The Bully-in-Chief Remains as Predictable as Ever

At the beginning of the year I wrote a post predicting what Donald Trump will do next. Sadly, recent events are proving me right. I have no special psychic ability, but I’ve studied bullies for a long time and I know what a bully does when cornered. Like all bullies, the more Trump has his back pushed against the wall, the more he lashes out. His latest Tweet storm is ample proof of that.

Today his son-in-law Jared Kushner, was interviewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee.  Trump’s son Donald Jr., and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort have also struck an agreement to be privately interviewed by the Committee. Clearly things are getting uncomfortable for the current resident of the White House.

This leads me to two new predictions:

1.     Someone close to Trump will throw him under the bus. Trump is bully who leads a collection of bullying toadies. When bullies get threatened, they lash out.

2.     Trump will soon replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions with someone who can influence the course of the Russia investigation. Trump’s inquiry about pardoning himself makes it clear that he’s getting desperate.

To find out what will happen we only have to stay tuned, but one thing is for sure—the behavior of bullies, and the Bully-in-Chief, will always be predictable.

Andrew Faas is the author of From Bully to Bull’s-Eye: Move Your Organization Out of the Line of Fire

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Understanding the Magnitsky Act is a Must for U.S. Citizens

Maybe he was overly eager to please his bullying father. Maybe he thought that the rules didn’t apply to him. Or maybe he was just ignorant, but clearly Donald Trump Jr. didn’t give it much thought when he approached a foreign national for “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

Who would have thought that the “smoking gun” would come from the Trumps themselves?

There’s an excellent piece on NPR by Jim Zarroli about the British-born music promoter, Rob Goldstone, who set up the meeting between Don Jr. and a Russian lawyer with Kremlin connections. The meeting wasn’t terribly clandestine considering that former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and brother-in-law Jared Kushner also attended and it was held at a Trump property.

At that meeting, the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, mentioned a few things about campaign funding in the Democratic party, then tried to change the subject to the Magnitsky Act and the banned U.S. adoption of Russian children. Goldstone says, “at which point the meeting was halted by Don Jr. and we left.”

Junior’s lack of interest in the welfare of children aside, what is really interesting here is the Magnitsky Act. It was named after the Russian attorney of author Bill Browder whose highly acclaimed book, Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice (Simon & Schuster; 2015) details the corruption and murderous heart of the Putin regime.

The Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act was passed in 2012 to punish the Russian officials responsible for Sergei Magnitsky’s horrific torture and death by prohibiting their entrance to the U.S. and access to American banks. The book details the background to this Act. The Washington Post said, “[A] riveting account of Browder’s journey through the early years of Russian capitalism….Begins as a bildungsroman and ends as Greek tragedy…. ‘Russian stories never have happy endings,’ Magnitsky tells Browder, in the book’s most memorable line. Perhaps not, but they do have inspiring ones.”

For anyone who wants the big picture on the Russia situation, this is a must-read.

Photo credit: Reuter's