Donald Trump is suddenly looking like a very weak autocrat
Washington: President Donald Trump once again unleashed a fearsome barrage of tweets on Wednesday morning. The target was the New York Times' new report that intelligence officials have established contacts between Russian intelligence and Trump campaign officials during the campaign.
Trump attacked the news media again, railing that "the fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred." He also blasted the intelligence services, claiming that they are "illegally" giving information to the media, which, he opined, is "just like Russia."
This has become a pattern, in which Trump deals with setbacks by lashing out at other institutions, including ones that can function as a check on his power. When the courts blocked his immigration ban, he blasted both the courts and the news media for making us less safe, in what seemed to be designed to lay the groundwork to blame them for a future terrorist attack, a move that even some Republicans criticised for its authoritarian tendencies. This appeared to be a test run of sorts, in which Trump was experimenting with how far he could go in delegitimising the institutions that might act as a check on his power later.
But as a test run, for now, at least, it is failing. Trump's unchecked antics on multiple fronts are suddenly making him look like a very weak autocrat wannabe.
The Times' new report is actually pretty carefully drawn. It notes that phone records and intercepted calls show "repeated contacts" between members of the Trump campaign and "senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election."
These were discovered at around the time that evidence emerged that Russia was trying to interfere in the election. The report stressed that intelligence officials did not name particular Trump campaign officials, other than Paul Manafort, and have not seen evidence of collusion ("so far") designed to influence our political process.
