It looks like Theresa May’s final formal act will be to welcome Donald Trump – and his extended family – to the UK on the controversial state visit next week; the latest milestone in the so-called ‘special’ relationship. Perhaps they will discuss the President’s advice to the PM last time he was here, which, had she followed it, would obviously have avoided Britain’s current political predicament.

This past week, Devin Nunes, the senior Republican on the House intelligence committee, pressed the President to use the visit basically to interrogate Mrs May about the role of Britain’s secret services in the origins of the Mueller investigation. Not for the first time Nunes’ timing could probably have been better.

As the prime minister prepares to leave office with untold chaos behind her and uncertain prospects ahead, much as it seems odd to say now, it’s possible that in time – perhaps even in a relatively short period – we could be looking back longingly on her premiership the way many Americans now peer incredulously through rose-tinted glasses at the presidency of George W Bush. Everything, it seems, is relative.

But if President Trump might be grateful for next week’s demonstration of support from one female leader, this week he got anything but, as the feud between the White House and Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi erupted  into a series of public spats over the president’s behavior and resistance to congressional oversight, with both sides claiming the advantage.

The Washington Post reported that “Pelosi’s allies said her taunting of Trump now is intentional, designed to get under his skin and elicit an angry reaction,” while “White House aides say Trump was more frustrated by Pelosi’s “cover-up” comment than her Thursday commentary likening him to a toddler. He flew into a rage Wednesday morning after she made those remarks – and then stewed as she continued to taunt him from Capitol Hill.”

The President’s circulation of a manipulated video of the Speaker led to a debate over whether or not Facebook should remove it, but not until it had racked up more than two million views. Just wait until the ever-more sophisticated “Deep Fake” videos start to appear ahead of the 2020 election.

Clearly, Pelosi had succeeded in riling Trump at the same time as pressure has grown on him over further revelations from his former lawyer Michael Cohen, as well as the potential of financial disclosure by Deutsche Bank and other institutions.

But the President’s Pelosi tweet and its resulting viral circulation – together with the fact that he has simply been tweeting far more often – successfully dominated the news cycle towards the end of the week and distracted from a number of important events. Here are just a few “other” recent stories, in case you missed them…

 * The Washington Post reported that the President “has personally and repeatedly urged the head of the US Army Corps of Engineers to award a border wall contract to a North Dakota construction firm whose top executive is a GOP donor.” (It recently emerged that the border wall was costing roughly a billion dollars a mile).

* A Chicago bank CEO was indicted for allegedly bribing former Trump  campaign chairman Paul Manafort in exchange for a senior job in the administration. Meanwhile, David A Graham wrote at The Atlantic on the “unchecked corruption” of Trump’s cabinet.

* The administration is set to “sidestep Congress” to clear arms sales benefiting Saudi Arabia and the UAE by invoking an emergency provision over objections from both Democrats and Republicans. Meanwhile, tensions rose after President Trump said he would send 1,500 troops to the Middle East to “counter Iran’s influence in the region.”

* In the ongoing trade war with China, the President announced a $16 billion relief package for US farmers, which means, according to the Los Angeles Times, that American taxpayers are effectively footing the bill twice for the effect of tariffs.

But perhaps the two most significant stories of the week are ones that indicate Trump’s approach to those he considers his “enemies.” The espionage indictments issued against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was something of a “sleeper” story, but was seen by many as a threat to journalists and to free speech.

Margaret Sullivan wrote at the Washington Post that: “What’s alarming about the indictment is the way it would criminalize some of the basic functions of newsgathering and publication.” She continued “… journalists and citizens are caught in a tighter-than-ever squeeze: Far too much that they should know has been labeled secret, and the accepted ways of informing the public are at risk of being criminalized.”

Post editor Martin Baron issued this statement:

The other highly significant story was that Attorney General Bill Barr has effectively been let off the leash to go after Trump’s adversaries – with the President even invoking the idea of charging them with treason – when Trump granted Barr “unprecedented powers” to declassify information that could support the President’s assertions over the origins of the Mueller report.

Needless to say, not everyone thinks this is a good idea.

The President also just flat-out said he isn’t going to co-operate with the Democrats until investigations into him stop, prompting Dana Milbank to write about Trump’s “Nixonian paranoia” saying: “People often describe him as “unraveling,” but that implies he was once fully knitted. Whatever his mental starting point, those seeking the method in Trump’s madness lately have encountered less of the former and more of the latter.”

As Jonathan Chait writes in New York magazine, the message is clear – if you investigate Trump or his allies, “you will yourself be hounded and scrutinized for evidence of any wrongdoing.”

With all this in mind, therefore, you could be forgiven for thinking that – like often before – we seem to have reached yet another tipping point; or at least a point where there is no longer any pretense about the fundamentally partisan, protective and self-serving nature of this President. How his Democratic opponents in Congress respond to the latest series of events is crucial; not just for how it affects Mr Trump’s immediate prospects, but for the presidency itself and for the very future of the nation’s institutions.

So, to impeach or not?

Pressure is growing among members of the Democratic caucus in the House – especially those elected in November’s “Blue Wave” – who feel the need to respond to their constituents’ desire for some kind of action. Pelosi has maintained a stance that impeachment is not at the moment beneficial to the Democrats and their prospects for victory in 2020, a position party strategists have commended. Should that really be the criteria, though?

Reasons why not: Trump appears to want them to do it and barely misses an opportunity to try to goad them into it. Why? Because it will give him a chance to play the victim – especially when he knows he will be “exonerated” by the Republican majority in the Senate – and importantly, he will likely be able to exploit the issue by fundraising off it (something both sides would do, certainly).

Opinion polls seem to indicate there’s no public taste or desire for it. But if something is the legally proper thing to do, how popular does it have to be? Is there a threshold? There’s a danger, as Noah Feldman points out at Bloomberg, that an  important constitutional principle inevitably gets turned into a “political game” with, ultimately, no winners.

Reasons why: As well as reining in a President who considers himself unbound, there really is only one over-arching reason why – the need to maintain standards and establish political precedent; a warning to subsequent Presidents that they will be held accountable for their actions.

For Trump’s associates who have stood in the way of Congressional investigations, meanwhile, contempt of Congress has to have some consequences, otherwise the President becomes the equivalent of a monarch, answerable to no-one, with all the levers of oversight frustrated, ignored or co-opted.

Whatever the Democrats decide, the challenge for the party and their ever-expanding field of presidential candidates for 2020 should simply be to do what is right for the country, not for their party: a test that Republicans appear to have long since failed.

Remembrance and Respect

Today is Memorial Day, when Americans remember and revere their fallen military heroes. Yet even today has been sucked into the seemingly endless vortex of controversy that surrounds Donald Trump by reports that he has been considering using today to announce controversial pardons for troops accused of war crimes – a move criticized by some former senior officers.

So, with growing uncertainty over the future of America’s 45thpresident, I paid a visit this week to the home of its first: George Washington’s estate at Mount Vernon, a picturesque Potomac River cruise away from the nation’s capital.

One of the most humbling sights on the grounds is the memorial to what are now referred to as “enslaved workers.” Ironically, the day I was there, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin – the man running interference on Trump’s tax returns – announced that plans to honour former slave and leader of the Underground Railroad Harriet Tubman with a place on the $20 bill had been “delayed.” (Whether Mnuchin likes it or not, though, Tubman’s face is already appearing on some bills as an act of civil disobedience.)

America’s victorious General George Washington knew well that while it was important for him to become the new nation’s figurehead leader, it was just as vital that there was a second president after him, and a third, and that an historical precedent be preserved that would transcend and survive any short-termism of contested politics.

By contrast, the current incumbent has joked about becoming “president for life.” With some of his supporters suggesting that his first term somehow be extended to compensate for time “wasted” by the Mueller investigation, there is, it seems, precious little about this Presidency that passes for a joke anymore.