1.  Adam Davidson: Michael Cohen and the End Stage of the Trump Presidency

This is the week we know, with increasing certainty, that we are entering the last phase of the Trump Presidency. This doesn’t feel like a prophecy; it feels like a simple statement of the apparent truth. I know dozens of reporters and other investigators who have studied Donald Trump and his business and political ties. Some have been skeptical of the idea that President Trump himself knowingly colluded with Russian officials. It seems not at all Trumpian to participate in a complex plan with a long-term, uncertain payoff. Collusion is an imprecise word, but it does seem close to certain that his son Donald, Jr., and several people who worked for him colluded with people close to the Kremlin; it is up to prosecutors and then the courts to figure out if this was illegal or merely deceitful. We may have a hard time finding out what President Trump himself knew and approved.

However, I am unaware of anybody who has taken a serious look at Trump’s business who doesn’t believe that there is a high likelihood of rampant criminality. In Azerbaijan, he did business with a likely money launderer for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. In the Republic of Georgia, he partnered with a group that was being investigated for a possible role in the largest known bank-fraud and money-laundering case in history. In Indonesia, his development partner is “knee-deep in dirty politics”; there are criminal investigations of his deals in Brazil; the F.B.I. is reportedly looking into his daughter Ivanka’s role in the Trump hotel in Vancouver, for which she worked with a Malaysian family that has admitted to financial fraud. Back home, Donald, Jr., and Ivanka were investigated for financial crimes associated with the Trump hotel in SoHo—an investigation that was halted suspiciously. His Taj Mahal casino received what was then the largest fine in history for money-laundering violations. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/michael-cohen-and-the-end-stage-of-the-trump-presidency

2. Paul Krugman: The Paul Story: From Flimflam to Fascism

Some commentators seem surprised at the way men who talked nonstop about fiscal probity under Barack Obama cheerfully supported tax cuts that will explode the deficit under Trump. They also seem shocked at the apparent indifference of Ryan and his colleagues to Trump’s corruption and contempt for the rule of law. What happened to their principles?

The answer, of course, is that the principles they claimed to have never had anything to do with their actual goals. In particular, Republicans haven’t abandoned their concerns about budget deficits, because they never cared about deficits; they only faked concern as an excuse to cut social programs.

And if you ask why Ryan never took a stand against Trumpian corruption, why he never showed any concern about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, what ever made you think he would take such a stand? Again, if you look at Ryan’s actions, not the character he played to gullible audiences, he has never shown himself willing to sacrifice anything he wants — not one dime — on behalf of his professed principles. Why on earth would you expect him to stick his neck out to defend the rule of law?

So now Ryan is leaving. Good riddance. But hold the celebrations: If he was no better than the rest of his party, he was also no worse. It’s possible that his successor as speaker will show more backbone than he has — but only if that successor is, well, a Democrat. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/opinion/paul-ryan-fascism.html

3. Charles M. Blow: Signs of a Political Armageddon

Donald Trump can feel the breath on the back of his neck. Aggressive federal investigators — in the Russia case and a separate inquiry of his lawyer’s behavior related to women who have alleged consensual sexual relationships with Trump — are taking ever more bold actions.

They are getting closer to knowing things that I am sure Trump thought no one but the parties involved would ever know.

This has frightened and enraged the president.

The country is in a perilous position. It is in the hands and under the thumb of a man now motivated by a primal survival instinct, a consuming egotism and a petrifying fear of ignominy.

At this point, nothing is beyond the possible, no matter how ill advised and how ultimately destructive. In Trump’s mind, I can only imagine, he has settled on a strategy in the case of his own administration’s Armageddon: If he’s going down, the whole system is going down with him. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/opinion/trump-mueller-secrets.html

4. Rick Wilson: Everything Trump touches dies, and the speaker’s legacy is no exception.

The collapse of the economic leg of the GOP’s coalition is complete. We’re now the party of Credit Card Don, the King of Debt. Our base worships a man whose own Bhagavad Gita reads: “Now I become Debt, destroyer of Republicans.”

The trillions in new spending, the blowout tax bill’s monstrous costs, and Trump’s moron-grade nationalism and state capitalism mean the ideal of making government smaller, smarter, and better is over. It was one thing to talk about dynamic scoring and positive job growth based on the tax cut. It was quite another to predict levels of growth approaching asymptotic.

The grunting, pig-ignorant Trumpentariat types are doing their usual ranting street-preacher genius analysis of the situation, declaring you’ve triggered duh libs and now Ryan will be replaced with a speaker who, as the Trump Constitution clearly states, will behave with properly knee-padded deference to President for Life Kim Jong Don. They see this as the greatest possible loss for the hated establishment, a draining of the swamp.

Those poor, dumb bastards. https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-takes-out-paul-ryan-and-its-going-to-be-a-civil-war

5. Eric Levitz: Why the GOP’s Campaign Against ‘Lyin’ Comey’ Makes No Sense

With the White House’s blessing, the Republican National Committee is launching a multifaceted campaign to rebrand George W. Bush’s deputy attorney general as “Lyin’ Comey.” The party is airing digital ads and dispersing talking points to Republican officials across the country.

This case is, of course, mendacious and absurd. Yes, Democrats (rightly) criticized Comey’s handling of the Clinton email investigation. But that is only relevant if Trump can credibly claim that he fired Comey in response to those complaints. And he can’t — both because he applauded the very action that Democrats criticized most, and because Trump has already said, on national television, that he fired Comey because he disapproved of the FBI’s Russia probe.

There is no “he said-he said” here. Trump might officially deny that he pressured Comey to drop his investigation into Flynn. But he’s made it perfectly clear that he thinks he had the right to do so. The substance of Trump’s dispute with Comey is not about whether he has tried to compromise the independence of federal law enforcement; it’s about whether federal law enforcement should be independent of his will. For legal and political reasons, Trump’s allies have tried to pretend they’re having the former argument. And to an extent, the mainstream media has followed suit — because if we all stopped pretending that there was any mystery about the president’s contempt for the rule of law, we’d have to confront the fact that one of America’s major political parties is actively helping a would-be authoritarian consolidate power over the Justice Department. And acknowledging that objective fact would make it quite difficult for mainstream news outlets to maintain their “objectivity.” http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/why-the-gops-campaign-against-lyin-comey-makes-no-sense.html

6. Jennifer Rubin: Paul Ryan is abandoning the ship before it sinks

House Speaker Paul Ryan’s departure makes his refusal to remove from committees characters such as Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) — who colluded with the White House in smearing the FBI and wrecking the intelligence-oversight system — all the more inexplicable. Why not take the heat to do the right thing, especially if Ryan is not going to run anyway? The lack of political courage still stuns onlookers who regarded Ryan at one time as a genuine policy wonk and serious leader.

In sum, Ryan retreats from the scene after loading the country up with debt and leaving virtually every other agenda item save tax cuts undone. He fantasized that in backing Trump, who lacks conservative principles (or any principles), he’d have carte blanche to enact the entire GOP agenda. He made his Faustian bargain with Trump on the false assumption that Trump would be compliant, take direction from House Republicans and demonstrate enough discipline to get through a slew of initiatives. That did not come to pass, because Ryan, in making his disastrous decision to place party over country and corporate tax cuts over defense of democratic values, failed to comprehend the depth of Trump’s unfitness and the centrality of character in determining a president’s success.

Instead of achieving the entire GOP agenda, Ryan will leave a besmirched legacy defined by his decision to back, enable and defend Trump, no matter how objectionable Trump’s rhetoric and conduct. Ryan has come to embody the nasty scourge of tribalism that dominates our politics. The inability to separate partisan loyalty from patriotic obligation — or to assess the interests of the country and the need to defend democratic norms and institutions — is proving to be the downfall of the Republican Party and the principal threat to our liberal (small “l”) democracy. And no one is more responsible for this than Ryan. No one. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/04/11/paul-ryan-is-abandoning-the-ship-before-it-sinks/

7. Paul Waldman: Trump's careening presidency

We've been told many times that "President Trump thrives on chaos." He likes things unpredictable, freewheeling, fast and loose. You never know what will happen, it's a crazy ride, but in the end everybody gets rich.

Except there's one person who doesn't want people to believe it. "So much Fake News about what is going on in the White House," the president tweeted at 6:38 a.m. Wednesday morning. "Very calm and calculated with a big focus on open and fair trade with China, the coming North Korea meeting and, of course, the vicious gas attack in Syria." Yes, if there's anything that characterizes this White House, it's that it's "Very calm and calculated." It may have sounded familiar, because a month ago Trump tweeted, "The new Fake News narrative is that there is CHAOS in the White House. Wrong! People will always come & go, and I want strong dialogue before making a final decision. I still have some people that I want to change (always seeking perfection). There is no Chaos, only great Energy!"

If that's the case, there is some seriously great "Energy" coming out of the White House right now. Recent departures include Trump's communications director, his national security adviser, his secretary of veterans affairs, his homeland security adviser, and probably a few more people nobody ever heard of. Meanwhile, his personal lawyer just had his home and office raided by federal agents, Trump's starting a trade war almost everybody thinks is a terrible idea, he's about to bomb Syria, and he's trying to figure out how to fire the special counsel while members of his own party tell him doing so would be "suicide" and "the beginning of the end of his presidency."

Funny how this pattern keeps repeating itself: Stories portraying the White House as a cauldron of backstabbing, resentment, and incompetence, where barely a week goes by without the departure of one or more senior aides, followed by the president's insistence that in fact everything is going great. http://theweek.com/articles/766728/trumps-careening-presidency

8. Joel Dodge: Paul 's final surrender

House Speaker Paul Ryan is retiring from Congress. In the process, he's throwing in the towel in one final act of reckoning with President Trump's takeover of the Republican Party.

Ryan's retirement can be seen through several lenses. Through one, he's taking his tax cut and going home. Cutting taxes on the rich had long been the motivating force in Ryan's political career. With that achieved, he can happily exit the stage. (Ryan's other wish to eviscerate health care and food stamps for the poor will remain a dream deferred.)

Through another lens, Ryan is running from the blue wave gathering across the country before this year's midterm election. Ryan was facing an unusually tough re-election challenge from Democrat Randy Bryce, an iron worker who goes by the Twitter handle "Iron Stache." Rather than face a humiliating career-ending loss, Ryan is quitting preemptively.

But perhaps most significantly, Ryan's retirement signals a surrender in an intra-party fight against Trumpism that had establishment conservatives already barely on life support. Throughout the 2016 campaign, Ryan agonized over Trump and kept him at arm's length, demanding that the wrecking ball candidate win Ryan's endorsement by demonstrating a commitment to small-government conservative principles. http://theweek.com/articles/766655/paul-ryans-final-surrender

9. Jennifer Rubin Newt Gingrich’s shameless smear of the FBI

Appearing on Fox News, Gingrich condemned the no-knock raids at Paul Manafort’s home and at the office, hotel and home of Michael Cohen, President Trump’s lawyer. The former speaker of the House declared, “It ain’t the rule of law when they kick in your door at 3 o’clock in the morning and you’re faced with armed men. And you have had no reason to be told you’re going to have that kind of treatment. That’s Stalin. That’s the Gestapo in Germany. That shouldn’t be the American FBI.”

That’s a disgraceful statement for two reasons. Let’s take the Gestapo part of it first.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, told me, “Newt Gingrich’s remarks comparing the Justice Department’s actions in executing a search warrant to ‘the Gestapo in Germany’ are deeply offensive, especially coming on Holocaust Remembrance Day, when we recall the campaign of Nazi atrocities against the Jewish people. There’s simply no comparing the actions of the Gestapo with America’s criminal justice system. This is an inappropriate trivialization of history.”

Gingrich says many foolish things, but the danger here is that the slavish viewers of Fox News, which includes the president, will absorb that Nazi-themed message and adopt it as their own. Soon, an entirely inappropriate analogy gets normalized. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/04/13/newt-gingrichs-shameless-smear-of-the-fbi/

10. Bess Levin: Trump Begs World Leaders To Let Him Back In Their Club

World leaders could be forgiven for sneering at Mr. Johnny-Come-Lately. It was not long ago that President Art of the Deal was raging against the T.P.P. deal as “a rape of our country” that he was as likely to join as to admit to golden showers with Russian prostitutes. Trump only seemed to undergo a change of heart after receiving a rude awakening last week—one that literally everyone warned would happen—when China responded to his tariff threat with its own tariffs targeting Trump-country products like soybeans and whiskey. With those constituents and congressional Republicans livid over this completely predictable turn of events, he’s now hoping that rejoining T.P.P. will help exert pressure on China, which was the point all along. Now, of course, the C.E.O. president is in a significantly worse negotiating position, though that hasn’t stopped him from acting like the 11 countries who’ve already struck a deal without the U.S. might suddenly come crawling back.

The Great Negotiator, in fact, seems to be making a habit of misunderstanding deals, making a hasty decision, and then trying to reverse course. According to Politico, Trump is so upset by the omnibus spending bill—which he reportedly didn’t read before signing—that he is “moving ahead with plans” to reopen the legislation to claw back some $60 billion. It’s unlikely to happen, and would barely put a dent in the $1.3 trillion bill, anyway, but that’s Trump: begging your negotiating partners to give you concessions after you’ve already given away the farm. Just like in The Art of the Deal. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/trump-begs-world-leaders-to-let-him-back-in-their-club

11.  Joe Scarborough: Trump’s miserable crew has never been so desperate

These are desperate times for the quislings of Trump. The cost of collaborating with President Trump in the continued debasement of American democracy is becoming far too high. Fifteen months into his presidency, Trump has seen a national security adviser, a former campaign chairman, a foreign policy adviser and another high-ranking campaign official face charges of serious crimes. This week, the president must have felt the walls closing in even more tightly around him when FBI agents searched the home, office and hotel room of his longtime personal lawyer, whom associates call Trump’s “fixer.”

The president’s response to the Michael Cohen search, duly authorized by an independent federal judge, was to reflexively trash law-enforcement officers, undermine the rule of law and slander a Vietnam War hero who has committed his adult life to the service of America. By now, of course, few should be surprised by the depths to which Trump sinks when attacking law enforcement personnel. But this week provided insight into just how desperate Trump and his courtiers have become in their defenses of an indefensible administration. The president promoted a Fox News show via Twitter that starred a steady stream of sycophants who slandered special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

Regardless how Mueller’s investigation ends, Trump will one day leave Washington. And when he does, the steady stream of attacks on Justice Department professionals, FBI agents and all the honorable men and women who daily defend Americans against enemies foreign and domestic will forever stain the reputations of Trump’s most shameless apologists. All this for a man who has spent decades showing loyalty to little else but his ravenous pursuit of money and fame. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-miserable-crew-has-never-been-so-desperate/2018/04/13/23198a90-3f43-11e8-974f-aacd97698cef_story.html

12.  John Cassidy: James Comey and Donald Trump Go to War

Referring to his one-on-one dinner with Trump on January 27, 2017, during which the new President told him, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty,” Comey recalls that it brought him right back to “The Ravenite. The Palma Boys. Café Giardino.” He writes, “To my mind, the demand was like Sammy the Bull’s Cosa Nostra induction ceremony—with Trump in the role of the family boss, asking me if I have what it takes to be a ‘made man’.”

The comparison between the Trump White House and an organized-crime family doesn’t end there. Comey recounts two more White House meetings that also left him feeling compromised. At a White House meeting that was attended by representatives of the intelligence agencies, Trump and his political advisers instigated a discussion about how to respond to the charges against Trump in the infamous dossier compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele. “Holy crap,” Comey writes, “they are trying to make each of us an ‘amica nostra’—a friend of ours. To draw us in. As crazy as it sounds, I suddenly had the feeling that, in the blink of an eye, the president-elect was trying to make us all part of the same family.”

With the Republican National Committee’s new “Lyin Comey” Web site, the Party’s media outriders at Fox News and elsewhere, and the tweets of the Commander-in-Chief, Trump and his circle will do all they can to discredit Comey in the coming days. But Trump’s approval ratings and the recent elections in Virginia and Pennsylvania suggest that the majority of the American public has already taken Comey’s message to heart, because it is so obviously true: “What is happening now is not normal. It is not fake news. It is not okay.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/james-comey-and-donald-trump-go-to-war

13. Michael D’Antonio: Trump’s mob mentality: Comey’s description of Trump is actually quite apt

Shockingly, the fact that we have reached the point where the nation's former top cop is publicly discussing the mob-like behavior of a sitting President became inevitable on election night 2016. And though the right-wing media is working overtime to call the Trump-godfather comparison obscene and histrionic, my time studying the Donald has taught me it's actually quite apt.

Seventy years old when he took office, Trump has long projected a menacing mobster/executive style. It was in the air all around him when we sat for eight hours of interviews in 2014 as I wrote my book, "Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success."

It starts with the look — the suits, the hair, the bodyguards — and extends to his penchant for tough-guy talk. Opponents get nasty nicknames like Crooked Hillary or Lyin' Ted or Crying Chuck and critics become assailants whom he promises to "hit back 10 times harder."

Though Trump considers this stance righteous, it is the attitude of a thug who intends to intimidate. Especially when the man doing the threatening is the most powerful person in the world.

In his life before the White House, Trump operated with the impulsive unpredictability of a Tony Soprano and prized, above all else, secrecy and loyalty.

And like a mobster, Trump surrounded himself not with top talent, as he has often claimed, but with a circle of needy sycophants who owed their existence, and their futures, to him. http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/trump-mob-mentality-article-1.3932779

14. Robert Reich: The truth about an untethered President Trump

The petulant adolescent in the White House — who has replaced most of the adults around him with raging sycophants and has demoted his chief of staff, John Kelly, to lapdog — lacks adequate supervision.

Before, he was merely petty and vindictive. He’d tweet nasty things about people he wanted to humiliate, like former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

Now his vindictiveness has turned cruel. After smearing FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe with unfounded allegations that he lied to investigators, the new Trump made sure McCabe was fired just days before he would have been eligible for a pension after more than twenty-one years of service.

Before, he was merely xenophobic. He’d call Mexicans murderers and rapists.

Now his xenophobia has turned belligerent. He’s sending thousands of National Guard troops to the Mexican border, even though illegal border crossings are at a record low.

And he’s starting a trade war against China.

China has been expropriating American intellectual property for years. But Trump isn’t even trying to negotiate a way out of this jam or build a coalition of other trading partners to pressure China. He’s just upping the ante — and, not incidentally, causing the stock market to go nuts.

But the most dangerous thing about the new Trump is his increased attacks on American democracy itself.

Start with a free press. Before, he just threw rhetorical bombshells at the Washington Post, CNN, and other outlets that criticized him.

Now he’s trying to penalize them financially, while bestowing benefits on outlets that praise him. https://www.salon.com/2018/04/16/the-truth-about-an-untethered-trump_partner/

15 Jonathan Chait: Michael Cohen and the Busting of the Trump Crime Family

One of the ways in which Trump’s business closely resembles organized crime is that, because it relies so heavily on morally and legally dubious business ventures, its human-resource strategy de-emphasizes qualifications and relies heavily on loyalty. Or, to put it differently, a person’s willingness to engage in, and keep one’s mouth shut about, Trump’s dubious activities is the most important qualification. This explains why Trump is not known for hiring bright young minds from leading business schools and relies so heavily on his children, as a mafia boss would. It also explains why he retained the legal (or quasi-legal) services of Michael Cohen, a graduate of the worst law school in the United States.

Trump has run his business like a mafia operation because maintaining secrecy is the paramount value. Despite the vast trove of public access to Trump’s endless public statements and colorful marital life, a huge amount of his work remains shrouded in secrecy, from his ties to La Cosa Nostra in the New York real-estate world to his casino business in Atlantic City, to his overseas business dealings and the tax returns he refuses to disclose. Mueller’s investigation probably will not result in the literal end of Trump’s presidency. (That would require 67 Senate votes to impeach, a highly improbable outcome.) But it will probably reveal whether he has run his business merely like a crime family or literally as one. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/michael-cohen-and-the-busting-of-the-trump-crime-family.html

16.  George Packer: Trump’s Erratic Threats to Bashar al-Assad

A few days before the latest gas attack, the President declared victory over the Islamic State and announced that the two thousand U.S. troops in would soon come home. Maybe he will have them march down Pennsylvania Avenue, past his reviewing stand, in the military parade planned for later this year. Trump had nothing to say about the fate of the Syrian Kurds and our other partner, the Free Syrian Army, or about the possible return of isis, or about the regional ambitions of Russia and Iran. The announcement came as a surprise to his generals. After nearly two decades of inconclusive wars in collapsed states, against elusive enemies backed by complex arrays of actors, our military leaders no longer think in terms of victory parades. They use phrases like “staying in the game” and “pursuing your objectives.” They are far too wised up to suit their shallow, fragile, ignorant Commander-in-Chief.

Trump’s taunts and reversals of the past week are the product of a character that we know too well. They also reflect deep American frustration with the limits of our power to win these wars or to end them. Hitting Assad now might bring a momentary sense of just deserts, but there is nothing to be proud of in Syria, and no American solution—not even for the gassing of children.  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/23/trumps-erratic-threats-to-bashar-al-assad