Jack Engelhard
Jack Engelhard’s classic international bestselling novel Indecent Proposal, which later became a worldwide hit movie, has been republished to meet readers’ demands. His other major works include Compulsive: A Novel, his award-winning post-Holocaust Montreal memoir Escape from Mount Moriah, plus Slot Attendant: A Novel About A Novelist. His website: www.jackengelhard.comOn Monday it was The Washington Post that found President Trump guilty of sharing classified (Israeli) intel with Russia.
Time for a special prosecutor howled Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Democrats. Indeed, a special counsel was picked today. He is Robert Mueller. He preceded James Comey as Director of the FBI. While he’s at it, at examining Trump and the Russians, perhaps he will also investigate Hillary Clinton and the Russians, like the uranium deal.
But it’s Trump they’re after. The Democrats are proving that even though they lost the White House and Congress, they still run the show. Bitterness can do that!
They can’t build, but they can destroy. They’ve got the media and they’ve got bottomless rage to damage Trump and the nation.
On Thursday it was The New York Times…so next, in blaring headlines, Trump is found guilty of asking Comey to quit probing Michael Flynn.
Obstruction of Justice, they cried.
Time to go directly for impeachment, they insisted.
That’s Franz Kafka’s world, where “the condemned man” is always guilty.
“My guiding principle is this,” says the executioner in Kafka’s The Penal Colony, “guilt is never to be doubted.”
Hang him high is what they want and from one nitpicking un-sourced headline to the nexty they are getting close...
This, ladies and gentlemen, is where we are in America today. Guilt is never to be doubted so far as Trump is concerned. They won’t give him a chance.
Hang him high is what they want and from one nitpicking un-sourced headline to the next they are getting close -- and even a special counsel won’t stop the kvetching.
Not that Trump is totally without fault.
First of all, his team is wildly out of sync. One day, for instance, The Western Wall isn’t part of sovereign Israel, next day it is; depends which one of his crew is talking, and personally I am not nuts about H.R. McMaster or Dina Powell at the national security office. That’s another story.
Trump’s story is that he never had time to enter the White House fully in command because…because he never expected to win the election.
For him, it was a lark. Let’s give it a try. See what happens. Well, it happened.
Something like it happened in the 1972 Robert Redford movie The Candidate, where Redford plays candidate for Senate Bill McKay.
After he wins, he asks his manager, “Now what do we do?” Trump has already done plenty of good but rates no attention and no credit.
Did Trump intend to obstruct? “This isn’t even close to a high crime and misdemeanor,” attorney Jonathan Turkey told Fox News.
At worst, Trump may have been too casual as likely he was too casual when he shared Israeli intelligence with Russia and may have harmed Israeli agents working undercover against ISIS. The Israelis are upset, but what’s done is done and the friendship will endure, as it must.
He did not, in my view, mean to impede the Flynn/Russia investigation, but only to share his concerns one pal to another.
My guess is that one fine day back in February, Trump ran into Comey and man to man, asked for a favor, Trump being Trump the dealmaker… Trump forgetting one detail, that this was the President of the United States talking to the Director of the FBI.
In New York, at Trump’s level, that’s how business is done. We talk. We schmooze. But Trump finds himself in an entirely different place, Washington, D.C.
That’s where it’s all about politics, a game even more brutal than business because it’s more than money; it’s about power. That’s how they keep score.
They lost Obama’s replacement, Hillary, and it’s got them hysterical to teach Trump, the outsider, a lesson he’ll never forget even if it takes them four to eight years.
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva. His books, including “The Bathsheba Deadline,” are available from Amazon and other retailers. Engelhard wrote the international bestseller “Indecent Proposal” and the award-winning Montreal memoir “Escape from Mount Moriah.” His latest is “News Anchor Sweetheart.” He is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com
