In Washington, everyone pretends to be bipartisan until the doors close and someone utters the magic words: “This is OFF THE RECORD.”
This week, I found myself in a room full of powerful people representing some of America’s biggest companies, all exchanging the usual diplomatic pleasantries. Everyone was terribly polite. Careful not to offend anyone who might be useful tomorrow.
Then the host announced that the conversation was off the record. And man, what a transformation it was.
The grey suits were almost identical. The politics were anything but. You could practically tell the Republicans from the Democrats without anyone declaring their allegiance.
I stared at my perfectly arranged plate in disbelief as some of the most powerful people in America brought their politics to the table with more heat than an entire evening of punditry on MSNOW and CNN.
The eye-rolling! The passionate animosities! The things people were prepared to say! And all because the conversation was off the record. Not reportable. Not quotable. Not even the most entertaining part.
It felt like listening to a confession of a crime knowing there was absolutely nothing you could do about it.
Which brings me to the latest scandal in Trump’s network.
Enter Corey Lewandowski. The latest protagonist in the ledger of the price of proximity to Trump.
One of the earliest loyalists in Trump’s inner political circle is under Justice Department investigation, over allegations that he profited from his role at the Department of Homeland Security. Lewandowski served as de facto chief of staff to Secretary Kristi Noem, with a hand in government contracts.
Trump has made a strong statement about accountability.
“All I know is I want my people to be honest, and if they’re not going to be honest, they have to be prosecuted.”
How very presidential!
He is letting Corey sink or swim alone.
The Department of Homeland Security inspector general referred the matter to the Justice Department for investigation. The DOJ may let it go, find nothing, or bring charges.
Who knows?!
Trump has to say what he said. But does he mean it?
“Do not believe a word he’s saying,” someone very close to him told me.
Do not believe a word he’s saying.
For all this talk about honesty, prosecution and law and order, there is something waiting on the other side of all federal criminal proceedings: the presidential pardon.
What a remarkable juxtaposition. Say what you like off the record. Color outside the lines on the record. In Trump’s Washington, accountability may only be the first act. And the pardon, the last.
In Trump’s Washington, accountability may only be the first act. And the pardon, the last.
The president can declare that people must be prosecuted if they have broken the law and still retain the constitutional authority to grant them clemency. One does not necessarily cancel out the other. But it does make the meaning of accountability rather interesting when the people involved happen to be your own.
We have been here before. Consider Alina Habba’s $50 million deal: a job arranged by the family of a man seeking a presidential pardon. Two weeks after she started, Trump pardoned him. She denies any involvement.
I wrote last week that Trump’s inner circle brings its own explosives. And Trump has quite a collection of loyalists who end up entangled in scandals and criminal investigations.
He almost seems to possess a peculiar radar for them. The kind of loyalists equipped with an unusually flexible moral compass and a willingness to travel any distance for money.
The greedy ones. The hungry tigers. The social climbers who will scale almost any wall if there is a richer billionaire sitting at the other table. Those who do not worry about keeping their integrity intact.
The greedy ones. The hungry tigers.
Corey, meanwhile, denies any wrongdoing. But in Washington, you never quite know which Congress you’ll get: one controlled by the president’s allies, or one determined to find out who got the contracts, who got the favors, and who profited from being close to power.
Which brings us to November 3. The midterm elections.
Trump needs Republican control of Congress. He certainly doesn’t want to spend the last two years of his presidency watching Democrats conduct congressional investigations from the committee chairs.
So, naturally, we hear about accountability. Honesty. Law and order. All excellent things.
But if Democrats take control, the final two years of his presidency will become quite difficult. There will be investigation after investigation after investigation. And it will get very ugly.
He would not merely be fighting Democrats. He would be fighting the possibility that his own legacy might slip out of his control. And that is a very different fight.
Because an aggressive Trump is like a man pushed into a corner without an exit ramp. He will only become angrier. And it is jut a matter of time before he starts ricocheting. Through the West Wing. Through the administration. Through the people whose job it is to explain the president’s decisions, defend his statements and manage the consequences.
And who else?
Of course, the press.
Trump has already taken to speaking through clenched teeth and threatening journalists. A president confronted with a hostile House, repeated investigations and an increasingly difficult political environment may become still less tolerant of the people asking questions.
Perhaps Trump will decide that the news organizations occupying space in the West Wing have enjoyed quite enough access. Perhaps he will decide that the reporters have become an inconvenience he no longer wishes to accommodate. And somewhere in the middle of all this, the possibility of removing the briefing room and restoring a swimming pool.
After all, if he is going to have a pool at the White House, why not make it one that finally gives the press something else to do?
And knowing Trump, he might even give it a name.
The press pool.
The Washington Cut is Ksenija Pavlovic’s first-person diary from inside American politics, power and the White House. New every Friday morning in The Pavlovic Today.
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