I think the collusion goes all the way up to Trump's back door.
It's been two weeks since the mess started and I haven't written a word about it. I figured that trillions of words were being written by so many others - no need for any additional verbiage from me.
But when I saw that photo of him wearing a yarmulke yesterday and standing before the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, I flipped.
No other sitting President has staged a photo op at this most sacred of sites in Jerusalem. And here, he has the nerve to do it. Give me a break. He is so decidedly not sacred.
Supposedly he was praying. I guess if I were facing the disaster that is his presidency right now, I'd be praying too.
Like so many people, I've been glued to MSNBC every night for two weeks, watching one red banner after another at the bottom of the TV screen, endless breaking news about Trump's attempts to quash the FBI's investigation into the collusion between his campaign and the Russians.
Each day he digs himself deeper into the morass.
And last night, The Washington Post's big scoop: Trump called on two top intelligence officers, asking them to deny evidence of collusion in last fall's election.
As MSNBC's Chris Matthews suggested, Trump has been trying to run the government as if it's one of his companies, with everyone working for him. When FBI Director James Comey refused to toe the line, Trump uttered two of his favorite words on TV: "You're fired!"
Well, it ain't working that way for him anymore.
Last night, MSNBC raised the obvious question: why is Trump trying so hard to suppress the investigation? Doesn't it make sense that he is personally responsible for the collusion?
It certainly makes sense to me.
Those of us who lived through Watergate can't help drawing connections between that momentous episode and the one unfolding with Trump.
I was a junior in college when Nixon tried unsuccessfully to fire those investigating his coverup. In a very real way, Watergate affected my life. I was a biology major, intending to apply to medical school But I was also keenly interested in journalism. (I worked at the campus radio station.)
In the summer of 1973, during the Watergate hearings, I was taking organic chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. That fall, I took a semester off, trying to decide if I really wanted to be pre-med. I spent the semester working as a secretary at a Berkeley hospital. Meanwhile, I interned at an alternative weekly magazine across the bay in San Francisco.
Little did I know that Richard Nixon's impeachment and resignation in the summer of 1974 -- my senior year at Brown -- would influence me so personally. Watergate was the reason I dropped the medical school idea. Watergate was the reason I believed so fervently in the power of journalism to change the world.
I came to see that reporters chasing good stories aren't typically motivated by such lofty ambitions.
But now and then, with some top notch investigative reporting, the media uncovers corruption or reveals some egregious violation of the law that affects million's of peoples' lives.
Watergate and Love Canal -- the uncovering of a massive toxic waste dump that sickened thousands in a Niagra Falls, New York neighborhood -- were two of those investigations.
At those moments, it give me such great pleasure to see the villains twisting in the wind.
Mr. Trump, hire some good lawyers for yourself. And prepare for your demise.
This post appeared first on The Huffington Post.
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