trump catch all about his actions - part 4

Poor trump it seems his Vice President is making plans for 2020 without trump being part of them.

Problem is if trump goes down for Russia he's taking Mike Pence with him.  If it's found the trump campaign colluded with Russia there is no way Pence didn't know anything about it.

Its like Captain America told Nick Fury in Captain America Winter Soldier.  If Hydra goes down so does SHEILD because there is no way of knowing what has been contaminated or something like that.   In other words whatever Pence says you won't be able to trust it.   Not something you want in a President. 


The Plum Line Opinion
Is Mike Pence betting it will all come crashing down on Trump?
By Sarah Posner July 10 at 3:19 PM

Vice President Mike Pence is spending considerable time cultivating big-money Republican donors at small, private events, including hedge fund managers and executives from brokerage houses, chemical giants, and defense contractors, Ken Vogel reports at the New York Times. Many of these events, whose participants are kept secret from the media and are omitted from Pence’s public schedule, have been taking place at the vice-presidential residence at the Naval Observatory, as well as other non-government venues.

While cultivating support from deep-pocketed business interests is nothing new in GOP politics, Pence’s activities raise the question of whether he is doing this for Trump-Pence 2020 — or for himself. As Vogel’s piece points out, Pence’s intimate confabs with wealthy donors and conservative power brokers “have fueled speculation among Republican insiders that he is laying the foundation for his own political future, independent from Mr. Trump.”

All of this suggests something important about Trump. Despite Pence’s protestations to the contrary, the vice president looks to be preparing for his own political future. Beyond this clear signal about his own political ambitions, Pence’s actions raise the question of whether he has lost confidence in Trump’s ability to come out of the Russia investigation unscathed.

This is not the first time that Pence, in his short tenure as Trump’s vice president, has sparked chatter about his political ambitions — unyoked from Trump. In May, Pence filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission, forming his own political action committee, the Great America Committee, marking “the first time a sitting vice president has formed such a separate political arm,” NBC reported at the time.

The Great America Committee is apparently not wasting any time. Vogel reports that last Thursday, it “held a reception for prospective donors at the Washington offices of the powerful lobbying firm BGR.”

In holding donor events, Great America Committee will do nothing to quell speculation about Pence’s intentions.  

  
Pence filed the paperwork on May 17, eight days after Trump fired FBI director James Comey, and the same day that deputy attorney general Rod J. Rosenstein appointed Robert S. Mueller III special counsel in the Russia investigation. Indeed, the two weeks before Pence filed the Great America papers were rife with some of the most explosive news stories about the Russia scandal to date.

To review: On May 8, former acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the White House kept former national security adviser Mike Flynn for 18 days after she told the White House counsel that he was vulnerable to Russian blackmail. (Pence has always sought to distance himself from the Flynn affair: After Trump asked for Flynn’s resignation in February, Pence maintained that Flynn misled him about the conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, playing the part of the duped, but loyal, soldier.)

Then, after that Yates testimony on May 8, Trump engaged in probably the most self-destructive sequence of actions of his presidency. On May 9, he fired Comey. The next day, he met with Kislyak and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in the Oval Office, telling them that firing the “real nut job” Comey had eased “great pressure” on him from the Russia investigation. And the day after that, Trump admitted on national television that he had fired Comey because of the “Russia thing.” Finally, on May 11, Trump posted his tweet hinting that he may have recorded his conversations with Comey. (He didn’t.)

One week later, Pence filed the Great America Committee papers, marking his break with the traditional arrangement for political fundraising between presidents and vice-presidents.

The traditional arrangement is based on the expectation that the president and vice president will together run for reelection. But Pence’s activities seem to signal doubts about whether there will even be a Trump-Pence ticket to run in 2020. We are not yet six months into Trump’s term, and each new revelation in the burgeoning Russia investigation seems to heighten the possibility that Trump could either no longer be president, or at least no longer be a viable reelection candidate, in 2020.