These are among the 800-plus lies Trump told during the first six months of office, including fabrications about five million fraudulent voters for Hillary Clinton and Obama tapping Trump Tower.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/07/20/president-trumps-first-six-months-the-fact-check-tally/?utm_term=.4e3aa4ec041c

Don’t deceive yourself: A year after Russians came to Trump Tower to interfere with the presidential election in their meeting with Donald Trump Jr., the president continues to say he is not convinced the Russians interfered. In a remarkable exchange with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Trump’s new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, said the Russians are too slick to get caught hacking. “Somebody said to me yesterday, I won’t tell you who, that if the Russians actually hacked this situation and spilled out those emails you would never have seen it,” Scramucci said. “They are superconfident in their deception skills in hacking.”

When Tapper pressed who the anonymous source was, Scaramucci responded, “How about it was the president.”

Be loyal to your friends: Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the first senator to support Trump for president, received a dose of Trump “loyalty” this past week. The president told the New York Times he wouldn’t have appointed him if he had known Sessions would recuse himself from the Russia investigation. In other words, Trump wanted Sessions to protect him from the criminal investigation of Russian interference in the election that threatens his family and his presidency, even though Sessions’ recusal was required by Justice Department policy.

Don’t shift blame to others: After telling the Times last week that Sessions’ recusals was “very unfair to the president,” Trump came back this week with tweets about the “beleaguered AG” whom he then beleaguered with the Tuesday morning tweet: “So why aren’t the Committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered A.G., looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes & Russia relations?” Later in the day, he labeled Sessions “VERY weak,” something one doesn’t want to be in Trump’s administration of alpha males.

Don’t develop a persecution complex: Trump made it clear in the Times’ interview that the Russia investigation is Fake News pursued as part of a “witch hunt” by the mainstream media. He also criticized the acting director of the FBI, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Special Counsel Robert Mueller, possibly as a prelude for firing one or more of them. He said Sessions’ recusal was “very unfair to the president.” He revised that Tuesday to say — inexplicably — it was unfair to the presidency, as if the presidency can’t withstand an attorney general’s proper recusal decision.

Don’t showboat: Trump starts most days by tweeting his grudges and grievances and grabbing the nation’s attention. Everything screams “look at me.” Look, I have big hands. Look, I attract the biggest crowds. Look, I’m really, really rich and smart and went to the best schools.

Don’t call people names: Trump has turned around this parental admonition and attached a nasty pejorative to every opponent. Crooked Hillary. Little Marco. Lyin’ Ted. Goofy (Elizabeth) Warren, alias Pocahontas. Low Energy Jeb. Crazy Bernie.

Then there are the norms of public life that Trump flouts.

He threatens to lock up political opponents such as Hillary Clinton. He ridicules cabinet members in public. He writes nasty, graphic tweets about women and their bodies. He refuses to embrace the unanimous conclusion of his intelligence agencies that the Russians tried to influence the election in his favor. He fires the FBI director after demanding loyalty and asking him to block a federal criminal investigation. His son meets with a Russian agent to get dirt on Clinton instead of reporting the contact to the FBI. Trump cuts off support for Syrian rebels, handing Russia a victory in Syria. He blasts federal judges for incompetence when they disagree with him. He calls reputable news organization fake and believes reports of disreputable news organizations. He told a Youngstown, Ohio, audience Tuesday night that he was trying to get beyond the filter of “Fake, fake, fake news.”

At one point in the Youngstown speech, Trump addressed the criticism that he is not presidential.

“Sometimes they say: ‘He doesn’t act presidential,’” Trump told the audience. “And I say: ‘Hey look; great schools, smart guy, it’s so easy to act presidential, but that’s not going to get it done.’ . . . It’s much easier, by the way, to act presidential than what we’re doing here tonight.”

He added, “With the exception of the late, great Abraham Lincoln, I can be more presidential than any president who has ever held this office. That I can tell you. It’s real easy.”

If it’s so easy, Mr. President, give yourself and the American people a breather and try a few months of being presidential.

By William H. Freivogel

Opinion

False and misleading statements from President Donald Trump and the White House pile up day-by-day, week-by-week, steadily undermining the president’s credibility and making him the most unpopular president in modern history at the six-month mark.

Trump claims to have signed more bills than any other modern president. He hasn’t.

He blames the Democrats for killing the GOP health bill when it was the Republicans who couldn’t muster a majority.

His son first denies ever meeting with Russians about campaign issues, then admits meeting a Russian lawyer but says it wasn’t about the campaign, then admits he was promised a Russian government lawyer had dirt on Hillary Clinton, then releases emails expressing delight at the prospect of the dirt, then claims to have told everything about the meeting but leaves out other Russians in attendance.

Trump defends his son’s decision to meet with the Russians tweeting, “Most politicians would have gone to a meeting like the one Don jr attended in order to get info on an opponent. That’s politics!” But political operatives from both parties say it isn’t just politics to collude with agents of America’s chief adversary and the proper response would have been to call the FBI.

Trump’s lawyers say he is not under criminal investigation even though they have no way of knowing and the claim is difficult to believe. Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel after fired FBI Director James B. Comey disclosed the president asked him to drop the investigation of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn – an act that is arguably obstruction of justice. And now there are reports Mueller is investigating the Trump Jr. meeting.

All of this lying and misleading is in the last 10 days alone. Before that Trump lied about President Barack Obama tapping Trump tower, about millions of illegal voters for Clinton, and of course there was the big lie that was a cornerstone of his campaign – that Obama wasn’t born in the United States.

One might have thought Trump would take a vacation from his refrain about the “dishonest” mainstream media and “fake news” as his son was the source of the documents about the Russia meeting. But there’s no stopping this president who tweeted a day later, “Remember, when you hear the words ‘sources say’ from the Fake Media, often times those sources are made up and do not exist.”

And this week, when the media disclosed that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had an undisclosed meeting on the side of the G-20 summit – in which Trump spoke to Putin through the Kremlin interpreter – Trump complained bitterly “The Fake News is becoming more and more dishonest!”

Some of conservative commentators finally have lost patience. Last week Fox’s Chris Wallace said any fair-minded citizen should worry “about the fact that we were repeatedly misled about what this meeting concerned.” And Fox anchor Shepard Smith told Wallace, “Why is it lie after lie after lie? … My grandmother used to say … Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. The deception, Chris, is mind-boggling.”

Then this week the Wall Street Journal editorial page called for “radical transparency” criticizing the Trumps for having “created the appearance of a conspiracy that on the evidence Don Jr. lacks the wit to concoct. And they handed their opponents another of the swords that by now could arm a Roman legion…. Denouncing leaks as ‘fake news’ won’t wash as a counter-strategy beyond the President’s base, as Mr. Trump’s latest 36 percent approval rating shows.” The brutal realities of Washington, the Journal warned, will “destroy Mr. Trump, his family and their business reputation unless they change their strategy toward the Russia probe.”

It is true that a PPP poll shows more than half of Trump’s supporters think Trump Jr. never met with the Russians, even though he admits it. But Trump’s low approval ratings show the lies have had a cost. As Trump’s overall approval rating has slipped, the percentage of strong Trump supporters has declined while the percentage of strong opponents has grown.

It will take months for Mueller to complete his investigation, but it isn’t too soon to say this presidency is imperiled.

Opinion

By William H. Freivogel

Two stories by mainstream media – an excellent one by the Washington Post and a terrible one by CNN – have provided President Trump more material for his fairy tales on Twitter.

The Post reported a heavily sourced and deeply researched story showing that President Obama reacted cautiously to the high-grade intelligence he received last August showing “Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race and help elect….Donald Trump.” The story reported Obama was slow releasing the information because he did not want it to appear he was trying to help Hillary Clinton win the election. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/obama-putin-election-hacking/?utm_term=.1c2d1b0eadff

Meanwhile, CNN retracted its story suggesting contact between a Trump associate and the Russians. The story has just one source. Three reporters and editors have now submitted their resignations for their involvement in the poorly sourced story, including Eric Lichtblau who won a Pulitzer Prize at The New York Times.

Trump pounced. Using his talent for semantic jujitsu, Trump tweeted that the Post story showed it was Obama who had failed to respond to Putin’s cyber attack and was guilty of collusion and obstruction – not he.

The president tweeted, “The reason that President Obama did NOTHING about Russia after being notified by the CIA of meddling is that he expected Clinton would win…and did not want to ‘rock the boat.’ He didn’t ‘choke,’ he colluded or obstructed, and it did the Dems and Crooked Hillary no good.”

This was an extraordinary switch of positions for a man who called during the campaign for Putin to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails, who suggested at a presidential debate the culprit may have been a 400-pound hacker or China and who, as president has called the Russia investigation a “witch hunt,” “phony” and a “Dem HOAX.”

About a week ago, Press Secretary Sean Spicer said he couldn’t say whether the president thought Moscow interfered in the election. “I have not sat down and talked to him about that specific thing.” Later Spicer said the president had accepted that there was some Russian involvement in the election but wouldn’t say whether he agreed with the intelligence assessment that Putin wanted Trump to win. Other countries might have been involved in the hack, Spicer said, without providing proof.

So we have the remarkable spectacle of a president who has been in full charge of the government for five months still hedging on the unanimous intelligence assessment that Putin tried to help Trump win. And we have a president who has done nothing to respond to the Russian interference in the election criticizing his predecessor for not having responded forcefully enough.

When late last week CNN retracted its story linking a Trump transition official to the Russia investigation, Trump tweeted it showed the mainstream media was peddling fake news.

“Wow, CNN had to retract big story on ‘Russia,’ with 3 employees forced to resign,” he tweeted. “What about all the other phony stories they do? FAKE NEWS!”

He followed with another Tweet taking after other mainstream news organizations. “They caught Fake News CNN cold, but what about NBC, CBS & ABC? What about the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost? They are all Fake News!”

CNN definitely violated important standards of journalism in publishing the story based on one source. It deserves the criticism.

But the New York Times and the Washington Post have provided strong, traditional investigative reporting, including the Post’s report revealing that Michael Flynn had talked to the Russian ambassador last December about easing sanctions, even though Flynn had denied it. The Post story led to Flynn’s resignation as national security adviser and the president’s improper request to then-FBI Director James Comey to let go of its criminal investigation of Flynn. That, in turn, is an important part of a possible obstruction of justice case against Trump.

Trump’s twisting of the truth into convenient fairy tales recalls a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln. “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

Opinion

By William H. Freivogel

Many Americans are living in a fantasy world constructed by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Breitbart News and right-wing bloggers.

In this fantasy world:

1. President Donald Trump has more credibility than James B. Comey, the man he fired as FBI director.
2. Comey has perjured himself by first testifying he wasn’t ordered to drop any investigation into Trump associates and then testifying last week that Trump asked him to drop the criminal investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
3. It is Comey, not Trump, who committed a crime, leaking his contemporaneous notes of Trump’s request to drop the investigation.
4. Comey has cleared the president of obstruction of justice.
5. And then there was the surreal cabinet meeting at which, Trump said he was just about the most successful president in history and his cabinet and staff kowtowed with statements of how blessed they were to work for him.

Now take off those Fox-colored glasses and re-enter the reality.

1. Comey is a truthteller. Trump has lied more over a short time than any president in history.

Comey – a registered Republican longer than Trump – has lived the life of a straight-arrow lawyer and law enforcement official. As George W. Bush’s deputy attorney general he rushed to John Ashcroft’s hospital bedside to make sure the White House didn’t pressure the ill attorney general to reauthorize a warrantless surveillance program the Justice Department thought was illegal.

In the rare instance where Comey makes a factual mistake in testimony, he quickly corrects the record.

Meanwhile when Trump lies, he refuses to admit it – think Obama wiretap charges.

Most Americans get this. A YouGov poll shows 46 percent of Americans believed Comey was more trustworthy and 26 percent Trump. But in the alternative media universe inhabited by Trump voters, 70 percent thought Trump more trustworthy as compared to 7 percent who believed Comey.

2. Comey did not lie or perjure himself. That false news story began with right-wing conspiracy theorist, Jack Posobiec, who styles himself a White House correspondent. In the weeks before last fall’s election, it was Posobiec who spread the dangerous nonsense about Hillary Clinton running a child sex ring out of the back rooms of Comet Pizza in Washington, D.C.

This time, Posobiec tweeted that in testimony in early May Comey had “said under oath that Trump did not ask him to halt any investigation.”

Actually, Comey had been asked if “the attorney general or senior officials at the Department of Justice” had ever tried to halt an investigation. He said no. He was not asked if Trump had asked him to halt an investigation. So when he testified last week that the president had asked him to drop the investigation of Flynn, he was not contradicting earlier testimony.

Facts be damned; the Posobiec tweet ricocheted through conservative media. The New York Times traced its path. Breitbart published a story headlined: “Comey Under Oath: ‘Have Not Experienced Any Requests to Stop FBI Investigations.’” GotNews.com, a Trump favorite that has distorted reports on the Russia investigation, upped the ante by suggesting Comey may have perjured himself.

InfoWars, run by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, picked up the perjury angle. Jones is the “journalist” who says 9/11 was a U.S. black bag job and that no children died at the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre. Then Limbaugh read the GotNews.com article on air and called the Russia investigation a “witch hunt.” And Fox’s Sean Hannity picked up the story, claiming it showed Comey himself had admitted the Trump request to drop the Flynn investigation “never happened.”

3. Comey did not commit a crime by leaking his notes of the Trump meeting.

Comey acknowledged the leak without hesitation during testimony. This is not an illegal leak, such as revealing classified information. The memo was not classified and did not contain national security secrets. Comey’s leak of the memo is better understood as whistleblowing than leaking.

https://lawfareblog.com/sharing-memos-comey-did-nothing-wrong-former-official-and-everything-right-whistleblower

4. Comey never said Trump was not under investigation for obstruction of justice.

On last Sunday’s “This Week” program, Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow, who moonlights as a Fox legal analyst, challenged the credibility of Comey and Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III and baldly asserted “it was made very clear from the FBI director on multiple occasions that the president had not been and was not under investigation for obstruction of justice.”

In fact it wasn’t clear or even implied. Comey declined to make a conclusion about obstruction of justice, properly leaving that legal judgment to Mueller. “I don’t think it’s for me to say whether the conversation I had with the President was an effort to obstruct,” he testified. “I took it as a very disturbing thing, very concerning, but that’s a conclusion I’m sure the special counsel will work towards to what the intention was there and whether that’s an offense.”

Comey said he had leaked his memo to trigger the appointment of a special counsel. So the gist of Comey’s testimony was the opposite of Sekulow’s claim. Rather than saying the president is not under investigation for obstruction, Comey made it clear he thought the act was so disturbing that there needed to be a special counsel to investigate the president on possible obstruction. In other words, even though the White House ballyhooed the claim that Comey had cleared Trump, Comey’s testimony strongly suggest Mueller is investigating the president for possible obstruction.

As former Watergate prosecutor Philip Allen Lacovara wrote in the Washington Post, “Any experienced prosecutor would see….a prima facie case of obstruction of justice.”

Trump puts Comey’s job in play, demands loyalty, repeatedly asks him to remove the cloud of the Russia investigation, asks him to drop the Flynn criminal investigation, reportedly asks intelligence chiefs to intervene with Comey, fires Comey because of the Russia investigation and tells the Russians the firing relieves the pressure of the investigation.

Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor who is Fox’s favorite commentator of late, claims the president can shut down any investigation he wants and can fire anybody he wants because he is totally in charge of the executive branch. This may have been the case before Watergate, but the Supreme Court rejected that view in 1988 in saying it was not “so central to the functioning of the executive Branch” for the president to be able to torpedo investigations of himself and aides. https://lawfareblog.com/view-supreme-court-alan-dershowitz-wrong-about-powers-president

5. A cabinet meeting like no other.

The most surreal moment of the week, however, was not the made up charges of the right-wing media, but rather the actual video of Trump’s first full cabinet meeting.

The president who has yet to get a major bill through the GOP Congress, bragged “Never has there been a president, with few exceptions…who has passed more legislation….” As cabinet and staff heaped praise on Trump, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus’s comment stood out as he thanked Trump for “the blessing that you’ve given us to serve your agenda.”

In the real world, one of those blessings was Trump’s reported ultimatum that Priebus had until July 4 to clean up the White House’s dysfunctional staff. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/11/donald-trump-reince-priebus-deadline-239411