The Daily Fuckup: February 16, 2018 · The Daily Fuckup

Edition · February 16, 2018

The Daily Fuckup: February 16, 2018

Mueller’s Russia indictment landed with a thud of self-serving denial, while a fresh account of Karen McDougal’s alleged Trump affair and suppression scheme reopened the president’s favorite kind of mess: the kind that smells like coverup, money, and denial all at once.

February 16, 2018 delivered two Trump-world problems that fit the genre perfectly. First, special counsel Robert Mueller filed a sweeping indictment against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for election interference, and Trump immediately tried to turn it into a vindication tweet. Second, a fresh report on Karen McDougal’s alleged affair with Trump and the money used to keep it quiet shoved the president right back into questions about secret payments, suppressed stories, and what his orbit was doing during the campaign.

Closing take

The common thread here is not subtle: the Trump response machine keeps reaching for the same exhausted defense, even when the facts keep getting uglier. On a day when the Russia probe produced one of its biggest public actions yet, Trump chose triumphal denial; on a day when a new hush-money story resurfaced, the White House went with the usual fake-news shrug. That may be politically familiar, but it is not clean, and it is not getting cleaner.

Ranked by how bad the fuckup was

5 stars means maximum fallout. 1 star means a smaller self-own.

Story

Mueller’s Russia indictment gave Trump a chance to look serious. He went with ‘no collusion.’

No Collusion Spin Confidence 5/5

★★★★☆Fuckup rating 4/5 Serious fuckup

The special counsel’s indictment of 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities was the most concrete public evidence yet of the Kremlin-linked interference case. Trump’s immediate response was to declare victory and insist the indictment proved his campaign did nothing wrong, a move that undercut the gravity of the charges and handed critics an easy opening. The White House echoed the line almost instantly, deepening the sense that the president was treating a major national-security matter like a message-board fight.

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Story

Karen McDougal’s Trump story came roaring back, along with the old smell of hush money and coverup

Hush Money Echo Confidence 4/5

★★★☆☆Fuckup rating 3/5 Major mess

A new account of Karen McDougal’s alleged affair with Trump, and the payment used to keep her story from going public, put the White House back on defensive footing. The story revived questions about how Trump-world handled embarrassing women, who paid whom, and whether the campaign benefited from suppressing damaging material. Even in a country already numb to scandal, this is the kind of episode that makes “fake news” sound less like a defense than a reflex.

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