Trump Is Basically Just Admitting to Collusion with Russia Now

This has been an absolutely terrible week for the commander-in-chief. First, his former campaign manager lost his plea deal with Robert Mueller because Paul Manafort lied to the special counsel. Next, we learned that Manafort was sharing some information with Trump’s lawyers—not only compromising Mueller’s end of the case (as Trump’s lawyers could glean insight into where he’s looking and prepare a defense)—but potentially Trump’s as well (the flip side is that some communication between Trump’s lawyers and Manafort is no longer protected by their joint defense agreement, meaning that Mueller could potentially probe some of Trump’s legal team’s communications).

Then, Trump’s former fixer/lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to lying to congress about Trump’s attempt to do business in Russia during the 2016 campaign. BuzzFeed News’ ace reporting team of Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold uncovered in May much of what Cohen pleaded guilty to this week, and their new scoop this week detailed a plan to give Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse for free in Trump Tower Moscow.

This is what Trump’s denials to all the Russia stuff have sounded like prior to this week.

Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017

Not only was this sentiment clearly betrayed by tweets like this to Russian oligarchs in 2013:

@AgalarovAras I had a great weekend with you and your family. You have done a FANTASTIC job. TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next. EMIN was WOW!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2013

But now, Trump is basically just straight up telling us what his plan was.

A key line from President Trump’s gaggle with reporters: “There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would have gotten back into the business, and why should I lose lots of opportunities?”

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) November 29, 2018

This morning brought even more honesty on the part of the president, as he tried his hand at sarcasm.

Oh, I get it! I am a very good developer, happily living my life, when I see our Country going in the wrong direction (to put it mildly). Against all odds, I decide to run for President & continue to run my business-very legal & very cool, talked about it on the campaign trail…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2018

….Lightly looked at doing a building somewhere in Russia. Put up zero money, zero guarantees and didn’t do the project. Witch Hunt!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2018

This is objectively hilarious. Trump has spent an entire lifetime doing business with organized crime figures, and all he had to do to get away with it was not become president. Paul Manafort spent his whole career being the foot soldier for war criminals across the globe, and he would have retired comfortably in the Hamptons if he just hadn’t won a presidential election. The Trump-Russia saga is important because it provides key insight into how important crooked money is to the economy (especially real estate in major cities across the world), and the lesson we are learning from it is all you need to do to get away with it is not rise to a position of democratic power.

That Trump is now basically admitting to colluding with Russia over his business interests (his side of the deal, it doesn’t take a genius to see Paul Manafort’s “how do we get whole” text to Oleg Deripaska, one of Putin’s favorite oligarchs, and the subsequent attacks on the DNC to know what Russia’s side of the deal looked like) tells you how out in the open this stuff really is. If we truly want to rid our economy of crooked real estate developers working with figures connected to organized crime, Mueller’s task force should stay around far longer than just President Trump’s investigation. This is but one piece of a much larger global con.

Jacob Weindling is a staff writer for Paste politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling.