President Trump for years has claimed to have had no dealings with Russia, nothing to do with Russia, no business whatsoever with Russia. According to his TV lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump was pursuing a Trump Tower deal in Moscow through the election in November 2016. (Trump has previously held the Miss Universe pageant in Russia, has sold properties to Russians, and has used financing from Felix Sater, who had Russia connections.)
Trump said no one he knew on the campaign had contacts with Russia; we now know there were more than a hundred. Trump’s former campaign chairman apparently colluded with Russia by giving Konstantin Kilimnik polling information. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn discussed sanctions with Russia, and lied about it.
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has racked up “192 criminal charges, 36 indictments or guilty pleas, and 4 prison sentences” over the course of his investigation.
We’ve also learned that the FBI was concerned enough that Trump was either a witting or unwitting agent of the Russians to open a counterintelligence investigation. Trump has met or spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin five times during his presidency and has left behind no recordings or notes of the meetings.
Pundits have insisted that none of this matters to Americans. However, there is now evidence that simply isn’t true. It turns out that facts — including legal indictments and sentencing of figures connected to Russia — have taken their toll.
In the latest CBS News poll, for example, “More Americans think the Russia investigation is justified than say it is politically motivated, the first time that’s happened in CBS News polling. . . . Fifty percent of Americans now think the Russia investigation is justified, while just 45 percent think it is politically motivated. As recently as November, a slight majority of Americans felt the investigation was politically motivated.” Also according to the CBS poll, 64 percent think it is either very or somewhat likely that senior Trump advisers had improper dealings with Russia before Trump was sworn in. That includes nearly one-third of Republicans. Asked whether Trump did anything wrong, 40 percent (including 35 percent of independents) of respondents said he did something illegal; another 18 percent (including 23 percent of independents) believe he did something unethical but not illegal.
If it turns out the public can be influenced by developments, then we find it altogether possible — even likely — that a detailed, compelling report from Mueller, whose favorability remains high, may have quite an impact. Enough to shift the public toward supporting impeachment? That depends just how damning the report is.
Nevertheless, given Trump’s lack of credibility with voters and the overall perception of his performance, we reasonably can expect that a large percentage of voters will think he’s doing an awful job, not want him to run again and decide they cannot vote for him. Republicans who persist in supporting him under those circumstances will be dooming their party to defeat, or maybe a wipe-out, in 2020. That may be one reason Democratic leadership isn’t much interested in impeachment.
If Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) can keep the president tied up in knots for two years, expose the Republicans as hapless flunkies and support fair-minded investigations exposing more Trump wrongdoing, wouldn’t she rather run against him than a more capable, untainted Republican in 2020? With seven current Democratic contenders leading Trump in the polls, you have to think the answer to that is: Heck, yes!
