As is frequently said in Washington, it's not the crime but the coverup that gets you. It's looking like that theory is going to be tested sooner than anyone might have expected, in the Donald Trump administration. No matter what happens now, they may have already done permanent damage to themselves in the eyes of the American public. The underlying theme of Trump being no more than a stooge for Russia's Vladimir Putin seems to be growing by the day, at this point. Which means that everything they do to fight this image is going to have the flavor of "Methinks they doth protest too much" about it. At this point, they can't avoid it.

We've now entered into the freewheeling phase of political scandal where everything gets tossed at the wall just to see what sticks. We've already had one prominent Trump administration official step down amid allegations of inappropriate contacts with Russia -- and then lying about it, even to Vice President Mike Pence. Now we've got another high Trump official who is currently dancing around "it depends what your definition of 'is' is" Clintonesque statements, in an effort to explain why he was just misleading Congress under oath, and not actually lying and committing perjury to them. And once again, team Trump appears completely blindsided by the entire crisis -- apparently they only heard about Jeff Sessions having meetings with the Russian ambassador by reading them in the newspaper like everyone else. This brings up the real possibility that Sessions -- like Michael Flynn before him -- has previously lied to the White House about the existence of such meetings. Which, if you'll recall, was the reason why Flynn was fired.

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President Donald Trump's first speech to Congress and to the American public was not a disaster of epic proportions. Normally, I wouldn't begin a speech review with such a statement, but with Trump, the possibility always exists (see: Trump's first press conference). Trump managed to clear the bar of "speaks like the public wants to hear a president speak, and not like an enraged adolescent on the playground." Again, for any other president this bar wouldn't even be mentioned, because it has never been an issue before now. Because it was Donald Trump, however, much of the audience watching the speech breathed a sigh of relief that Trump finally managed to "look presidential."

Grading Trump's first big speech has to be split into two different categories. Now, much of the mainstream media chose to focus solely on the first aspect of Trump's speech: style. Precious little attention was paid to the substance of the speech, which is why I'm saving it for last in my own review. Suffice it to say for now that I think Trump did much better on style than on substance.

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I should begin by stating that I'm writing this before President Donald Trump gives his first almost-but-not-quite State Of The Union speech (historically, the first such speech isn't officially given the S.O.T.U. title). So anything he says in his speech tonight that contradicts this article can't be avoided. Just to point it out, up front.

The Trump White House released its first hints of a budget proposal yesterday, and in doing so they masterfully trolled pretty much the entire mainstream media. The first thing everyone focused on was the proposal to boost military spending by $54 billion, or ten percent. But the other focus was successfully manipulated by the White House to "journalists" who seem absolutely incapable of doing basic math. Get that -- the Trump team is outdoing someone else on lack of math skills! Really thought that would have proven impossible to accomplish, but here we are.

The Trump White House spin was that they'd be paying for their big boost to Pentagon dollars by cutting other spending in the federal budget. The trolling happened when they dangled a few programs which would be first on the chopping block. The result was that virtually every media report about the budget proposal said something like: "and Trump will be saving an equal amount of money by making cuts in the State Department, foreign aid, and the E.P.A." Few media reports gave any context to this statement, and the ones that bothered to dig deeper somehow came up with "these agencies will be subject to deep cuts -- as deep as 30 percent!"

Sigh.

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The Democratic National Committee met this weekend and elected as its new chairman Tom Perez, who narrowly beat out Keith Ellison on the second round of voting. It was the most contentious race for party chair seen in decades, so the first challenge Perez is going to face is whether he can quickly achieve any sort of party unity before the big push for the midterm elections gets underway. He's got his work cut out for him, but the bigger question is whether he'll be an effective party leader for the Democrats, and whether he can reverse the slide in the party's relative strength both nationwide and at the state and local level.

This is a lot to ask of anyone. Normally, party chairs are (somewhat mockingly) called "fundraisers-in-chief," since a big part of their job is keeping the party's campaign chest full, by convincing the big donors to keep the money flowing in. But these are not normal times, and that's before even considering the Trump effect. Even if a run-of-the-mill Republican were in the Oval Office right now, Democrats would still have no real visible leader. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are the closest thing to party leaders the Democrats have, but they don't exactly personify where the energy is in the party right now. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren clearly lead one wing of the Democratic Party, but they can't realistically be called the outright leaders of the entire party either. All of this puts much more weight on the shoulders of the D.N.C. chair, elevating the position to more prominence than just being the best at shaking down big donors on a regular basis.

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That question is becoming more and more acute for the rest of the world, in reference to President Donald Trump versus the rest of the Trump administration. If you were the foreign minister from a country in Europe, for example, would you believe what Trump says about American policy towards Europe and Russia, or would you believe his minions, such as the Vice President Mike Pence or Secretary of State Rex Tillerson? This dilemma could become a sort of low-level ongoing crisis, since Trump's comments are so far removed from what others in his administration are saying. Who are you going to believe? The boss, or the underling who is making much more sense? That's a pretty risky geopolitical gamble to make, no matter which side you choose to believe.

Since the Trump regime assumed office, the president has disparaged NATO (as he had repeatedly done on the campaign trail). This had to be walked back by Pence, who assured European leaders that Trump really didn't mean what he said. The Europeans are awfully nervous about Russia, and every time the Trump-Putin bromance gets chummier, they get more worried. Tillerson and Pence both tried to reassure the Europeans, but skepticism remains high that they don't truly speak for the president. Understandably so.

Tillerson went down to Mexico this week to make a desperate attempt at healing wounds south of the border. He immediately had to walk back a statement by Trump that deportations were proceeding as "a military operation." Tillerson was left to weakly insist that of course this wasn't true, and the U.S. military wouldn't be rounding people up in America. Again, who would you believe?

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I thought I'd take a little break from politics today to address some scientific news. Astronomers recently announced (with much fanfare) that they had identified a planetary system with seven possible Earthlike planets orbiting it. This, inevitably, gave rise to claims such as "[it] could be the best place in the galaxy to search for life beyond Earth." That's a pretty superlative statement, but we'll ignore it for now (hey, even scientists like to create media buzz, right?). Because in all the stories I read about the discovery, there was a significant lack of some necessary context. Namely, the sheer distances involved.

The planetary system is being called TRAPPIST-1, for the telescope they used to discover it. Now, they really had to stretch the whole "making an acronym" rules here, since the telescope is named (with the odd capitalization you'd need) the "TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope." It gets even more amusing, since the Belgian researchers are planning to look for similar planets in a project they've called SPECULOOS (also the name of a Belgian cookie): the "Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtracOOl Stars." As one article noted wryly, pointing out the fact that Belgians also love Trappist beer, the researchers' "next effort will have to be called WAFFLES."

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There are two things currently happening in the world of Democratic and progressive politics, which are happening independently of each other, for the most part. This weekend, the Democratic National Committee will meet to elect a new chair. Meanwhile, out in the hinterlands, the progressive wave of energy and resistance to Donald Trump and his agenda shows no signs of abating. But I would extend a word of caution to whomever becomes the next D.N.C. chair: Don't attempt to corral or co-opt the burgeoning Indivisible movement -- instead, just do your damnedest to fulfill their expectations.

Although the new movement is only one month old (like Trump's presidency, which is no coincidence), it's already had an impact on the national political debate. Establishment Democrats, so far, are caught between hoping the movement sustains its energy all the way to the midterm congressional elections and worrying about how to "harness" the movement for their own ends. This is the very same dilemma the Republican Party faced when the Tea Party began (although I'm not suggesting Indivisible is a complete parallel or mirror-image of the Tea Party, because it's so early that it's impossible to make such comparisons). But Democrats should be worrying more about living up to the movement's goals than somehow grabbing the reins of the movement in any way.

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[Program Note: Since yesterday was a holiday for others, and yet I still wrote a new article, I decided to take today off to deal with a lot of other chores that had been building up, chez Weigant. In place of a new column, here is a Presidents' Day column from a number of years ago. Enjoy, and regular columns will resume tomorrow.]

Originally Published February 21, 2011

Happy Presidents' Day, everyone!

The two formerly-individual holidays celebrating Washington's Birthday and Lincoln's Birthday have been merged into a single federal holiday -- a holiday which, while intended to honor both Washington and Lincoln, has now become somewhat "genericized" (in name, at least) into a celebration of all our presidents. But what about the forgotten presidents? [Or, to be scrupulously accurate, "presidents"?]

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Since it is Presidents' Day (or whatever else you call today, apostrophized or not), I thought I'd take it easy on our current president, and take a break from the regular ridicule I've been heaping upon him since he was sworn in. Today's supposed to be a noble holiday, after all, so I thought I'd make an extra effort at evenhandedness, and take a look back through history at some of the rocky starts various American presidents have had on the job.

Donald Trump has unquestionably had a rocky start. But he certainly hasn't faced the worst rocky start of any president in history, not by a long shot. Abraham Lincoln wins this honor hands-down, since the crisis started before he was even sworn in. Between Lincoln's Election Day and his Inauguration Day, seven Southern states seceded from the Union. Lincoln was sworn in on March 4, 1861, and five weeks later Fort Sumter happened, officially kicking off the Civil War. One certainly hopes that no other United States president ever has such a rocky start to his or her term, that's for sure.

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Before we begin, two quick notes. That subtitle above isn't ours, but when we heard what CNN's Brian Stelter called the hot mess we saw yesterday, we had to agree it was the perfect description. Stress conference indeed! Secondly, our opening metaphor to describe our own personal reaction is going to need a rather roundabout explanation, just to warn everyone in advance.

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