Trump Believers

Jonathan Chait is on to something in I'm a Peeliever and You Should Be Too.

And you should be too. On to something that is.

Chait sets forth 5 reasons to believe the pee tape is real. But the point is not whether or not there is a pee tape with compromising images of Trump, or some other tape. Assuming that Russia has first hand evidence of collaboration with Trump going back years, they don't really need such a tape.

But there is a certain fascination with this one item in the Steele dossier.

Public controversy over the dossier (which is not a dossier, but a compilation of raw intelligence) has taken the form of our usual political debates.

For Trump and his defenders, if any allegation in the dossier is false, then all of the allegations in the dossier are false. This is, of course a logical fallacy. But logical fallacies are the currency of the realm.

Like Chait, I too was originally skeptical of the pee tape. The claim did not fit in with the tone and substance of other items in the dossier and seemed like a possible planted item, perhaps by a Russian operative who suspected or learned other Russians were leaking information to Steele. Whatever.

But one aspect of the pee tape stood out. When an accusation is leveled at Trump, his immediate reaction is to deflect attention away from himself. Deny, deflect, distract and, often accuse. Accuse Hillary. Accuse Obama. And so on.

Surprisingly, Trump kept the attention on the pee tape by offering evidence to demonstrate why the accusation was false. That behavior by Trump was shocking. Yet few, if any, news organizations caught on. Trump's failure to distract attention attention signals an important difference about the pee tape. Perhaps the accusation is true. Or, not true, but there is an underlying truth that the Russian government has different recorded evidence of misbehavior by Trump showing more disgusting behavior.

And, as a matter of interest, Trump reacted surprisingly to another Steele "dossier" allegation, presenting "evidence" that Michael Cohen never went to Prague in the summer of 2016 because he had examined Cohen's passport himself (never mind that Cohen could have multiple passports or that Cohen could travel to Prague on the ground and not have a passport stamp. The fact of Trump presenting "evidence" rather than dismissing the allegation out of hand is a tell, a giant red flag.

And now, apparently, there may be evidence that Cohen went to Prague after all.