However for this week, we'll keep that more front of mind than usual, which brings us straight away to the House Oversight Committee's hearing with former Trump attorney, Michael Cohen. First, Mr. Cohen is a liar, a cheat and a conman - the three things he directly described the president as being. Foremost, he lied to Congress under oath and that's why in May he will be going to jail for the next three years. At this point, Mr. Cohen is certainly not going to be given a pardon so why did he 'throw himself at the mercy of the world that hates Trump?' as Commentary Magazine's Jon Podhoretz described. Was he telling the truth now as some part of an act of contrition? Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH), senior Republican on the Oversight Committee said that Mr. Cohen had lied to Congress again in this hearing.
What we do know is that at this point, Mr. Cohen can not have his sentence reduced any further and was not offered any reduction for his testimony this week so if he lied again the main consequence would be that more years would be added to his sentence. But still, why testify? It seems to this column that Mr. Cohen was a willing and loyal soldier for Mr. Trump, carrying out the dirty work that needed to be done in New York City. Upon Mr. Trump being elected president and Mr. Cohen not being rewarded for his effort, he most probably held out hope that Mr. Trump would back him up when investigators came calling. Mr. Trump did initially, but when Mr. Cohen lied to Congress for Mr. Trump's benefit and then had to take this fall, the loyalty wasn't reciprocated. An ax to grind? Yes, of course, but isn't that the common motivation in a situation like this?
When Mr. Jordan says that Mr. Cohen lied again to Congress this week that's just hard to believe. With that said, everything Mr. Cohen said in terms of charges he made about Mr. Trump has to be verified. Heidi Przybyla pointed out that Mr. Cohen's credibility went up because if he were lying, he would have said that the president did collude with Russia during the 2016 election, but instead he said that he had no knowledge of that. She also gave a few other instances where Mr. Cohen defended the president, so there's that.
Mr. Jordan also said that he doesn't believe that the president has lied at all when it comes to all things Russia, which is just impossible to believe given what's out there in the public record, specifically the overwhelming reporting on the Trump Tower Moscow deal.
It's not a crime per se to lie about this, but it's a relevant fact that the voters should have been made aware of, as Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) pointed out. Mr. Cohen also stated the Mr. Trump was in contact with Roger Stone about Wikileaks prior to the hacked information dump, which Mr. Warner said his counter-intelligence committee is looking into. If the president was aware of this before the fact, then that would be a crime. But Republicans don't want to talk about this and in the hearing instead of defending the president, which they didn't do, they solely focused on attacking the credibility of Mr. Cohen. And as Mr. Jordan outlined today, he doesn't want to talk about Russian collusion, but instead of the many accomplishments of the administration such as: tax reform, putting two conservative justices on the Supreme Court, record low unemployment and economic growth.
There are holes in those accomplishments such as raking up $2 trillion more dollars of debt and the fact that the middle class is suffering on the tax return front because refunds are significantly less because Republicans adjusted the withholding tax structure. Despite that, Mr. Jordan did outline a list of things that conservatives like.
To that point, The New York Times Helene Cooper explained that if you look past the ridiculous tweets and statements, the Administration's actions with regard to North Korea has been sound. Mr. Trump has opened up a dialogue with the Kim regime and smartly walked away from this week's summit because North Korea couldn't meet any of the United States demands in exchange for sanctions relief. However, it should be pointed out that a summit shouldn't really occur if some sort of framework for an agreement hasn't been worked out beforehand. Fine, that's not how Mr. Trump negotiates and that we have to accept. But Ms. Cooper then pointed out that after rightly walking away from the deal, Mr. Trump once again took the word of a dictator over what American intelligence officials had told him.
It's not a crime per se that Mr. Trump said that he takes Kim Jung Un at his word that he didn't know about what happened to Otto Warmbier, but just on the face of it, it's unfathomable that he didn't know. Mr. Trump explained that it would have been to Mr. Kim's advantage for such a thing to happen, as if he was defending the North Korean dictator. That's simply an affront to American values and respect to human rights. Defending a dictator's personal responsibility with regard to the torture and in essence murder of an American citizen is a moral crime.
It prompted a rare statement from Mr. Warmbier's parents:
"We have been respectful during this summit process. Now we must speak out. Kim and his evil regime are responsible for the death of our son Otto. Kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity. No excuses or lavish praise can change that."
As Yahoo News' Matt Bai pointed out, this president seems to lack any measure of empathy and the ability to feel someone else's pain. If we're thinking in terms of realpolitik as Jon Podhoretz brought up in the discussion, it has to be acknowledged that in that context that people do suffer making empathy an essential quality that the President of The United States must possess.
Panel: Helene Cooper, The New York Times; Matt Bai, Yahoo News; Heidi Przybyla, NBC News; Jon Podhoretz, Commentary Magazine
One more thing...
The president's longest riff... er, speech... occurred this weekend at CPAC this weekend where among other things he he said that 'people try to take you down with bullshit.' Not a crime, but also not very presidential and neither is this:
It's just f**king weird.
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