By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support great journalism.
Debra Wines: What is Trump hiding?
Smithville Local Columnist.png

I do not blame Donald Trump for trying to avoid talking about the Mueller Investigation and all the various news reports and pundits talking about where this main investigation will eventually lead.  Innocent or guilty, as the President of the United States, it can’t be easy to govern with the Sword of Damocles hanging over his head.  Donald Trump isn’t the first President to experience this kind of tension while in office.  Chances are, he won’t be the last either, as long as we remain a Democratic form of government and the three branches of our government perform their Constitutional duties and maintain their responsibilities to provide a system of checks and balances.  It feels as if, too many times during Donald Trump’s administration, he and Congress need to be reminded of our system of government and their duties to the American people.

Personally, I am getting quite bored by Donald Trump resorting to juvenile name calling of government official, people who criticize or testify against him, anyone investigating him, and labeling Robert Mueller’s investigation as a “witch hunt”.  Instead of telling investigators, “prove your accusations, because I know I’m innocent”, Mr. Trump seems to be doing everything in his power to sabotage, slow down or stop any investigations involving him; his family; his businesses connections to Vladimir Putin; various Russian leaders and oligarchs within Putin’s “circle of friends”.  Since Donald Trump’s campaign and his inauguration, rumors, stories and suspicions have been mounting.  Mr. Trump’s obvious anger with Jeff Sessions’ recusal from any involvement with the initial Russian investigation, made me and others ask, “why is he so upset”?  The other question was; what is going on that Jeff Sessions felt this need to recuse himself from an investigation involving Russia’s possible interference with our 2016 election?  It didn’t make any sense.

Jeff Sessions’ confirmation hearing was bizarre, at times, and his memory of certain events was questionable.  Yet he was confirmed as the United States Attorney General, much to the surprise of many people who felt he was too far to the right.  He was Donald’s boy and that was that.  Then we had the whole fiasco with FBI Director, James Comey.  If you take a grain of salt with all the comments he made and those of Donald Trump, the situation still stinks of something unpleasant going on at the time.  We know that Mr. Trump expects totally loyalty of the people around him. That is not unusual for anyone, especially those in the business world and politics.  The degree of loyalty that Mr. Trump expects is, to say the least, over the top.  He expects people around him to be “Yes men and women”, anything less than that, the “disloyal” person will be publicly humiliated and removed from Trump’s isolated world.  The sad thing is Mr. Trump doesn’t seem to respect, appreciate or have any use for people who are experts in areas that he is not.  My opinion is that he doesn’t want anyone around him that may make him feel ignorant or inadequate, in any way.  That is dangerous when someone is running a country like the United States of America.

Many people have been concerned about Trump’s business ties to Russia.  For years, his own sons have boasted that when U.S. banks would no longer finance the Trump Organization, because they felt it was too financially risky, they sought help from rich Russians and they got it.  Granted, when this all started, I am sure it appeared to be just “simple” business dealings.  How that business was actually been conducted, may have been questionable to some because there was the appearance of the Trump Organization “laundering money” for suspicious Russian “businessmen”. Those business dealings probably put the Trump Organization on some government agencies’ “watch list”.  I’m sure this kind of “white collar” crime take years to investigate and actual proof may be very difficult to ascertain, let alone being able bring charges against an organization.  The Trump Organization might have stayed below the radar for years, but when Trump decided to run for President of the United States, the situation changed.  The intensity of questionable business dealings took on a life of its own because Donald Trump was no longer in a “celebrity” spotlight.  He was in the “presidential candidate” spotlight and that was a whole different ball game.

Mr. Trump’s continuous claims that he is not Putin’s puppet and is in no way beholding to Vladimir Putin for his election as the President is at best, becoming more and more questionable as the days, weeks and months of his presidency is coming under more specific scrutiny.  Everyone who has been caught up in the Mueller investigation and has plead guilty or have been found guilty in a court of law, have had many ties to Trump, others in his circle of loyalists, Russian and former Soviet Bloc Oligarchs, Russian government officials and Vladimir Putin himself.  We know Donald Trump will not go down without a fight.  He is behaving like a cornered, rabid animal, willing to attack anyone and anything that he feels will threaten him.  His behavior is not that of an innocent man.  Again, he is not the first president or high government official who has been under investigation and is willing to do and say anything to protect his position.  Every one of those men were guilty. They may not have gotten the kind of justice the average person would have received, but they did lose their power and position.

I can understand Donald Trump’s current behavior and I can almost admire his determination and his fighting spirit to maintain his power as the President of the United States.  What I don’t admire is the fact that Mr. Trump is not thinking about the people he swore to protect.  His handling of the situation is irrational and dangerous to all of us.