All Bets are Off

Wednesday was a big news day. We were intrigued by the celebrity college admissions cheating scandal. There was a Boeing 737 Max plane down in Ethiopia. Our own FAA kept American carriers’ Boeings in the air, and to show confidence, the head of the FAA climbed on board one for a flight.

 Wednesday morning, President Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort was found guilty on eight counts of conspiracy and given a piggyback sentence which, with prison time he’d just been handed on other counts, amounts to more than seven years behind bars. 

Moments later, New York authorities announced new charges filed against Manafort that would be potentially damaging to Mr. Trump.

Within an hour, a different FAA official (the sudden “acting head”) suggested that new evidence warranted grounding the entire US fleet of Boeing Max planes. President Trump straightened his necktie and jumped on television to address the nation with the announcement. 

The eerily convenient timing of the FAA about-face and Trump’s television address bumped the Manafort story out of top position on the news channels. And it bought Mr. Trump time. At a press conference following his speech, most of the questions to the president had to do with airline safety and Boeing. One reporter did ask if Mr. Trump was planning on pardoning Mr. Manafort.

“I haven’t even given it a thought as of this moment,” the president replied firmly. “It is not something on my mind.”

Of course it was on his mind. And of course he will pardon Mr. Manafort, unless Manafort chooses to tell prosecutors things about Mr. Trump that would jeopardize the president or bring Congress closer to impeaching him, an action House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has publicly discouraged. (There’s not telling why she’s taken this position, as by every indication, she’s a Trump anti-fan and would love to see him impeached.) If Manafort gives Trump-related information to New York prosecutors in exchange for a reduced sentence, he will join the long list of former Trump loyalists who defected Trump-dom and found themselves in purgatory or worse. Trump is all about loyalty and allegiance—not to America, but to him personally. 

But Manafort will not give up Trump. Because he knows he's being pardoned. And Trump absolutely will pardon Manafort. It's gotten too hot in the kitchen for Trump's handlers to allow him not to, even if the optics are awful and it's politically damaging to Mr. Trump. 

About those optics:

The pardon will happen on a Sunday, sometime late afternoon, after the Sunday morning news shows and probably during the afternoon sports broadcasts. It'll be too late for the evening network on the east coast. ABC, NBC and CBS will do a second, updated version of their broadcasts for the west coast, as happens when a big story is developing and a three-hour-old report is creaky and out-of-date. But Fox News, CNN and MSNBC will be in repeats and documentaries for the evening. The story will still get attention the following day, but it'll be a full news cycle old at that point.

The pardon will come just after the New York court finds Manafort guilty of some of all of the charges he’s facing, and will probably be just before a predictable "other" positive news story from the White House. 

If not on a Sunday, it will be first thing Friday before the 8:30am announcement of a favorable jobs report.

Or that’s what would happen in 2019 in a White House running according to expectations and with a savvy understanding of internet/news media and how to promote or bury a story. 

But we do not have a predictable White House. 

The most volatile and (some would say) dangerous thing in the west wing weights 6.2 ounces and fits in the President’s hand. It’s his iPhone X. And it’s connected to the Internet. And Twitter is on the Internet. And while Trump’s announcement of the FAA pulling the Boeing fleet was executed slickly and with marvelous timing, the grown-ups at the White House can’t count on being lucky twice in a row with our president when he has time to stew on things and has that damned phone in his hand.

So all bets are off. More to come.