The White House is a big mess, which isn’t really much of a change from what it has been since the beginning of Trump’s presidency. However, the past few days have been especially hectic. Here are a few things you might have missed.
1. Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen have been convicted.
Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and Trump lawyer Michael Cohen have both been convicted for their crimes. Manafort has worked for a number of different powerful people and has been accused of helping Putin’s government and their U.S. interests, thus making him one of the main suspects in the Trump-Russia connection. On top of these allegations, Manafort has been convicted on counts of tax fraud, hiding foreign bank accounts, and bank fraud.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, admitted to taking money from Trump to cover up the President’s affairs with two women, one of whom was Stormy Daniels. Along with taking this hush money, Cohen has also pleaded guilty to tax evasion and bank fraud.
2. Omarosa’s memoir
In her new memoir, Unhinged, former White House adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman has finally admitted that Trump is a racist (not that we needed her memoir to know that). In the memoir, Manigault Newman recounts that Trump has been caught saying racial slurs on multiple occasions. Furthermore, Trump has added insult to injury by referring to Omarosa as a “lowlife” and a “dog” in a recent tweet. When asked if there were tapes of Trump uttering racial slurs, White House press secretary said that she “couldn’t be sure.”
3. Trump may have had an affair with his former housekeeper.
This is incredibly recent news and has yet to be proven. However, a former Trump World Tower doorman, Dino Sajudin, says he has knowledge of the affair, which resulted in a child. Sajudin was under a contract with American Media Inc., which kept him from telling anyone about the alleged affair. Now that Sajudin has been freed from the contract, he is free to talk about it, and CNN even got a copy of the contract between Sajudin and AMI. Whether the affair is true or not is yet to be confirmed; however, the fact that possible rumors could be spread in the first place says a lot about Trump’s character.
Though these three points may not seem like a lot, the implications they offer towards Trump’s character are large. It is clear that President Trump will do anything to stay in power, and he even comes out of scandals unscathed. Whether that’s his privilege as a white man in power, or his having hoards of people that are willing to lie for him, Trump is not the kind of person that America should be led by. He has made that incredibly clear, but it seems nothing can get in his way. Trump’s role as president says a lot about the role of privilege in America, and it creates an awful dynamic between people who are in power and people who are under that power.