MUST BE THE SEASON OF THE WITCH
We, the unworthy citizens of a once proud nation, are a never ending source of disappointment to our President. We are, it seems, a stiffnecked people, unwilling to do the bidding of our leige lord, who is accustomed to unquestioning deference. Even worse, the crooked media is now engaging in “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!”
I’ve been sharing summaries of the work of some “citizen journalists” (i.e. amateurs whose work appears on twitter and personal blogs rather than in the respectable press). In reporting on the Trump-Russia scandal, they have sources inside the intelligence and legal communities that mainstream journalists don’t, and they’re not bound by the same rules and conventions that the mainstream press plays by. This sometimes annoys journalists who are obliged to follow those rules.
But it has often happened that, after a few days or weeks pass, those wild-eyed conspiracy theories promulgated by irresponsible citizen journalists wind up being confirmed by the national press. Today, for instance, Newsweek published a story confirming (because a Senator was willing to go on record) that Mike Flynn is cooperating with the FBI, which several citizen journalists reported a month ago.
With that as prologue, here are a few crazy rumors that may become tomorrow’s headlines. I report, you decide
Why did Donald Trump choose to spend this past weekend at Camp David for the first time in his presidency? Especially since Trump once described Camp David as “very rustic. It's nice, you'd like it. You know how long you'd like it? For about 30 minutes." The rumor: his inner circle put him under lockdown – no appointments and no tweeting – to isolate him from people who were encouraging him to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Could it be that at least a few people in his inner circle are beginning to grasp the seriousness of the situation? Sure enough, the weekend came and went with Mueller still on the job. Although with Trump, an explosion could come at any minute.
Why has Ivanka Trump’s name suddenly been removed from the records of some holding companies mentioned in Donald Trump’s financial disclosures? The rumor: Investigators have linked many of Trump’s companies to Russian hackers, and people close to Ivanka are scrambling to cover up her involvement.
How many memos did Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein write about the performance of FBI Director James Comey? We know of one, which was generally negative, although it stopped short of recommending dismissal. The rumor: Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered Rosenstein to write two separate memos about Comey, one positive and one negative. Sessions, the rumor goes, showed only the negative memo to Donald Trump (who later said it wouldn’t have mattered what Rosenstein wrote). If this is true, Sessions violated his recusal, and both Sessions and Trump were trying to throw Rosenstein under the bus.
What’s up with Steve Bannon these days? The rumor: He’s freaking out about the investigation of Brad Parscale, the director of Trump’s digital presidential campaign. Why might that worry Bannon? The rumor: Parscale has been linked to Russian hackers, and Bannon worked with Parscale on the digital campaign project.
What’s up with those “tapes” that Donald Trump used to try to intimidate FBI Director James Comey? In his Senate testimony, Comey seemed to relish the prospect of a recording of his conversations with Trump. As he said to Senator Diane Feinstein, “Lordy, I hope there are tapes.” The rumor: Lordy, there are tapes! Not necessarily the “tapes” from inside the White House that Trump cited in a tweet, which may or may not exist. But Comey installed a recording device on his own cell phone – legally, with court approval – over a year ago, as part of the FBI investigation into the Russian election hack. Comey shut the “wiretap” down on the day he was fired, but everything Donald Trump said to Comey in calls to that phone is now in the hands of the FBI. (Fun fact: Two days before he was fired, Comey questioned Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. about a Russian botnet on a server in Trump Tower. Could that have been the impetus for his firing?)
Here’s something that is NOT a rumor. If the whole Trump-Russia thing was nothing but fake news, you wouldn’t think that it’d be necessary to lawyer up so heavily. But that’s what people in the White House are doing. Today brings the news that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has hired a lawyer. Donald Trump has built a legal team of his own, but he’s relying on a couple of minor league fixers rather than competent attorneys to protect him against the witch hunt.
Jay Sekulow and Michael Cohen are a lot like Trump. They can’t shut up, and the more they talk, the deeper the hole they dig. Sekulow, the newest member of the team, was even mocked by Fox News anchor Chris Wallace. If Trump loses Fox News, his goose is cooked. Longtime Trump lawyer Cohen has now hired an attorney of his own. The latest Twitter joke is that MAGA stands for “making attorneys get attorneys.”
Meanwhile, allegedly conservative magazine The National Review has done us all a favor by making it explicit that American conservatism has no moral center. Its only interest is in maintaining power. During the Republican primaries, the magazine was solidly “Anybody But Trump.” But when Trump surprised everyone by winning, TNR transitioned to an anti-anti-Trump stance, not always defending Trump, but saving their harshest criticism for his opponents.
Finally, in a June 16 editorial, editor Rich Lowry has admitted that the fates of Donald Trump and the Republican Party are joined at the hip. He argues implicitly that conservatives have no choice but to be Republicans, and explicitly that Republicans have no choice but to support Trump in order to save the party. Lowry doesn’t try to defend Trump’s philosophy; in fact, he pretty much admits that Trump has no philosophy, apart from arrogance and greed. He simply asserts that criticizing Trump will jeopardize the Republican tax cutting agenda and hurt the GOP in the 2018 midterm elections.
The Republican Party motto is now “party over principle.” As the GOP’s uber-cynical approach to health care policy demonstrates, conservative philosophy has been reduced to one thing: “tax cuts for the rich.” Everything else is expendable. They’ve sold whatever ideals they once may have had to the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Robert Mercer, et al, who have poured billions of dollars into Republican campaign chests. Congressional Republicans will be rich, no matter what happens to their constituents.
That’s why we can’t count on congressional Republicans to care about the millions of people who will be hurt when they replace Obamacare with “WhoCares?” It’s why we can’t count on congressional Republicans to keep the oath they took to “support and defend the Constitution” against all enemies (including Donald Trump and his cronies). Their cynicism is staggering, but it’s good to have it out in the open.
I'll say it again. Everything Trump touches turns to shit. The Republican Party is about to learn that lesson the hard way.