Prensa Internacional/ZUMAPRESS

I have a feeling that Donald Trump will not be giving any impromptu interviews to Michael Schmidt again. Schmidt reports today in the New York Times that Robert Mueller is very strongly investigating the question of whether Trump obstructed justice by trying to derail the Russia investigation:

President Trump gave firm instructions in March to the White House’s top lawyer: stop the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, from recusing himself in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s associates had helped a Russian campaign to disrupt the 2016 election….Mr. Trump said he had expected his top law enforcement official to safeguard him the way he believed Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general, had done for his brother John F. Kennedy and Eric H. Holder Jr. had for Barack Obama.

….Mr. Mueller has also been examining a false statement that the president reportedly dictated on Air Force One in July in response to an article in The Times about a meeting that Trump campaign officials had with Russians in 2016. A new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” by Michael Wolff, says that the president’s lawyers believed that the statement was “an explicit attempt to throw sand into the investigation’s gears,” and that it led one of Mr. Trump’s spokesmen to quit because he believed it was obstruction of justice.

….Experts are divided about whether the accumulated evidence is enough for Mr. Mueller to bring an obstruction case….Some experts said the case would be stronger if there was evidence that the president had told witnesses to lie under oath.

In late March Trump went ballistic over James Comey’s testimony before Congress:

Mr. Trump’s frustrations with the inquiry erupted again about three weeks later, when Mr. Comey said publicly for the first time that the Justice Department and the F.B.I. were conducting an investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia. Mr. Comey had told Mr. Trump in private that he was not personally under investigation, yet Mr. Comey infuriated Mr. Trump by refusing to answer a question about that at the hearing where he spoke publicly.

….Two days after Mr. Comey’s testimony, an aide to Mr. Sessions approached a Capitol Hill staff member asking whether the staffer had any derogatory information about the F.B.I. director. The attorney general wanted one negative article a day in the news media about Mr. Comey, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting.

This whole subject remains maddeningly hard to make sense of. The problem is that Trump’s behavior is consistent with two diametrically opposite conclusions. Needless to say, it’s consistent with the possibility that Trump colluded with Russia in some way and is desperate to cover it up. But it’s also consistent with the possibility that Trump is entirely innocent. A person with Trump’s volcanic temper and bottomless feelings of grievance would probably react exactly the way he has if he had done nothing wrong.

So far, all the evidence we’ve seen publicly has come tantalizingly close to obstruction of justice, but has never quite gotten there. But even if it doesn’t, consider this: the precise legal definitions of obstruction apply only in a courtroom, not in an impeachment trial. The kinds of things Trump has done are more than enough to constitute a “high crime” if enough members of Congress think it does. At the moment, Republicans prefer keeping Trump in office. But if they ever decide he’s too big an albatross and they’d rather deal with President Pence, Mueller is almost certain to give them enough to make a case with.

According to previous press reports, now bolstered by Michael Wolff’s account in Fire and Fury, pretty much everyone who knows Donald Trump thinks he’s not very bright. Can you match up the precise epithet with the person alleged to have said it?

Teenagers are having less sex. Actually, strike that. White teenagers are having about as much sex as ever. But among black and Hispanic teenagers, there’s been a sudden and steep dropoff among the number of high school seniors who say they have ever had intercourse:

I’m a little skeptical about how reliable these numbers are. Among Hispanic kids, for example, it’s a little hard to believe that the number with sexual experience was 70 percent in 2007, then down to 60 percent in 2011, back up to 70 percent in 2013, and down again to 60 percent in 2015. And do we really think that in the space of two years, the number of black kids with sexual experience plummeted from 77 percent to 63 percent? What could possibly have caused such a huge drop in such a short time?

So take this with a grain of salt. It’s good news, I suppose, but I wonder if it’s fake news?

Ireland is full of abandoned, weatherbeaten homes. This one is in Castlecove, a few miles north of where we stayed during our vacation. The yard is wildly overgrown, but I hacked my way in to take a peek. If I had taken this picture at dusk instead of dawn—and perhaps underexposed it instead of deliberately overexposing it—it would have looked like something out of a gothic novel. Instead, it looks like it just wants a gardener and a fresh coat of paint to become someone’s home again. This particular design, featuring a centered door surrounded by five windows, is apparently a very popular one. I saw it all over the place.

I’ve been meaning to weigh in on the latest raft of pieces about the decline of American democracy, the decline of Western liberalism, the decline of globalism, and the decline of everything else in the era of Trump. In a nutshell, I’m far more optimistic than most of the people writing about this. Unfortunately, I haven’t really thought the whole thing through rigorously enough to make a little essay out of it.

Actually, you might consider that good news. However, I do want to lay down a few markers. Here they are:

• Globally, there’s no question that there’s been a backlash against immigration. But this is hardly the first time that’s happened, and the vast influx of refugees into Europe makes it unsurprising that there’s been a response. Given the size of the refugee crisis, I’m frankly surprised the reaction in Europe has been as restrained as it has been.
• Brexit is not a harbinger. Britain has had a fraught relationship with the EU from the very start, and there’s always been a large contingent of people who oppose British membership. Nor is this some kind of exclusively working-class thing. Conservative Party elites have been euroskeptics for a long time. Brexit is mostly the result of a stupid tactical decision by David Cameron, not a sign of a huge upsurge in xenophobia.
• In the US, there’s no real indication that Donald Trump is a sign of the future rather than an anomaly. His victory was a result of growing polarization and a couple of weird lucky breaks, not a massive backlash against PC culture and NAFTA.
  

  

• Republicans aren’t “falling into line” behind Trump. They’re just being Republicans. As long as the subject is conservative judges and tax cuts for the rich, they’re on board. When the subject is a border wall or cozying up to Russia, they’re about as divided as they’ve always been.
• Would Trump like to be a dictator? Sure. Every president would probably like to be a dictator. But aside from lots of dumb tweeting, he’s done virtually nothing to seriously break the norms of liberal democracy. He’s issued lots of executive orders, just like Obama did. Courts have overturned some of them, just as they always have. He hasn’t fired Robert Mueller. He hasn’t declared martial law. His judicial nominations have been standard issue Republicans. His Fed nominee is a standard issue Republican. And appointing wingnuts to head the EPA and Interior is standard issue Republican behavior. (Those of us of a certain age have sharp memories of James Watt and Anne Gorsuch Burford.)
• The worst norm-busting thing Trump has done is firing the director of the FBI because he wouldn’t abandon his investigation of Michael Flynn. But this hardly passed unnoticed. It resulted in the hiring of Robert Mueller as a special prosecutor, something that has turbocharged the investigation of Trump and his buddies.
• Republicans are refusing to seriously investigate Trump, but what’s new about that? Congressional investigations have always been partisan. You may recall that Republicans declined to investigate George Bush but went after both Bill Clinton and Obama hammer and tongs. There’s nothing new here.
• Trump is not gaining popularity. Just the opposite. He’s even lost popularity among Republicans. GOP candidates recently supported by Trump have lost, and generic congressional polls suggest a big Trump-inspired backlash in the 2018 midterms despite a healthy economy acting as a tailwind.
  

  

• Every scrap of evidence suggests that most of Trump’s staff think he’s an idiot. Many of his cabinet members think he’s an idiot. Congressional leaders think he’s an idiot. And the big difference between Trump and, say, Mussolini, is that Trump really is an idiot. Nor has this changed over time. If anything, this view of Trump has become even more widespread over the past 12 months. This is not a portrait of a man who can take over the country.

Trump is still plenty dangerous. But I don’t really see any kind of fundamental change in the country. Working class white men are susceptible to grievance mongering and racially-coded attacks, but that’s been true for a long time. Trade agreements aren’t all that popular among workers, but again, that’s been true for a long time. Remember Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton competing in Ohio in 2008 over who could pretend the hardest that they hated NAFTA? Nor has there been any kind of serious cultural backlash. College kids are still doing dumb things, same as always. Marijuana is being legalized despite Jeff Sessions’s best efforts. Gay marriage is here to stay. There’s been little change on the abortion front.

Probably the biggest danger we face from Donald Trump is the question of what he’ll do if a crisis hits. A big terrorist attack, for example, could serve as an excuse for some serious hits on democratic rule. So far, that looks unlikely, but it’s a real danger.

There’s also the chance that he could start a nuclear war, but I now consider that less likely than I used to. Trump has allowed North Korea to make progress on its nuclear technology without doing much about it, and North Korea now has—or is very close to having—a genuine deterrent capability. This will, almost certainly, deter Trump.

I’m curious. Of all the bitcoin trades made in an average day, does anyone know how many of them are sales of bitcoin for actual money? And by “actual money,” I mean exactly what you think I mean: dollars, euros, yen, pesos, yuan, etc.

Also, why isn’t there a cryptocurrency named quatloos? Oh wait: there is. One quatloo is worth 5.8 cents. Finally we know!

Stock markets around the world were on a roll last year. Here’s the year-end report card from Yardeni:

The biggest winners around the globe were France, Germany, Italy, China, India, Argentina, South Korea, and South Africa. The biggest losers were Russia and Pakistan.

Chris Kleponis/CNP via ZUMA

Holy shit:

A lawyer representing President Trump sought Thursday to stop the publication of a new behind-the-scenes book about the White House that has already led Trump to angrily decry his former chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon. The legal notice — addressed to author Michael Wolff and the president of the book’s publisher — said Trump’s lawyers were pursuing possible charges including libel in connection with the forthcoming book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.”

The letter by Beverly Hills-based attorney Charles J. Harder demanded the publisher, Henry Holt and Co., “immediately cease and desist from any further publication, release or dissemination of the book” or excerpts and summaries of its contents. The lawyers also seek a full copy of the book as part of their investigation.

Threatening to sue Bannon was barmy enough, but demanding that a book publisher halt release of a book? That’s stone crazy. Hell, courts wouldn’t block publication of the Pentagon Papers, let alone a tittle-tattle account of a presidential administration. Trump has just insured that Wolff’s book will be the biggest bestseller of the year.

Now this is a classic Trumpian feces-flinging brawl. He’s bringing the famous Trump nondisclosure agreement into his battle with ex-friend Steve Bannon:

Late Wednesday, lawyers for Trump sent a cease-and-desist letter to Bannon, arguing he violated the employment agreement he signed with the Trump Organization in numerous ways and also likely defamed the president. They ordered that he stop communicating either confidential and or disparaging information, and preserve all records in preparation for “imminent” legal action.

“You have breached the Agreement by, among other things, communicating with author Michael Wolff about Mr. Trump, his family members, and the Company, disclosing Confidential Information to Mr. Wolff, and making disparaging statements and in some cases outright defamatory statements to Mr. Wolff about Mr. Trump, his family members, and the Company,” read the letter from lawyer Charles Harder.

I really hope Trump goes through with this. Presidents routinely get upset about leaks and tell-all books, and often do ill-advised things to try stop it. But this! This would be the stupidest thing ever. And it would include discovery! And depositions under oath! And two titanic assholes vying for the title of who’s the bigger asshole.

That’s all too good to be true, so it probably won’t happen. But wouldn’t it be great if it did?

The Wall Street Journal reports that auto sales dropped 1.8 percent last year:

The U.S. auto industry suffered its first annual sales decline since the financial crisis eight years ago, but a streak of strong profits is expected to overshadow a slowdown in dealership traffic….Executives have reasons for optimism as employment gains are leading to wage growth in certain pockets of the U.S. The federal tax cuts and a robust stock market could provide more spending power for people in the mood for a new vehicle.

….Still, vehicle makers are reducing North American production, including a broad pullback in the U.S., in anticipation of a softer market. North American output is expected to fall 2.3% in the first quarter, according to WardsAuto.com, a move aimed at trimming dealer inventories and lowering the supply of sedans and compact cars that are unpopular amid low fuel prices.

Here is monthly sales growth over the past five years:

The industry says it expects another 1.8 percent decline in 2018, but if this trendline continues it’s likely to be closer to a 3-4 percent decline. We’ll see.