"Pause This Presidency!" is now the #1 trending topic on Twitter. It is also the title of a Monday column by Charles Blow of the New York Times. Blow calls for an immediate end to "all consequential actions" by Trump until it can be shown that there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia to affect the outcome of the 2016 election. Blow minces no words. He calls such collusion if discovered an unprecedented assault on democracy and a wound to "faith in our sovereignty."
A pause that does what?
There are three problems with Blow's heartfelt plea to basically neuter Trump.
1. Appealing to the nation is a bit like having a rerun of the election itself. If anything, the nation is more divided now than it was prior to Trump's inauguration.
2. The nation has no power to pause the Trump presidency any more than the nation can get gun control even when 90 percent want it. There is a reason for gridlock.
3. A pause, in any case, is utterly impractical. Are Mr. Spicer and Mr. Bannon going to stand in the doorway of the White House when the Consequence Police arrive?
The true way to get a pause in the presidency is to do the only thing that can stop any president. Take a legal route aimed at proving that no president stands above the law.
"The president is actually lying. And we have to continuously say" so --@CharlesMBlow https://t.co/dZ4AteYhTg
— Reliable Sources (@ReliableSources) March 6, 2017
Needed: a special prosecutor
Charles Blow makes an excellent case in his column but it does not lead to deciding whether or not the Trump forces crossed a line in their encounters with Russians during and after the campaign.
The only way to arrive at even the chance of an answer is to appoint a special prosecutor and have an investigation that is conducted beyond any suspicion of its being "rigged," to borrow a term from Mr. Trump.
Blow's logic needs a nudge
Trump does what he thinks is best for him and until this moment he has been fortunate. He has won most of his fights while managing to keep his enemies almost immobilized by their anger at his presumption.
The biggest news at the moment is Trump's silence. He has gone dark on twitter since yesterday when he clearly had not heard the James Comey ultimatum instructing the Justice Department to publicly say Trump was lying when he accused President Obama of wiretapping him. Whatever happens next will tell volumes about whether the president thinks he can survive Russiagate.
