Im-Politic: Fin de Trump? Again?

Tags

2016 election, Donald Trump Jr., establishment, healthcare, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jared Kushner, Mitch McConnell, Paul Manafort, Paul Ryan, Republicans, Russia, Russiagate, Trade, Trump, Vladimir Putin

The latest Trump-Russia revelations make me feel like the Bill Murray character in “Groundhog Day.” I’ve already written posts to the effect that “[Candidate] Trump could really be in trouble this time.” I’ve also already written posts to the effect that “[Candidate] Trump could really be in trouble and this time it could be different.” Like practically everyone else I read and communicate with, I’ve been wrong on these scores, but I’ll be plowing the same fields again – if only because the circumstances are so extraordinary, and especially because so much is still unknown.

First, my bottom lines: I remain skeptical that the emails Donald Trump, Jr. released yesterday (after he was told they’d be published) will result in the end of his father’s presidency in any direct sense (i.e., impeachment and removal, or resignation). I remain equally skeptical of meaningful (and I know that’s an important qualifier, as I’ll discuss below) Trump-ian collusion with Russia’s government (which includes lots of operatives without official positions) to undermine his chief presidential opponent Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

I am, however, more convinced than I had been that what is different about the newest disclosures is that Washington will remain preoccupied with “Russiagate” for most of the rest of the President’s (first?) term, that they’ve just about ruled out any meaningful policy accomplishments through 2020, and that one reason is that Mr. Trump will have bigger reasons than ever to toe a standard Republican establishment policy line that’s highly unpopular even with his own base, but that’s still gospel with a Washington wing of the party whose loyalty is vital to his survival.

Second, let’s knock down the main talking points offered by Mr. Trump’s aides and other supporters (full disclosure: I support much of his agenda, and most of his establishment-bashing). As should be obvious, the failure of the Russian lawyer actually to produce any damaging information on the Clinton campaign does not absolve the president’s son – or son-in-law cum adviser Jared Kushner, or then campaign manager Paul Manafort, of the charges that they tried to cooperate with foreign agents to affect an American political campaign (the heart of the politically salient collusion charge).

The email exchange showed that this information was the principal reason that all three figures attended the meeting. Their motives are completely unaffected by the false pretenses under which they acted.

Just as obvious, and just as bogus, is Trump, Jr.’s claim that he and his colleagues viewed an offer from Russia as nothing special because the Russia-gate charges had not proliferated. Manafort, for example, formally joined the Trump campaign manager on March 29. Certainly by May 2 – a month before Trump, Jr. first heard about the supposed Russian information – Manafort’s longstanding lobbying for pro-Russia politicians in Ukraine was making news. As a result, even if the president’s son was politically inexperienced enough not to recognize the potential dangers, Manafort himself, a veteran Washington operative, surely knew the score.

Even more important, the Russia business ties of Trump, Sr. himself were being scrutinized and fretted about at least as early as March 15.

Have any laws been broken? Beats me. That’s now officially the responsibility of Robert Mueller, te Justice Department’s Special Counsel, to determine. But much of this uncertainty centers on how much is known about this meeting, and how much is known about similar activities. Further, neither impeachment nor the future of the Trump presidency will necessarily hinge on such legal questions. A president, as I’ve noted previously, can be impeached for anything the House of Representatives believes satisfies the definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” – which itself is a political, not a legal, concept. The Senate, moreover, can remove a president from office for equally political reasons.

So public opinion will be crucial. There are no signs yet that Russia-related charges have significantly damaged President Trump’s support either with the general public or among Republicans. But the more such Russia-related material keeps coming out, the likelier such erosion becomes.

Nor will the president’s political support depend completely, or even largely, on politicians’ often less than steely backbones. The new Trump, Jr. emails – and the continuing and utter failure of anyone in the Trump circle (including the president himself) to provide straight, durable answers to perfectly reasonable questions – understandably revive questions of how extensively individuals associated in any significant way with Mr. Trump or his campaign worked with the Russian government to sway election results.

Until yesterday, as I’ve written, I’ve felt confident that no important collusion evidence would emerge because none had yet been leaked – even though the matter had been probed for months by several official and many unofficial investigations, and even though bureaucrats at the highest levels have been positively eager to reveal incriminating Trump information even if national security could be undermined.

In addition, it’s never been clear to me why Russian interference with the election ever required cooperation from the Trump campaign – or any other American source. As long as Moscow was so motivated, its formidable hacking and disinformation capabilities were amply capable of producing the desired results on their own. Moreover, the U.S. intelligence community’s January report on the Russian interference campaign itself reported that Russian leader Vladimir Putin was wary of praising candidate Trump too enthusiastically precisely for fear of generating a backlash.

At the same time, even the canniest political leaders and other figures don’t always behave logically or sensibly. It’s also now clear at least that many in the Trump circle have been less than canny or, when it comes to explaining controversial events, even minimally competent. As a result, as stated above, there’s now indisputable evidence of receptivity to collusion by three extremely influential Trump aides (including two family members).

If the June Trump, Jr. meeting represents the extent of the collusion, there’s still an excellent chance that the president ultimately will survive the Russia mess. After all, what kind of (serious) collusion effort, once started, would feature no follow up? But because no one close to Mr. Trump now enjoys (or deserves) much credibility on these matters outside hardcore Trump-supporter circles, Democrats now have the pretext they need to force the administration to keep trying to prove a negative – a challenge no one should relish. Special Counsel Mueller has a comparable justification for prolonging his own investigation considerably.

Yet even before the possible crumbling of the president’s political support, for either legal or political reasons or some combination of the two, the Trump administration’s Russia-related problems could profoundly impact the nation’s policy agenda – and not in a good way if you’ve hoped Mr. Trump would be an agent of serious change. Here’s what I mean.

Recall that last year, Mr. Trump did not simply assume the leadership of the Republican party after winning its presidential primaries. He engineered a hostile takeover, supplanting a party mainstream that strongly opposed him on his two signature issues – trade and immigration policies. The shocking Trump fall victory, however, gave the incoming president crucial leverage in this relationship, and for a very powerful, concrete reason. The Republicans’ establishment leaders in Congress gave his campaign, and especially the inroads he made with new constituencies, abundant credit for saving the party’s control of both the House and Senate.

Once the Russia-gate charges and Team Trump’s failures to address them adequately began gaining critical mass, though, the dynamics of this relationship began changing dramatically. President Trump’s future became more dependent on the establishment GOP’s support. Therefore, he needed to warm to its establishment agenda – notably their budget and healthcare proposals – despite the poor poll numbers they’ve been drawing. Additionally, his ability to reach across the aisle on promising areas of bipartisan agreement, like infrastructure, turned into a function of the overall party’s flexibility – which seems pretty limited to date.

Since such vast new – and, due to the Trump circle’s constantly changing responses, legitimate – investigative frontiers have been opened up by the new emails, the Trump wagon now looks to be hitched to the Congressional Republican star more tightly than ever. That’s not to say that House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will never stray from their party’s orthodoxy. McConnell, at least, has hinted that bipartisan compromise may be needed on healthcare. Moreover, the party establishment is by no means united on all major issues, either. Consequently, intra-party divisions may widen the scope for bipartisanship (as has generally been the case to avoid or mitigate various budget crises).

But the main point here is that at this point, these decisions are likeliest to be driven by the establishment, not the president. And the tragedy, at least for anyone rooting for the president or any of his agenda, is how many of the resulting White House political and policy wounds will have been entirely self-inflicted.

Im-Politic: Deconstructing Obstruction of Justice

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Constitution, Dianne Feinstein, FBI, high crimes and misdemeanors, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, impeachment, James Comey, James Lankford, James Risch, Marco Rubio, Michael J. Flynn, obstruction of justice, removal, Russiagate, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Trump

There have been so many important economic and foreign policy stories to write about these days, and certainly RealityChek will be covering lots of them. But this of course is #ComeyDay, as they’ve said on Twitter, and I thought the most useful item I could post today would focus on one of the central questions raised by the Russiagate controversy: Has President Trump committed an impeachable offense?

Before beginning, though, it’s vital to recognize that although the Constitution provides for impeachment (and removal – they’re two separate matters) of government officials, including the president, on the grounds of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the Framers never defined this term. Not surprisingly, legal specialists have made any number of convincing arguments for infusing these words with some specific content. But at least based on this Congressional Research Service survey, the consensus seems to be that “high crimes etc” mean anything that a majority of the House of Representatives (which impeaches) and two-thirds of the Senate (which conducts the trial, and whose guilty verdict on any specific charges, or “articles” results in removal from office) believe it means.

So legally and Constitutionally speaking, the debate on whether the president is guilty of the specific crime of obstruction of justice is beside the point. Politically speaking, though, finding this kind of actual violation of criminal law would make impeachment and removal votes much easier to justify for lawmakers when they face the electorate.

The main evidence so far in favor of an obstruction charge consists of two claims made by Comey under oath in his opening statement today to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. First, according to the former FBI Director, in a one-on-one February 14 Oval Office meeting, Mr. Trump made the following comments about the bureau’s probe of former White House national security adviser Michael J. Flynn:

“‘He is a good guy and has been through a lot.’” He repeated that Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong on his calls with the Russians, but had misled the Vice President. He then said, ‘I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.’”

Second, in phone calls with the president on March 30 and April 11, Comey said Mr. Trump referred to a “cloud” that was undermining presidency’s agenda that he wanted Comey’s help in lifting. In the first phone call, according to Comey,

“the President called me at the FBI. He described the Russia investigation as ‘a cloud’ that was impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country. He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia. He asked what we could do to ‘lift the cloud.’ I responded that we were investigating the matter as quickly as we could, and that there would be great benefit, if we didn’t find anything, to our having done the work well. He agreed, but then re-emphasized the problems this was causing him.”

Comey added that President Trump “finished by stressing “the cloud” that was interfering with his ability to make deals for the country and said he hoped I could find a way to get out that he wasn’t being investigated.”

In the April 11 call, Comey stated that Mr. Trump

“asked what I had done about his request that I ‘get out’ that he is not personally under investigation. I replied that I had passed his request to the Acting Deputy Attorney General, but I had not heard back. He replied that ‘the cloud’ was getting in the way of his ability to do his job. He said that perhaps he would have his people reach out to the Acting Deputy Attorney General. I said that was the way his request should be handled. I said the White House Counsel should contact the leadership of DOJ to make the request, which was the traditional channel.”

It seems clear, therefore, that the “cloud” references concerned the president’s belief that Comey should have informed the public that he personally was not being investigated by the FBI for anything. That is, it had nothing to do with the Russiagate investigation or the separate Flynn investigation. And responding to separate questions from California Democrat Dianne Feinstein and Florida Republican Marco Rubio, Comey explicitly agreed.

The question still remains, however, of whether Mr. Trump’s Flynn comments constitute obstruction. At this point, definitive answers aren’t possible. For one, the president’s personal attorney has denied Comey’s claim that any such Flynn-related statements were made at all. For another, as all the legal community seems to agree, obstruction of justice is a complicated act consisting of numerous criteria that need to be met. But what’s certainly noteworthy for the time being is what Comey himself has said about the matter – and what he hasn’t said.

It’s important to observe that Comey at one point did indeed tell the Senate panel, that although he found the Flynn remarks “very disturbing, very concerning,” he also said

“I don’t think it’s for me to say whether the conversation I had with the president was an effort to obstruct….that’s a conclusion I’m sure the special counsel will work towards to try and understand what the intention was there, and whether that’s an offense. “

Considering Comey’s willingness to expound at great length last July on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s innocence of the charge of criminally mishandling classified information on her personal server, that sounds coy at very best.

In addition, Comey was given repeated chances to characterize the Flynn statements as obstruction. For instance, Idaho Republican James Risch asked him whether the president “directed” or “ordered” him to “let it go.” Comey responded, respectively, “Not in his words, no” and “those words were not an order.”

Comey then added that “I took it as a direction” because “this is a president of the United States with me alone saying I hope this. I took it as, this is what he wants me to do. I didn’t obey that, but that’s the way I took it.”

Also pertinent: In response to a question from Rubio, Comey said that President Trump never asked him to “let go” the Flynn investigation after the February 14 meeting. Moreover, Comey told Republican James Lankford of Oklahoma that neither any White House nor Justice Department staffers, nor the heads of any of the intelligence agencies ever mentioned to him dropping the Flynn probe.

As Lankford concluded: “The key aspect here is if this seems to be something the president is trying to get you to drop it, it seems like a light touch to drop it, to bring it up at that point, the day after he had just fired Flynn, to come back here and say, I hope we can let this go, then it never reappears again.”

Keeping in mind that other shoes could always drop, that’s an observation I hope will remain front and center as the Russiagate probes – and press coverage – drag on.

Im-Politic: Why Russiagate Could be a Never-Ending Story

Tags

2016 election, Daniel Coats, Democrats, FBI, Im-Politic, intelligence, intelligence community, James Comey, Mark Warner, Michael S. Rogers, National Security Agency, Russiagate, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Trump

This morning’s Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearings on some of the Russiagate scandal charges preoccupying Washington remind Americans once again how determined most Democrats are to continue what looks like a politically inspired, open-ended fishing expedition.

Don’t get me wrong: Russia’s interference with the 2016 presidential election (and apparently others before it) is a national security threat of the first order. Stronger official U.S. responses than we’ve gotten so far are essential. Moreover, since any Russian cooperation offered on common problems such as fighting terrorism isn’t an act of charity, and serves Russian interests, such sanctions need not upend such joint efforts.

At the same time, the intelligence community issued the public version of what it’s discovered months ago. It’s fine for Congress to conduct its own probes, but it’s unclear what Capitol Hill will find out about Moscow’s meddling that the CIA etc don’t already know.

In addition, of course it’s essential to know if President Trump or anyone connected with him or his campaign “colluded” with the Russians in this election interference, or if the chief executive and/or associates has tried to impede the executive branch probe of this subject that are underway. It’s also clear that not all the facts are in – or at least publicly divulged.

But I’m more convinced than ever that Democrats generally, for the foreseeable future, aren’t likely to take any official “No’s” for answers having just seen Virginia Senator Mark Warner query National Security Agency chief Admiral Michael S. Rogers and Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats on reports that Mr. Trump tried to persuade them, respectively, to deny the existence of any collusion, and to intervene with Trump-fired FBI chief James Comey to “back off” an aspect of the agency’s Russiagate work.

After all, as I’ve written, though the Russiagate uproar has now lasted for months. But although President Trump’s opponents in the intelligence community clearly have absolutely no compunction about leaking the most sensitive national security material to cripple his administration, they’ve produced absolutely nothing in the way of a collusion smoking gun.

Today, Warner directly asked Rogers and Coats to confirm or deny those Trump interference charges – which of course raises the question of whether from now on, taxpayer funds are going to be spent running down every anonymously sourced allegation produced by every organ of the Mainstream Media. But whether you think this is a good use of lawmakers’ time or not, bear in mind how Rogers and Coats answered: Although both refused to disclose the details of any specific conversations they’ve had with the president, both also denied ever in their careers (including this year) having been asked or pressured to do anything improper regarding an investigation in progress.

Warner’s response? (And he’s far from one of the Democratic Party’s Maxine Waters-like yahoos.) “[H]e was ‘disappointed’ with the officials’ answers. He told Rogers the committee had ‘facts’ that other individuals were aware of his conversation with Trump and that a memo had been written about it.” But did Warner then go on to reveal those “facts”? No.

On Thursday of course Comey himself will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee. In fact, the panel has just released his opening statement. My first read – and the reaction of the Twitterverse, for what it’s worth? No smoking gun confirming obstruction of justice charges – though Comey did describe his view of a key conversation with the president as “very concerning.” No matter. Based on his performance today, I expect Mark Warner and most of the rest of his party to make sure that Russiagate remains the (manufactured) political gift that keeps on giving.

Im-Politic: Initial Thoughts on the Trump Wars

Tags

2016 election, Andrew McCabe, Director of National Intelligence, FBI, hacking, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, impeachment, intelligence community, James Clapper, James Comey, John McCain, Justice Department, Lindsey Graham, Loretta Lynch, Michael T. Flynn, Richard M. Nixon, Russia, Russiagate, Sally Yates, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Trump, Wategate

Since I’m not a Trump or intelligence community insider, I’ve refrained from posting any items on the last crisis that began surrounding the administration starting with the president’s firing of James Comey as FBI Director. (I have commented on some aspects briefly on Twitter.) But since I’m a strong supporter of many positions championed by Mr. Trump both during the campaign and – to a lesser extent – in the White House, I thought that RealityChek readers would be interested in some observations about aspects of the uproar that deserve more consideration.

First and most important: Both current and former officials in the federal bureaucracy and even the intelligence community clearly hope to end the Trump presidency, and have decided to leak to the equally anti-Trump Mainstream Media even the most highly classified material if it’s judged to be potentially harmful to the president. Yet no leaks have revealed any evidence supporting the central allegation against the president: the charge that he or close aides colluded in any way with Russian efforts to fix the presidential election in his favor.

Given that the president’s foes long viewed the prospect of his victory with alarm, and given that they have sought to de-legitimize this victory since it unfolded the evening of last November 8, the absence of such a smoking gun after so many months is absolutely startling. If this evidence exists, what are President Trump’s adversaries waiting for?

P.S. – this argument pertains to retired General Michael T. Flynn, who advised candidate Trump and briefly became his White House national security adviser. Flynn has certainly acted in several instances like he’s had something (or things) to hide. But he’s been tracked for months by intelligence officials who – again – have been anything but reluctant to make troubling findings public. And nothing has emerged pointing to working with Russia to undermine the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

One possible explanation? Many anti-Trump-ers are waiting for the 2018 mid-term elections to get closer and closer, in order to boost the chances of a Democratic landslide before the administration had a chance to rebut the charges conclusively – and before Congressional Republicans have a chance to dissociate themselves from Mr. Trump. And maybe they’re being joined by some establishment Republicans, who hope to recapture their party from the Trump-ist forces. And maybe both factions are motivated mainly by the belief that Mr. Trump is such an unprecedented danger to the republic that any means are warranted to remove him from the Oval Office.

If so, however, some big legal issues pop up.  For instance:  Are individuals privy to information about crimes – and in fact major crimes – withholding them from law enforcement authorities? 

Second: Not only has no evidence of collusion been leaked. The former head of the entire intelligence community has just made clear that, during his own prolonged probe of Russia’s efforts to interfere with the election (a related but clearly separate issue, for which strong evidence exists), he saw none.

In March, James Clapper, who resigned as Director of National Intelligence soon after the election, had tantalizingly hinted at the existence of such material by telling a reporter that the intelligence community “did not include any evidence” in its January report on the Russian campaign “that had anything, that had any reflection of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. There was no evidence of that included in our report.”

But when pressed by “Meet the Press” anchor Chuck Todd to confirm whether such evidence existed, Clapper responded, “Not to my knowledge.” And when asked under oath in Senate testimony on three months later whether that statement was still accurate, Clapper stated, “It is.” In other words, Clapper’s probe, which reflected the work of 16 intelligence agencies including his own Director’s office uncovered no collusion evidence.

The issue was briefly muddied during that same hearing by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. Like Clapper, an Obama administration appointee to her latest position, Yates initially answered the question about collusion by demurring. She explained that her “answer to that question would require me to reveal classified information. And so, I — I can’t answer that.”

As noted by questioner Senator Lindsey Graham – no admirer of President Trump – the FBI that Yates helped supervise as the second-in-command at the Justice Department was part of Clapper’s Russia investigation. After Yates indicated that the FBI was conducting its own separate counter-intelligence inquiry into Russia’s activities, Graham asked Clapper if the evidence found by the Bureau at that time “was not mature enough” to justify including in the broader intelligence community report.

Responded Clapper: “[T]he evidence, if there was any, didn’t reach the evidentiary bar in terms of the level of confidence that we were striving for in that intelligence community assessment.”

So again, a protracted look into Russia’s Election 2016 hacking produced no evidence of collusion that the intelligence community as a whole believed was solid enough to justify even hinting at in its publicly stated conclusions.

Third: One highly damaging allegation that’s been made over the last week was the Washington Post‘s claim that Comey requested more resources from the Justice Department for his investigation just before he was fired. The clear implication: The president became convinced that Comey was ramping up his investigation – which began in July – and decided to fire him in order to deny him the funds needed to do the job adequately. Such an action, of course, would at least strongly resemble obstruction of justice.

This article, however, too, looks fishy. Post reporter Ashley Parker did include an on-the-record flat Justice Department denial, but needless to say, government spokespersons lie or dissemble all the time. Much more difficult to dismiss: Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe – who had been Comey’s former top deputy – stated in his own sworn testimony to Congress that he was unaware of any such request.

Yes, it’s true that Comey might have made the request without telling McCabe. But how much sense does that make? Nor can anyone accuse McCabe of being a Trump toady. His wife, Jill, had run for office in 2015 as a Democrat and had accepted $500,000 in campaign contributions from the political organization of a long-time Clinton family ally, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe.

Finally (for now!), comes the subject, as reported in The New York Times, of Comey’s alleged memo claiming that President Trump asked him to drop his Russia investigation in a February meeting. The former FBI Director will surely have the chance to confirm, deny, or otherwise elaborate on this story and the conversation in his own testimony under oath to Congress.

As suggested by prominent Trump critic Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, if this request was made, we’re talking about a genuinely Nixonian case of obstruction of justice. (The “smoking gun” tape that played such a decisive role in Richard Nixon’s impeachment and removal in 1974 centered precisely on a decision by the former President to order the FBI to stop its Watergate investigation.)

As Mr. Trump’s critics like to say, however, the Times article “raises questions” – indeed, big ones. First, it’s crucial to note that, as Nixon himself admitted, his actions were intended to cover up criminal activity. As noted above, there’s no evidence yet of a Russia-related crime committed by the Trump administration.

More immediately, Comey has not exactly been shy about loudly expressing, acting on, and widely sharing his concerns about obstacles to official inquests and other behavior he considered improper. In 2004, he threatened to resign as Deputy Attorney General over post-September 11 domestic surveillance programs he viewed as illegal. Last July, he famously held a press conference in which he took the extraordinary step of moving beyond his position’s investigative role to explain extensively his decision to recommend against indicting Hillary Clinton for using a personal email system as Secretary of State. And earlier this month, Comey said – again, under oath – that he took this step because he unilaterally decided that his superior, Attorney General Loretta Lynch had lost credibility as a Clinton investigator because of her meeting with the candidate’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, in June.

It’s certainly possible that Comey has decided to keep firsthand evidence of clear Trump criminality under wraps for going on three months now. But it sure looks out of character.

All of the above notwithstanding, there’s no question that the President’s undisciplined and often contradictory statements understandably have created major suspicions – which are by no means confined to his enemies’ ranks. The consequently confused efforts by his surrogates to clean up these messes have only compounded the problem. And even if the administration had its communications act together, one indisputable lesson of Washington and other scandals is that shoes keep dropping. Moreover, numerous continuing global business ties and burgeoning official responsibilities of the President’s children, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his family keep failing valid smell tests.

At the same time, the clearly organized Dump Trump effort by numerous persons with detailed knowledge of seemingly the full range of the federal government’s most sensitive activities suggests that “RussiaGate,” at least, could be different. Not in the sense that damaging claims won’t continue to be made, but in the sense that the anti-Trump-ers might have already leaked their worst.

The only certainty at this point appears to be that the various Trump Wars will rage on for months at a minimum – which means that the valid policy grievances of the president’s supporters and so many other Americans will continue to be neglected by their government.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: As Political Wars Rage, U.S. Wages Keep Stagnating

Tags

inflation-adjusted wages, manufacturing, private sector, real wages, Russiagate, Trump, wages, workers, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The tragedy of the continuing Trump and “Russiagate” political battles was perfectly illustrated yesterday by the release of the Labor Department’s newest data on inflation-adjusted wages. As the administration and its foes intensified a fight that’s ultimately over the legitimacy of the president’s White House win last November, the statistics made clear that the growth of Americans’ paychecks is still deeply stuck in the mud.

The real wage figures are always one month behind their pre-inflation counterparts, so the new numbers only take us through April. And they and the March results are still preliminary. At first glance, the news looked mixed. On a monthly basis, wages for the private sector (these data leave out government workers’ wages, since they’re determined largely by politicians’ decisions, not market forces) inched up only 0.09 percent in April. That was worse than March’s 0.28 percent improvement, and that March figure was revised down from the initial 0.47 percent reading.

The picture was somewhat brighter for manufacturing; April’s sequential increase of 0.46 percent was its best since August, 2015 (0.66 percent). But the March rise was downgraded from 0.37 percent to 0.28 percent.

And no one should be happy about the year-on-year changes. April’s was 0.37 percent for the private sector as a whole, and 0.46 percent for manufacturing. Between the previous Aprils, the numbers were 1.42 percent and 1.79 percent, respectively.

The cumulative results during this nearly eight-year old economic recovery? After-inflation private sector wages have increased only 4.07 percent, and manufacturing wages are up only 1.49 percent.

In other words, American workers – and especially those in manufacturing – have all but lost nearly eight years when it comes to their ability to keep up with the cost of living. And given Washington’s focus on the political wars, more lost months at the least are likely on the way.