Since we've already established that Trump subcontracts his thinking and policy decisions to his media buddies, let's look at what his longtime pal Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy suggests he do in the face of Robert Mueller closing in on him.
Of course, Ruddy isn't going to let some television time pass without doing the typical conservative obfuscation of the facts, as hard as Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter tries to contextualize them.
My favorite part is the metaphorical pearl-clutching of how irresponsible news outlets aren't waiting for evidence before running inflammatory highly partisan stories. I mean, what kind of scumbuckets do that?
But more relevant to the near future is what Chris Ruddy whispered into Trump's ear at Mar-a-lago last night over dinner, as he admits to doing regularly. And that's how to handle the fall out of Mueller's investigation.
Note that there's an implicit understanding that no good will come of this investigation. Of course Ruddy and everyone else in front of the camera defending him KNOW that Trump is guilty of corruption, collusion, violations of many laws and of personally enriching himself.
To Ruddy, the question then becomes "Which tactic should Trump take?" Should he think that the country is more important than him and resign, as Nixon did? Or should he pretend to be unaware of the lawlessness surrounding him and let everyone else take the fall, as Reagan did?
Ruddy's suggestion: Reagan, naturally.
"I don't think he should fire Robert Mueller or Rosenstein. You know, there's two ways of a president approaching an investigation like this. One is the Nixon model. You know, Nixon didn't know about the burglary, he didn't order it. Yet he got involved in the investigation. He fired the prosecutor. It did not end up well for him.
The Reagan model, 26 indictments and plea agreements of officials, Reagan stayed completely out of it. He remained popular the whole time. My view is, the president should wall himself off from this. None of the crimes that have been involved so far with Mueller involve his campaign or impact him. The president should stay away from it.
If, at the end of these prosecutions, the president feels some of these people have been mistreated, or the investigations have been unfair, he can always exercise a pardon, just like elder Bush did, Bush 43 did with the commutation of Scooter Libby.
And so it goes. Republicans don't care about integrity or lawfulness. Just walling themselves off from it.
