An incompetent Nixon, but with less charm.

Yeah, but Nixon was like, super-guilty, wasn't he? I ask because the President made a weird comparison on twitter wherein he's Nixon and I'm not sure he wasn't to be Nixon.

You know, because he was indeed a crook and
we've been kicking him around for forty years.

Pictured: Donald McGahn II and his
actual hair. I'm not kidding, that's real.

It all started last week when the New York Times reported that White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn II was cooperating with-wait, II? As in the second? Isn't that just junior? Huh...I guess he must be fancy. Anyway, they reported that Donald F. McGahn the younger was cooperating with the Mueller investigation because, you know, the law. He answered questions related to the firing of James Comey and how Russia basically owns us now. The little details that led us to the preposterous situation we now find ourselves in.

He also discussed with Mueller how much the President would like to fire him and shut down the investigation. Something innocent people totally do, and something I'm sure was probably awkward for McGahn.

"Really? Fire me? Whatever will I do?"

-Robert Mueller mentally calculating

his speaking fees and book deal

"If you're planning to testify please queue
up here. If you have secret recordings
please use the starboard lifeboats.
That's it, nice and orderly now."

Holy shit, right? Well, who knows? On the one hand I think we're all hopeful that this is the thing that finally brings this truly bizarre season of The Celebrity Apprentice we've been watching these last twenty months to an end. On the other hand, according to the Times, McGahn has been cooperating for the last nine months so if there is some explosive piece of damning evidence, you'd think we'd have heard about it by now. But whatever it is, there is a sense that this is another example of a Trump loyalist seeing reason and grabbing a lifeboat while there's still time.

Whichever it is I think, and I should preface this with 'I'm not a lawyer,' but whichever this is the thing for the President to do is keep his mouth shut, right? Again, I'm not an expert, but is anyone else convinced that this is all going to end in months of hearings where every single tweet this man has made since Twitter was a thing gets read into evidence? So obviously he started tapping out reactions:

Now it may look like the President of America can't spell the thing that's investigating
him for collusion and obstruction of justice, but that's just because you hate America.
The President, and a small group of people know exactly what 'Councel' means. 

Rats: you can't even trust them
to conceal your crimes...

So the guy John Dean 'ratted out' would be Nixon and he didn't so much as rat Nixon out as he testified against him to the Senate Watergate Committee because he was pretty sure Nixon was going to screw him first. Also, is the President unfamiliar with the colloquial use of the term rat? Does he think it means 'to cooperate with investigators'? Is that, to him, a character flaw? Trump's saying that McGahn is actually testifying-which he's not, is he? Isn't he just being interviewed by the Special Counsel?

If anything, shouldn't Trump be
asking Dean for advice on how
to not go to prison?

I think that's different but whatever. He's saying that McGahn is cooperating with Mueller because he, Trump, is allowing him to. John Dean,who-yes of course he's chiming in on this, Trump just called him a rat. He says that there's no indication whatsoever that Trump told McGahn to cooperate and that there's no reason to believe the administration has a clue about what he's told Mueller and I don't know, I think I'd be inclined to trust his assessment since he once was part of an actual cover up. He knows how it's done.

Here's what Dean had to say-and yes, all future political discourse will be twitter based. Rome had the forum, we have 280 characters, all caps and emoji.

He didn't enter the White House
graciously so at least he's consistent.

So really unless that legal-sized notepad
is just full of McGahn's Teenwolf fan fic,
he's giving Mueller something good.

Later, on CNN, he said that there's basically no way McGahn talking to Mueller is going to be good for the President:

"I can tell you this, even if he didn't go in with the intent to incriminate the President, even giving...just putting everything into a timeline for the Special Counsel is just invaluable information."

-John Dean, on the phone with CNN,

 presumably through a shit-eating grin

Yeah, but is it any less realistic
than what actually happened?

Look, we all, regardless of our politics, want this to be over. For Trump and his fans, the hope is that he'll be exonerated so that he can get back to the business of being terrible at his job. For the rest of us, we're hoping to watch as he's escorted from the White House in disgrace. And then, since we're just spitballing here, maybe then the woman most of us voted for could finally be sworn in? You know, like in a democracy? Ok, neither of those scenarios are terribly realistic, but at least we can agree on that first part, right?

But can't we also agree that cooperating with authorities investigating a possible crime and in this case, a pretty goddamn serious one, isn't the same thing as ratting someone out? That it's actually more like, you know, the thing you're supposed to do?

...well? No? Yeah, I didn't think so.