The investigation of Russian ties to the Trump administration is going to dominate the news for months, maybe years to come. James Comey, formerly the nemesis of Democrats for bringing down Hillary Clinton, announced that the FBI is investigating the White House and that Donald Trump’s claims that he was wiretapped by the Obama administration is baseless. It was a bad day for Trump.
The tweets coming out of the White House seemed frantic. Trump began the day denying anything was happening and ended the day blaming leakers from the Obama administration for concocting the whole episode. Republicans like Trey Gowdy supported Trump, claiming that leakers need to be held accountable. They have little interest in finding out if the Russians have infiltrated the highest levels of our government.
Democrats, particularly the social media armies, are raising the stakes. They’re sure there’s a conspiracy. One writer surmises that nothing less than a finding of collusion will satisfy the most partisan voices on the left. Russia may become the Democrats version of Benghazi, a rallying point to call for endless investigations of the administration.
A bigger question is how the investigation affects Trump’s ability to govern. He’s already made false accusations about the Obama administration wiretapping him. He’s also made baseless claims about Obama’s birth certificate, and 3 million illegal voters costing him the popular vote. His losing credibility before his administration is even off the ground. Republicans coming to aid risk losing theirs, too.
Trump is also getting in trouble with his first major piece of legislation—the health care bill. Trump told his supporters that he was going to make sure “everybody” had insurance and that coverage would be better than Obamacare for less money. None of that looks like it’s true.
About half the country has never believed what Trump is saying. If he continues to make stuff up that’s proven to be false, a solid majority might quit taking him seriously. If that happens, Trump’s administration and the Republican majorities in Congress are in jeopardy.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Democrats need to be respectful of process and of its results; they do not need to act as though they are confronted by some majority government. Trumps opponents received almost 11,000,000 more votes than he – that is eleven million! Nationally Democratic candidates for the US Senate won by almost that large a margin – the third time in a row that they have been the choice of US voters; and even in the gerrymandered US House contests on the national level the outcome was close to tied. Democrats have won the popular vote in 6 of the last 7 presidential elections.
I find this whole “Russian Interference in the election” to be a fascinating window into how the intelligence agencies can influence, perhaps control, elections and elected officials.
One of the more important items in the latest WikiLeaks info release includes the actual cyber-tools that the CIA uses to falsely attribute their own operations to foreign parties, including Russia. So we know that the machinery for false flag operations exists within the American intelligence network, and based on the statements that the leak was “very damaging” we can be confident that false flag machinery was actively used. We know the intelligence agencies hate and fear Trump’s ability to act independently of “The Washington Consensus” (for good or ill).
We saw at the beginning of the Obama Administration how the Praetorian allowed Muslim celebs to be allowed into the Indian Minister’s dinner without credentials – a clear warning to Obama that he would not be protected if he did not “play ball”. And we appear to be watching the same basic procedure with that guy being allowed to wander around the White House grounds for half an hour last week, as well as the previous Trump Tower break-in.
It will be interesting to see if the Praetorian is able to break Trump the same way they broke Obama.
Fascinating.
The United States is approaching an existential moment in its history when patriotic Americans must step forward to stand above the partisan squabbling.
Because the legislature, the administration, and the Supreme Court are securely in the hands of the right wing, heroes must come from the right, if there are any. Perhaps, Lyndsey Graham, John McCain or Jeff Flake will emerge as new leaders of the Republican Party. The country will be in serious trouble if we must rely on the likes of Louis Gohmert, Jason Chaffetz, Trey Gowdy or Ted Cruz. Venal and inept, they see opportunity in animating partisan animus even if it means taking the country into a deep abyss.
The intellectually and morally unfit, the man in the White House is a clear and present danger to this nation, something he demonstrates every day through his shocking ignorance of basic rules of conduct and the operation of our government. Devoid of ethics, he lies even when the truth would do him no harm and might improve his prospects. He is lazy and undisciplined. He is ushering in an era of fantastic corruption. His choices for cabinet members exceed our worst fears.
On Monday, a Congressional inquiry delved into lies he tweeted to his 16 million followers. The head of the FBI and NSA confirmed that his tweets were lies, but while his lies were being debunked, he tweeted more lies to his followers which misrepresented the proceedings. Those lies were debunked by the FBI director and the NSA director at the hearing. It’s astonishing, the government stopped functioning so that Congress could look into his lies. While his lies were being debunked, he lied some more. Those lies were aired in the hearing and also debunked. This is remarkable. We cannot believe our president about anything.
If he were lying about his golf score or the size of his hands or whatever, it might be a laughing matter, but the President is lying about crimes and trying to conceal national security issues. He is under investigation by the FBI for possible collusion with an enemy of this country. Unprecedented.
The Congressional hearing was focussed on the serious matter of weaponized cyber intelligence which interfered with our elections. Key figures in the White House and Trump campaign operatives with ties to Russia are under suspicion for assisting an enemy of this country. Russian operatives in the White House or in the cabinet? What strange god do the Republicans worship?
Cyber war on America during the campaign must be examined, but we know that messages (strategic lies) were told to Trump supporters and Republican voters in order to amplify the hatred of Clinton. The red caps were essentially the blank slate upon which Russian propagandists wrote their lies. As a group, they were less well-educated than average and the genius of Russian intelligence was that lies about Clinton were received without skepticism by the red caps. Strange scenarios and bizarre claims about Mrs. Clinton somehow registered in the minds of the gullible red caps.
Russian propagandists achieved much in 2016; they captured the hearts, the minds and the votes of Republicans.
If Republicans are happy about their dominance of American politics with the huge assistance of Russian spies, our nation is
is in deep trouble today, and the situation will continue to deteriorate as the White House takes the nation where it should not go.
I have absolutely no faith in the FBI or any of the investigating committees etc. The republicans have proven again and again that they are NOT at all interested in the people, only themselves.
I don’t see the Trump-Russia issue becoming anything like the Benghazi witch-hunt. All the Dems have to do is wait for and follow the findings of the FBI investigation, or those from any special investigator (if that happens). On Benghazi, the Republicans totally disregarded the findings of seven congressional committee investigations, and then created a “special,” highly partisan committee focused only on Benghazi. That’s just not going to happen with the Dems being in the House minority and with smart former prosecutors like Rep. Adam Shiff involved.