Yesterday I said Team Trump might have allowed this tape (or a summary of it) into the public sphere because it *knew* the tape would get out eventually and wanted to start spinning now. It appears I was right. This is a desperate gambit you only use when there's no other option.
2/ Giuliani has made clear that Trump is guided by Brett Kavanagh's theory: the only way to remove a president is by a political battle the president loses, with *no* input from any ongoing criminal investigation. Trump will selectively leak because it's all politics to him, now.
3/ The good news for America is that there *is* an ongoing investigation against Donald Trump—and one way or another the results of that investigation *will* be released to the public. And the American public *will* react to that investigation through its elected representatives.
4/ What all this means is the Russia issue and Trump's pre-election election crimes are connected—inasmuch as they're all part of a desperate political battle that Donald Trump and his legal team are now waging against Americans and their common sense about what/how criminals do.
5/ The narrative Trump is building with the Cohen tape is that he's just a normally flawed person who has been betrayed by his attorney and is being judged for things many politicians before him have done. Don't be fooled—Donald Trump is one of American history's great criminals.
