JOHN DEAN ON TRUMP.

I heard John Dean on a podcast. His view is that Trump is more Nixonian than Nixon in that he only exhibits the dark side of Nixon.  He went on to say he uses Prof, MacGregor's typologies in evaluating Presidents on character. Trump is essentially an "active-negative" President, the worse kind.

He says he doesn't think that Trump will be impeached and that the possibility will only occur if the Democrats take the 2018 elections. I would add a note that Nate Silver says that Democratic voting is up but not among African-Americans.  So Dean's "Hope" may not come about.

Dean says the Republican congress doesn't want to engage in any oversight. The only hope is the courts. 

Dean does say ,however,that in a moment of constitutional crisis like Trump ignoring a court order, 70% of Americans will go for law while 30% will remain as "authoritarians". 

Dean said the only good note is that Trump can't get deputy secretaries,almost 500 of them to fill spots. Why is this important is that these people give the instructions to career people. So far career people are carrying out Obama's policies. However, a Trump budget will change things. 

Today in the Washington Post, there was a piece on that budget eliminating civil rights divisions across the federal government. Civil rights will not be a priority anymore. 

This is already true on immigration issues where what we are seeing is a demographic change in the U.S. by exponentially more deportations of Hispanics. It is so bad that Joaquin Castro went to Mexico to interview veterans in our military who have been deported. Today a federal judge in Hawaii tried to prevent a successful immigrant businessman from being deported saying "it is no longer bad hombres who are being deported". In fact successful immigrants are being deported as  comfort to Trump's base. The "Other" who took your job.

What Dean and others don't register is the air of illegitimacy that hangs over this President. And that is becoming obvious every day. James Clapper this weekend said he did not have all the facts on Trump's collusion with the Russians. And then without being asked,he said that he also did not have the means to evaluate how they manipulated the vote.  The media has ignored this issue since the day of the election. Clapper's comments suggest it was done.

John Dean said something disturbing . he said we have alot of cover up but it is unclear whether anything was done illegally. He thought Kushner's request of the Russian ambassador to communicate on a consulate facility was not illegal. He said Trump and his WH staff are creating problems for themselves. He says having a Special Counsel hanging over an entire Presidency is debilitating.

Dean said that the WH counsel was able but only in the area of campaign law. But that he talked with Nina Totenberg who said he has assembled a staff of lawyers who took large pay cuts to serve and all known as significant lawyers in town.

It seemed the only hope Dean offered was that Trump is so disorganized that much of what he proposes can not be done.