PRESIDENT Donald Trump’s train has been getting all the more derailed by the events of the recent week, and based on what has been happening under his leadership in the past two years, we may be in for a more exasperating bumpy ride ahead.
First, the stock market has plummeted several times this week, erasing all the gains made since the beginning of the year, thanks to the uncertainties and mixed messages on trade by Trump.
His Republican cohorts in Congress, who have blindly stood by the president through all his lies and transgressions against the rule of law, have now been openly rebuking Trump for his defense of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.
The Senate is now preparing to confront the White House over its support for Saudi Arabia in the brutal and gruesome murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi — a Saudi national who is a U.S. permanent resident who has earned the ire of the Saudi royalty for his writings on the abuses of the Saudi government.
As in his defense of other dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, Trump chooses to ignore the findings of the U.S. intelligence agencies on the culpability of the Crown Prince, and accept the denial of the Saudi Royalty.
This week, Trump has also become even more unhinged in his daily tweets against Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who has been leading the investigation into the alleged conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to hurt the Clinton campaign and help Trump win the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
After Mueller’s 18-month-old airtight and methodical investigation which has led to charges against 32 people including 26 Russians, with four aides to Trump have pleaded guilty to various charges — the Special Counsel this week has released three important filings, sentencing three of these people in the Trump orbit — Trump’s ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, and Trump’s former attorney and fixer Michale Cohen.
With this progress in the Mueller probe, it has been established that people in the Trump orbit implicated in the Russia interference allegation lied in their testimony to the media, to Special Counsel, to federal investigators. The redacted memos released by Mueller (redacted means portions had been blacked out to the public because the contents of which are still part of the ongoing investigations) likewise reveal the conspiracy to mislead and limit the investigation to obstruct the quest for truth.
These filings of Mueller do NOT exonerate Trump. In fact, the DOJ charges say the president committed a crime to cover up information to affect the presidential election. More new information has also revealed Trump had knowledge of and was, in fact, part of the coordination with Russia to win the election.
The Mueller probe is still ongoing. We will discuss more details next week. Suffice it to say that Trump said they will make public a “counter-report” when the Mueller probe is over. It is important to point out that Mueller is privy to all the other corroborating evidence to all the testimonies of the people they interview — all of these considerations in pursuit of the truth.
Tutok, mga kababayan!
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
