GRABBING SMOKE

During the  2016 presidential campaign, one of the problems that the media had in covering candidate Donald Trump was that there were so many potential issues in his past that could reveal him as being a poor candidate for president: from the fact that he and his father were found guilty by the federal government of discriminating against black applicants at one of their properties back in the 1970's, to his multiple bankruptcies, to the blatant chicanery of Trump University, there was too much to cover properly, and emphasizing just one of them was difficult.  This stood in stark contrast to candidate Hillary Clinton, who had to field numerous questions about her emails time and time again; the effect of this was that to the casual news media consumer, the email scandal was far worse than anything in Trump's past because of the media's emphasis on it.  Add to that Trump's  image as a super successful billionaire that he had carefully cultivated over his years as a reality TV show figure, and its sadly easy to see why Trump was able to skate over his many past transgressions, without even the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape stopping him.
Now that he's president, the media is having the same problem of overload; here are some recent examples of Trump's potential scandals:

- He recently tweeted that he wanted to help out Chinese telecom company ZTE, saying that were “Too many jobs in China lost."  This came after a Trump backed company was pledged with a five hundred million dollar loan from the Chinese government, which Paul Krugman in the New York Times said may be an outright bribe.

- He also reportedly pushed the postmaster general, Megan Brennan, to double the rates that the Postal Service charges the online company Amazon for shipping.  It appears that the main reason he's doing this is because Amazon owner Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post, a newspaper that has the temerity to print the truth about him.  In other words, since he can't directly attack freedom of the press, he will work around it to punish anyone who prints anything negative about him.

-At the gathering in Israel to celebrate the relocation of the American Embassy to Jerusalem, the opening prayer was given by Robert Jeffress, a Dallas megachurch pastor,  who once said that "Islam, Judaism,  and Hinduism” lead people “to an eternity of separation from God in Hell.” The closing benediction was given by John Hagee, who once said that Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews to their ancestral homeland.

Given that none of these scandals have risen to the level of coverage that the Russia investigation and the Stormy Daniels affair have, it is highly likely that once again Trump has  gotten away with corrupt and possibly criminal behavior that no other president has come close to getting away with. (It's depressing to consider just how much of a media storm it would have caused if Barack Obama had tweeted about protecting jobs in China while president!) Sadly, Trump has never had to pay for all the corruption and lies he was involved in before he became president, and he may never as president.  I still often feel that this country may not survive this presidency intact.