If you're trying to decide whether it's worse to be fired through Twitter or have your firing celebrated on Twitter by the president, the latter is clearly the choice. The irony that a person whose catch phrase on television was, "You're fired," can not seem to do it for real, face to face. I'm sure that isn't lost on anyone. But knowing he couldn't be the one to fire Mr. McCabe, the president celebrated it on Twitter. He said, "It is a great day for Democracy," of all things, which is ironic in and of itself because it's really a sad day when the President of the United States demeans the office by being so small minded and petty so publicly.
The president felt the firing presented another good opportunity to lash out at the Mueller probe, essentially saying it is a politically partisan witch hunt. Nothing new there. However, it also emboldened Mr. Trump's lawyer, John Dowd, to issue a statement to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, demanding that he shut down the Russia investigation.
With that said...
You have to agree with The National Review's Jonah Goldberg when he explained the irony of this distasteful firing (McCabe's) being an actual preventative measure in saving the Mueller probe because it saves Attorney General Jeff Sessions' job, which blocks Mr. Rosenstein from direct attack, which in turn keeps Special Counsel Muller in place.
And Press Secretary Sarah Sanders called Mr. McCabe a bad actor?
The irony is so thick you can practically smell it. Unfortunately, it smells like a fart, powerful enough to humble.
Speaking of humble, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) certainly seemed to be one public official humbled in the last month or so by the events in his state - the Parkland shooting of course, but also the passed legislation that ensued, and now this week's bridge collapse. For Democrats who get their underwear in a twist about the potential firing of Mr. Mueller, Senators like Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham are in strong support of the special counsel, and as he said today, he supports the probe and in any direction it leads. Frankly, Mr. Rubio has had it with Trump; you can see it in his face. This attests to today's journalist-full panel accounts that Republicans in private are nervous and say they dislike the president's actions and statements. However, in public they're are stuck in supporting him because his popularity among the Republican base is greater than congressional Republicans. For Mr. Rubio though, it's getting more difficult to hide his feelings.
The probe is not going away; not as more stories keep coming like the one discussed today, in which it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica, doing work for the Trump Campaign, had somehow obtained the Facebook profiles of 50 million people. Did this organization somehow help Russian operatives spread fake news? That's the question Mr. Mueller and his team are investigating.
Facebook's role in all this lead to The Cook Political Report's Amy Walter asking whether the technology has gotten away from Facebook that they can no longer control the platform they created? Or are they just unwilling to spend the money to stop it from happening? You'd have to go with the latter again since Facebook has been trying to accommodate Chinese sensors for years so they're willing to spend the cash there to penetrate the market.
The other big news this week was that the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee wrapping up its Russia investigation because it said it found no evidence of collusion. In studio with Chuck Todd, making his first Sunday show appearance ever, was member of said committee Congressman Mike Conaway (R-TX). However, Mr. Conaway has a little explaining to do about his explaining because what he said today didn't make any sense at all. At one point in his interview he said the committee wasn't focused on Russian collusion but later said they found no evidence of it. Chuck Todd's point that if it wasn't a focus and you weren't looking into it, how could you find any? But then Mr. Conaway did say they investigated collusion. However, he explained that in terms of Vladimir Putin's intention to help Mr. Trump, he didn't see it.
At the 3:30 mark of the video, the discussion of the investigation begins...
Mr. Conaway didn't agree with Chuck Todd's assessment that the committee went 'off the rails' and said that oversight is constant. He also said that if there was something that surfaced that caused the committee to reconsider reopening, it's possible. However, that's unlikely because as long as Devin Nunes (R-CA) is the chair of the committee, it is in fact off the rails and will not reopen. They didn't even do a full investigation of the Russian meddling so how would they if something else came up? They didn't even interview George Papadopoulos, a key figure in it all.
There will be a time when congressional Republicans have their reckoning for being complicit and in many cases supportive of the president's constant attacks on our institutions, further deteriorating them by the day. Republicans in the Senate who think more long term, it seems, understand this more than their party brethren do in the House, and you can see Senate Republicans slowly souring. But it may not matter because as Poltico's Eliana Johnson pointed out, the Republicans have no legislative agenda for this year, which won't bode well come November.
Panel: Eliana Johnson, Politico; Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report; Jose Diaz-Balart; NBC; Jonah Goldberg, The National Review
A few more things...
Chuck Todd threw out something today that didn't really get any follow-up discussion, but it was a great nugget. He said that Trump Organization lawyers have joined Michael Cohen in trying to push the Stormy Daniels' case back into private arbitration, which means it's official that Mr. Trump was involved in some way with Ms. Daniels. Awesome.
Jose Diaz-Balart was right with the whole notion of 'emotional spasms on Twitter' for sure, and I agree that Comey, Trump, Brennan et al should all stay off of Twitter, but this one from former CIA Director John Brennan is something... because wouldn't he have such insight?
No comments:
Post a Comment