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| Two of the estimated 200 white supremacists who protested in Shelbyville, Tennessee on Saturday |
Having surrounded himself with a cadre of individuals with established white supremacist beliefs and ties, including Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka and Stephen Miller, there's no way for Trump to uncouple his presidency from the movement he encouraged and legitimized with his divisive rhetoric and policies.
As has frequently been the case since the inauguration, last week was not a good one for a White House that continues to struggle to achieve meaningful policy achievements in the face of a rocky relationship with the Republican majorities that control both houses of Congress and a foreign policy that lacks consistency, substance, cohesiveness and diplomatic polish.
The week started off with Republican Arizona Senator Jeff Flake publicly eviscerating Trump for his behavior and conduct on the floor of the U.S. Senate before announcing he would not seek reelection because he could no longer support his own president - leveling criticisms that a number of Republicans on Capitol Hill have shared privately.
In an interview with the Washington Post on Saturday, Flake confided to reporter Ed O'Keefe that he "couldn't sleep at night having to embrace the president or condoning his behavior, or being okay with some of his positions. I just couldn't do it, it was never in the cards."
Flake's comments came on the heels of a speech by former two-term Republican president George W. Bush that was widely seen as critical of Trump without specifically naming him - whether those comments will embolden the more moderate Republicans who've been marginalized by the increasingly right-leaning ideology that now dominates the GOP remains to be seen.
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| Former MI-6 agent Christopher Steele |
The Steele Dossier, a document compiled by the highly-respected former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele, a former MI-6 Moscow field agent who also headed the MI-6 Russia desk, is where the disturbing allegations that the KGB had compromising proof that Trump had engaged in lewd conduct with two Russian prostitutes in a Moscow hotel suite, first originated.
Even though members of the Trump campaign, including his son Donald, Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner, actively sought damaging information about Clinton from the Russians, Trump suggested that the news that Democrats had paid Fusion GPS for damaging information on him was akin to the Watergate investigations.
He tried painting the ongoing investigations into whether the Trump campaign actively participated with and sought Russian interference with the 2016 elections as some kind of partisan fishing expedition.
But the gas was let out of that balloon with the news that it was the Washington Free Beacon, the conservative Website bankrolled by the billionaire Republican donor Paul Singer, that first paid money for anti-Trump information months before Democrats requested it.
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| Special Counsel Robert Mueller |
My sense is that Trump's unsubstantiated comments last week were intended to deflect attention.
Not just from Jeff Flake's comments on the Senate floor, but also to distance Trump's name from the white supremacist rallies popping up in cities across the country.
In many ways, the rallies in Tennessee yesterday, the rally in Gainesville, Florida on October 19th, as well as the violent rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia weeks ago are a reflection of Trump's base of support.
Not just in terms of the bigotry, xenophobia, anti-immigrant hysteria that defines their ideology - one protester in Tennessee told a reporter that immigrants must be viewed as "conquerors" - but in terms of actual numbers.
Trump is unapologetic about having no interest in appealing to all Americans, virtually everything he signs, does, says or tweets is aimed at appeasing his base of support - which is currently about 38% of the U.S. population based on the latest NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll.
So the overwhelming majority of the country, 58%, do not approve of the job he's doing in office.
It's a reflection of the white supremacists protesting in Tennessee on Saturday.
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| Counter-protesters assemble to oppose the presence of white supremacists in Shelbyville, TN |
While Daniel Politi of Slate.com reported that about 200 white supremacists showed up for protests in Shelbyville, Tennessee, again they were outnumbered two-to-one by counter-protesters - who at one point drowned out a Neo-Nazi trying to give a speech by playing a recording of Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech.
In the same way that Trump basically speaks to about 38% of the country, the white supremacists at the rallies in Charlottesville, Gainesville, and Tennessee are essentially addressing a fraction of the U.S. population.
And as Alan Blinder reported for the New York Times yesterday, the majority of the people seen on the news attending these rallies are not from these local areas - they're traveling there from around the country to try and give the illusion of how large the white supremacist movement in this country is.
In no way does that reduce the danger that these kinds of groups pose to American society, but the fact that more of them are emboldened to bring their fringe movement and beliefs out into the public square is a troubling reminder of Trumpism.
The same political party that gave us candidate Trump is preparing to try and pass massive tax cuts for the 1% and corporations (tax cuts that will add more than a trillion dollars to the federal deficit) while screwing the working and middle class.
Why aren't they marching against the big banks that created and profited from the mortgage crisis that took many of their homes and decimated the economy?
Or the corporations who've moved manufacturing overseas and outsourced millions of American jobs to countries with lower wage standards?
People of color and immigrants aren't responsible for the rust-belt communities and stagnant wages across America that have angered the base that Trump now speaks to exclusively.
But scapegoating "others" is like a comfortable shoe for many in this country, and that's what Trumpism is all about - those rallies in Tennessee were basically pro-Trump events.
And that genie isn't going back in to the bottle anytime soon.
With Mueller set to announce the first criminal indictments for interfering the 2016 elections on Monday (indictments that may well be handed down to Jared Kushner or Donald Trump, Jr.) Trump needs that genie more than ever.
Anything to deflect attention from the truth of his presidency.
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