Monday, April 22, 2019

Trump Should Insulate Himself from Accusations of Hypocrisy in 2020 by Admitting the Russians Were Trying to Help Him in 2016



Still reading the Mueller Report. Now on Volume II. Mueller repeatedly documents, by means of testimony from multiple Trump aides, that Trump was unwilling to acknowledge that the actions of the Russians had a goal of favoring Trump. He saw it as a means of his opposition trying to delegitimize his win. For what it's worth, the DNC hack and the release of those emails was to help Bernie against Hillary. Nothing to do with Trump.

I think Trump's narcissism will come back to bite him in 2020. As Marco Rubio predicted, the next time the Russians interfere, it might not be to favor a candidate you like.

In 2016, the Russians preferred a Russia friendly Trump compared to a hard line Hillary. What if in 2020, the Russians have grown tired of Trump as he has followed a fairly hardline toward Russia and their interests despite his rhetoric against NATO and our own Intel Community. What if the Russians now prefer a Russia friendly Tulsi Gabbard or any of the uber progressive Democrats who can be counted on to favor domestic spending at the expense of defense spending? Who do you think the Russians will be rooting for then?

Trump and Trump supporters would be well advised to acknowledge that the Russians had a favorite in 2016 even if it hurts Trumps pride to say so. It might insulate Trump from some calls of hypocrisy in 2020 when he has to call out Russian support for his Democratic opponent.

Saturday, April 20, 2019

WaPo Offers an Olive Branch in One Hand and a Big FU in the Other



So a friend of mine emailed me a link to a Washington Post editorial by Karen Tumulty.  The Post is suggesting that in lieu of the Congress undertaking an impeachment proceeding against President Trump, they should move to censure him instead, and then move on, and let the voters decide his fate in 2020. 
That's not a bad idea as far as it goes.  Perhaps a way to end this mini civil war that's gone on in our country for the past three years, and allow for some measure of healing. But the WaPo editorial started off with a line that was so off putting to me that I could barely bring myself to read the rest of their opinion.  Here's how I responded to my friend's email:

I agree with its basic sentiment.  But it's a good thing the headline hinted at the subject matter of the oped, or I would have stopped reading at this:

" More than two years of admirably accurate investigative reporting on the part of the media — the same accounts that the president so often labeled “fake news” — gave the country a basic outline of how this presidency operates."

What a disgustingly self serving and deceitful statement.  It totally memory holes the fact that the majority of that reporting centered on collusion, coordination, and conspiracy.  Their reporting promised us with absolute certainty, that the president was a knowing agent of the Russians.  It smeared the reputations of, and then bankrupted total innocents like Carter Page, near total innocents like George Papadopoulos, and national heroes like Mike Flynn.  

Only after two years of effort, as it was becoming clear that the story was false, did the MSM pivot with an obvious moving of the goal posts from collusion to obstruction.  From the very start, this story was a total fabrication based on the most successful and nefarious "political dirty trick" ever perpetrated on the voting public.   The Clinton Campaign with the willing assistance of the MSM, elements of the FBI, and the Intelligence Community, both foreign and domestic, took a fabricated story about pee tapes, legitimate business trips to Moscow, and clandestine meetings in Prague that never happened, and spun it into a three year obsession for the Media Industrial Complex in this country to feed off of.  The entire business models of CNN and MSNBC have relied on this hoax to keep those networks from having to resort to screening infomercials to pay the bills.  

Oh, and the Russians.  I forgot the Russians.  They participated in this dirty trick as well.  There actually WAS a political candidate who conspired with the Russians in 2016 to try and influence the course of the election.  It was Hillary Clinton.  And that's not a rhetorical statement.  I'm serious.  Is there ANY part of the Dossier you're still willing to defend after reading the Mueller Report?  Any part that matters?  This three year nightmare was all based on a lie. 

And the only real beneficiaries are the Russians.  And maybe the Democrats.  We'll see.  If they prevail in 2020, then I guess we'll have to admit that they played the long game and won.  But at what cost?   What was/is the Democratic Party willing to put this country through to get some sort of sick revenge against Donald Trump because he defeated the anointed one Ms. Hillary Rodham Clinton?  Trump may go down in history as the worst president the nation has ever had, but he denied the presidency to Hillary.  And for that service to his country, I will be forever grateful! 

Now that the president's poor behavior in response to the lie has apparently been exposed, as I gather is well documented in Volume II of the Mueller Report, the left is quite happy to shift gears, dwell on that response and ignore their complicity in the fabricated story without which the response would never have happened.  It's like you spent three years kicking Trump in the balls, and then you criticize him because now he walks funny!  Well Trump may be a flawed man and an imperfect president, and I'll be the first one to admit that.  But as it stands today, you can count me among his defenders. 

Thanks to the Mueller report, we now know what Trump did, and some of it apparently borders on obstruction of justice.  It's time now to lay out the story of what his opponents did.  To me, the fact that Mueller spent over four hundred pages and never mentioned the name Glenn Simpson, or Perkins Coie, or Stephan Halper, and never addressed the real conspiracy with the Russians, is all the evidence I need that the fix was in. Mueller threw everything he had into proving collusion and utterly failed. Democrats are salivating over the fact that Mueller gave them a roadmap to pursue obstruction accusations, but I'd counter with this:  Can the president be held liable for attempting to obstruct an investigation into a crime that he knew he didn't commit?  A crime which a subsequent investigation has failed to show ever even took place?  And this despite all the time and resources that even a true obsessive could have ever considered necessary for the task?  Democrats think he can be held liable.  I think, good luck selling that one to the American people.  I think this Mark Levin take will sell a lot better.

Having gotten that out of my system, the idea of a censure in lieu of impeachment has appeal to me as well.  It may well be a way for bitter Democrats to express their rage at the president without making the rest of the country suffer any further simply in order to appease their spitefulness.  A consideration they should have afforded the rest of us over the past 2-1/2 years, but oh well...Better late than never.
Jess