Donald Trump Tweet Rants

Opinion in The Washington Post by David Von Drehle 

Robert Mueller is circling the Donald Trump campaign's connections with Vladimir Putin and Russia ~ a potentially treasonous affiliation.  If Donald Trump were innocent of illegal behavior, he'd have already been vindicated.

Unbelievably, Donald Trump's erratic Tweeting increases the appearance of his guilt in Russian compliance in his illegal election. If Donald Trump were innocent of invoking Russian interference in the American government, the fact is, he'd have already been vindicated. It's impossible to believe that Donald Trump is innocent of obstruction of justice and conspiring with Russia to illegally influence the 2016 American election. If Donald Trump were innocent, he would've been vindicated before now. Instead, the circle of conspiratorial and treasonous guilt continues to tighten around his administration.

Donald Trump! If you're innocent, why do you act so guilty?

Donald Trump protests his innocence with intensity worthy of Alfred Dreyfus (Alfred Dreyfus was a French artillery officer whose trial and conviction in 1894, on charges of treason, became one of the most tense political dramas in modern French history with a wide echo in all Europe.)

Donald Trump says he's the victim of a “hoax,” a “fraud,” a “witch hunt.” After the Justice Department announced the indictment of 13 Russians, including an oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, for meddling in Trump’s favor during the 2016 election, he nearly melted his phone as he furiously published an epic of self-exonerating tweets.

You or I might do exactly the same thing if we found ourselves targets of an unjust investigation. Few experiences are more maddening than to be wrongfully accused, whether the alleged offense is taking money from your brother’s sock drawer, flirting with a stranger at the Christmas party, cheating on a test or cooperating with foreign agents to improve your chances of winning the White House.

But as Queen Gertrude observed to Hamlet, “the lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Surprising as this is in a veteran of showbiz, Trump seems not to understand how a close-up magnifies every gesture. His jumpiness around the subject of Russia; his hand-wringing over ways to end the investigation; his rhetorical flop-sweat at the mention of the letters F, B and I — all these and more have his audience thinking: Gee, for an innocent man he sure does act guilty.

In the classic film “Rope,” Alfred Hitchcock has a pair of clever young men serve drinks to their professor over a trunk stuffed with their murder victim’s corpse. The tension comes from the professor’s slow discovery of their crime. A remake with Trump in the leading role would open with him tweeting: “There’s NOTHING in the TRUNK!”