January 18, 2019--Next Under the Bus

Two nights ago, on CNN, Rudy Giuliani unleashed another drunken rant. As with previous ones, embedded in the incoherent parts was genuine news. 

This time it was back to the persistent subject of collusion, Trump's default bête noire. It appears to be the one thing that always gives him grief.

Running out of cards to play, collusion is a clever thing for Trump to obsess about because (1) it is not a crime, and (2) it keeps folks from focusing on conspiracy, which is related to collusion but is a crime. A serious one.

Wednesday night Rudy took Trump one step further down the path to impeachment. And with BuzzFeed's overnight report that Trump instructed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about plans for a Trump condo in Moscow, things are looking precarious for the president.

"I never said that there was no collusion," Rudy in effect said, "In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there was collusion. I've said that before [lie] and I said if there was the president wasn't involved in it [lie]. About senior campaign staff? That I couldn't say. [lie]"

There's a pattern here, which I suspect will play out again next week when Mueller likely moves to reveal more of his findings. The pattern is that every time Rudy reveals something new shortly thereafter the Mueller team takes some serious action. Rudy serves as a kind of harbinger.

This may be because as a courtesy and possible requirement that prosecutors through the discovery process share their allegations and exhibits with the defense, Rudy in that way earlier this week may have gained a preview of what is to come--perhaps even that Trump himself did in fact collude with the Russians or, minimally, knew that senior members of his campaign staff did. Thus, the need to distract, obfuscate, and blame others.

In regard to who those others might turn out to be take note of the "senior staff" reference because they are the ones who Trump will attempt to blame. In other words, throw under the bus to save his own skin.

Like me are you thinking these senior campaign staff may include Paul Manafort (who was campaign manager for months), son-in-law Jared Kushner, and oldest son, Don Junior? If not them, who else?

If I had been a senior member of the Trump campaign staff at about now I'd be taking to drink. Or thinking about a pardon. We may be getting close to pardon time.