We know the fix is in. But how much fixin'? Here's a tl;dr post featuring some of the unproven assumptions & a few respective examples that have so much supporting evidence, we can assume they're true in nearly every case (the extremely rare exceptions include willful deceit or the last resort to repay a favor):
1) Government employees are hired, attacked/humiliated, or fired for a different reason than pushed on the public. Ex: Flynn, Comey, Mooch, Sessions.
2) Trump is helping monsters advance their interests. Ex: Nazis, Russia, Kim Jong-Un.
3) There is no flaw Trump won't exploit, regardless of how petty. Ex: Using charity funds to pay for things like both his son's $7 Scout fee and $20,000 self portraits to hang at Trump properties.
4) Violating national security to enemies is commonplace, not just with small stuff, but top level dangers as well. Unknown content for 3 Putin hours at the G20 is HORRIBLE! Ex: Russians in the Oval Office, Duterte, WikiLeaks.
5) The Trump family and business comes first, not America. Ex: China "choosing" to help Trump and hurt the US with NK, visiting and striking deals with the despised Muslim Saudis before going to any other countries.
6) The more someone struggles to avoid the public eye, the higher the chance they handle upper level covert nefarious operations. Ex: Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Rex Tillerson, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions.
7) Trump is purposely trying to weaken or destroy America for Putin. Ex: Spreading the military thin on increasingly tense situations with more and more Authoritarian Putin allies, spreading our trust thin on the interests of Democratic Putin enemies, tearing down values and norms and laws behind 250 years of US Democracy.
8) The anti-American actions in #7 are deliberate and coordinated because that is their goal, not incompetent and inexperienced because they're failing at governing. Ex: The government not understanding climate change. Failure to speak up against dark beliefs of the base and passing them off as an oversight each time.
9) Aside from the entire administration as a whole in #8, Trump is an idiot enough of the time, and sinisterly clever enough of the time, that the resulting smokescreen accomplishes what other smokescreen do. Ex: Trump lashing out "impulsively" on Twitter (towards strategically correct opponents, at strategically correct news moments, with plenty of time between tweets).
10) As Putin holds Trump at his mercy, Trump undoubtedly holds moves in his pocket to use against Robert Mueller should he get closer to the truth, and even more extreme Putin-backed measures if Trump learns of inevitable impeachment or indictments. Ex: Let your imagination run here, because it's so incredibly hard to come across direct evidence of treasonous talks, especially that G20 Putin hour with zero US witnesses. But it's not that difficult to see the potential for Putin to access Russian (cyber)knowledge of things like power outages, sonic deafening, nuclear equipment, etc. to hold individual or groups of Americans hostage, using voter/other data passed to him - willingly or unwillingly - by Trump and others.
Some of this sounds far fetched, I know. And for a normal administration it would be. But when, instead of using recall, you grab a full list of where we are now compared to January 20th and what's become public about Trump's methods of cheating at every possible turn, we realize how far fetched things have already been in just 7 months.
Until lots of unknown details are revealed, the prospects will remain terrifying and the fear alone is both limiting and justified. As with Putin (so much is), we have no evidence that Trump's limitations are are moral, ethical or legal in any way. It's simply a matter of importance, revolving around the penalty of consequences rather than ideology.
We also have a pressing need to move faster. Trump exploits everything, including the time gap between his actions and when he might be held accountable. If we can't speed up, we can't prevent a point of no return. Which brings us to Mueller, State AGs, and other investigations...
1 through 9 help the Feds. 10 hurts, badly. Indictments are most likely the only thing standing between a US revoltion, then a full on conflict with Russia. I'm not even convinced that impeachment will solve this anymore. They've had enough time and access to create a Trumpless contingency. With Trump gone, the astounding number of Russian strings left to pull would...astound...all of us.
That said, also use some imagination for the kind of planning that can be done when your time is largely spent on bad intentions and little on actual governing. Even being a fly on the wall of the main Trump/Manafort discussions during the campaign would be incredibly revealing. Think of how Trump bragged about only needing a staff of 71 vs Clinton's campaign staff of 800. The same goes for now, with an empty State Department, emptying Homeland Security and NSA, and lean overall staff. The public reason is Trump's amazing efficiency. But the real reason (as in #1 above) is different. When you're faking legitimacy, bad actors need more trust and loyalty than they do specified knowledge and competence, which leads us to the cabinet...
A few weeks ago, I got stuck fending off a slew of posters over claims that lots of street smart people work for Trump's government. Within the context of this post, let me elaborate a little. It's very easy to look dumb when you're a public official in the wrong department for the public, or when you're stuck defending indefensible comments and actions. All you need to do is keep in mind that Trump's hiring practices purposefully had different requirements. His staffing priorities were focused on rich & powerful crooks he personally knows will play evil ball to get richer and more powerful. They are competent...at making illicit money, avoiding scrutiny, getting out of tough implications against them, and Trump's style of bull****ting. And that's good enough when someone is pulling global strings on Trump's behalf. For (a 60% likely hypothetical IMO) example, how much do you need experts to diffuse a North Korean crisis if the current escalated situation were set up by its neighbors - sayyyy Russia with China's help? I'm not saying they own Trump enough or are smart or deceptive enough to pull it off, but they do and they are. Remember that Trump's rhetoric shot up Tuesday, after learning (lol) about mini nukes from one (lol) department of his trusted (lol) Intelligence Community. The theory is nothing conclusive, but definitely worth watching more closely than usual.
Trump's biggest governing concern is defying Putin, which makes complete sense when looking at the available facts. There could be a lot of reasons for it, but absent classified Team Mueller info, I prefer mine for now. If we could somehow even pause these guys from taking increasingly aggressive actions, it might allow all of us a chance to catch up on this HUGE story instead of the huge smokescreen.
CLIFFS: Approach Team Trump from the perspective that everything they do is public deception for both big & small scams and you will be SHOCKED at the difficulty of proving it wrong.
