Transcript

(drumbeats)

I'm Keith Olbermann and this is the Resistance.

Donald Trump, America's foremost Richard Nixon impersonator,

just as Nixon could not stop bringing up Watergate

to insist everybody should stop talking about Watergate

ensuring everybody kept talking about Watergate,

Trump brought up Russia and the Russian Facebook ads

and the Steele dossier six times last weekend to insist

everything was discredited and a plot and everybody should

stop talking about Russia, ensuring everybody will keep

talking about Russia.

And just as it never dawned on Nixon

that if his administration paid the legal fees,

or paid anything else, to men and women accused of,

or suspected of, committing possible crimes on his behalf,

or just witnessing them, the payments could, themselves,

become their own problem and help cost him his Presidency.

Trump has reportedly set out to do

almost exactly the same thing.

The payments first.

The Republican National Committee confirms

it has paid $430,000 worth of legal fees for Trump

and his son, Uday, I'm sorry, Don, Jr.

Axios.com quotes a White House source who says,

Trump won't repay the Republicans for that

but has instead pledged to pay the same amount,

quoting Axios' source, To defray the costs

of legal fees for his associates,

including former and current White House aides.

What's that called again?

When there's a criminal investigation

and one possible perpetrator gives money

to other possible perpetrators or witnesses

in the same case on whatever pretext?

What does that sound like to you?

When John Dean went into the Oval Office

on March 21st, 1973 to try to scare Richard Nixon

into calling off the Watergate cover-up,

he explained that Watergate burglar Howard Hunt

was blackmailing the White House for,

among other things, legal fees.

This was when Dean spoke his famous words,

We have a cancer within, close to the Presidency

that's growing, and said, These people are gonna cost

a million dollars over the next two years.

Nixon, John Dean tells me now, had long before proposed

to John Ehrlichman and Bob Haldeman that they should

establish a legal defense fund for the Watergate burglars,

publicly announcing that everybody deserved a lawyer,

but instead of bringing that idea back,

or instead of saying we have to stop this cover-up,

instead of deflating the most memorable quote

from the White House tapes,

what Nixon actually told John was, quote,

We could get that.

You could get a million dollars

and you could get it in cash.

I know where it could be gotten.

In today's case of Trump and Russia,

we know where it could be gotten.

From Donald Trump's pocket.

Holy crap, he may manage to clean up the legalities here,

but this is still tantamount to hush money,

and what's worse is it might work,

except there's one guy who won't hush.

Who, every time the Trump/Russia scandal fades into

the background, keeps reminding us about Russia

and the Steele dossier and the Facebook ads

and all the rest.

And that one guy is Donald Trump.

In just over 34 hours, starting Friday morning,

Trump tweeted six times in reference to Russia.

In them, twice referring to the Steele dossier,

twice to the Facebook ads,

twice to Hillary Clinton,

twice, erroneously, to people taking the Fifth Amendment,

and once implying that the FBI and the Democrats

and the Russians made the Steele dossier up.

In other words, don't believe this nonsense

that somebody in this country could have

colluded with the Russians to sabotage our election.

Instead, believe this other nonsense

that somebody in this country could have colluded

with the Russians to sabotage our election.

The I'm rubber, you're glue Presidential defense.

In a previous commentary, I suggested that Trump,

like a desperate child,

has to keep bringing the subject up,

keep shouting those key words

that he should never speak again:

Russia, hacking, Assange, Putin,

until he can presumably convince himself that he has

convinced everyone everywhere that none of it is true.

He could not make it look more like

he is covering up something, something horrifying,

if he hung a sign around his neck reading cover-up.

It is madness and it will destroy him.

That previous commentary was from the 10th of January.

And every time since then, when the investigation

or the story has seemed to droop,

Trump has revivified it.

Firing Comey, meeting with Russians in the Oval Office

and telling him he fired Comey.

Threatening Comey with apparently nonexistent tapes,

weighing in on or reportedly dictating his son's

misleading denial about the Veselnitskaya meeting.

And now legal fees and/or hush money, for possible

defendants or witnesses in the Russian scandal

and six tweets alluding to Russia

and two specifically about the Steele dossier.

The Steele dossier, which has that part about the,

(deliberately mumbles) tape.

The (deliberately mumbles) tape about which Trump

kept telling Comey he needed to be cleared.

You saw what John Schindler,

the former NSA and Naval War College figure,

wrote about the dossier and the

(deliberately mumbles) tape, right?

Though the specific, quote, 'pee-pee tape' claim

is viewed with derision by most Western spies

who know the Russians.

It's very likely that the Kremlin possesses kompromat

on the president, senior intelligence sources from

several countries have confirmed to me

that unpleasant videos of Trump exist.

Unpleasant.

So, Trump keeps bringing up Russia.

Why on Earth?

It is imperative to remember a little noted story

from the New York Times that Trump's attorneys

particularly the guy with the mustache, Ty Cobb,

the genius who held an extensive conversation

with another Trump lawyer about the case over lunch

at a popular Washington bistro without ever noticing

that the guy at the next table from them

was a reporter from the Times.

This Ty Cobb guy has reportedly kept telling Trump

that if he cooperates with Robert Mueller's investigation,

Trump will get what he most desires:

an official, public, permanent, everlasting statement

that he's not being investigated about Russia.

And by extension, that the Steele dossier

and the thing in the Steele dossier,

the (deliberately mumbles) tape are not true.

The topic Trump cannot leave alone,

cannot quit while he's merely behind,

and not yet, you know, impeached.

$430,000 for other people's attorneys

and for their sake, let's hope they get better

attorneys than Ty Cobb.

Resist.

Remove.

Peace.

This all might be explained by the title of my new book.

Trump is F'ing Crazy is now available in stores

and online and without a prescription.