I’m going to save most of my good stuff for tomorrow, but I just want to offer one piece of perspective today.
What Trump did in demanding that Congress investigate whether, why and how he or his associates were surveilled during the campaign is to give away his best defense against this ending his presidency.
How?
His best defense was to rely on the fact that no one in the intelligence community has permission to talk about any of this, and that he could rely on the Republican Congress to keep it that way.
But, now Congress is supposed to find out what surveillance was done, which inevitably will require people still in authority or recently out of authority to testify under oath. And that is the absolute last thing he can afford to have happen, because they’ll explain why what they did was legal and what the legal underpinnings were.
Many of these people are so desperate to get this story out that they’ve been leaking like a sieve, but even the ones who might be friendly to Trump won’t take a bullet for him if it requires them to pretend that they did something illegal.
Trump cannot afford to have anyone in charge of the investigation of his campaign testifying, and certainly not in a position of having to defend what they did.
Trump just made it much harder to save his ass by simply not asking the right people the right questions.
His best hope now is that he is simply proven wrong, and there was no surveillance on his team authorized late in the campaign. But when the best you can hope for is being proven to be aggressively wrong, that’s a ridiculous strategy to pursue.
He might as well be strangling himself and his presidency.
Jordan Orlando said it best in the preceding article’s comment thread:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2017/3/5/10714/58415#24
>>But Captain Queeg was so much smarter and more coherent.
i saw a tweet last night that read approximately “Trump is like Nixon at his Watergate paranoid worst, but minus 50 IQ points and with Twitter.”
That got a for-real LOL from me.
Bruce Barlet, former advisor to Reagan https://twitter.com/BruceBartlett/status/838036457428221952
thanks Kelly. i couldn’t remember who Bartlett was.
At some point does anyone ask themselves why he won?
I think one can say one thing definitely: Trump believes in always attacking.
Booman has been writing this post for about a year.
So if there is an investigation, and it finds nothing, Trump will claim there was cover up. Or it will be forgotten.
People: he accused Ted Cruz’s father of being part of the JKDF assassination.
AND NO ONE CARED!
At some point these confident predictions of doom are going to become self-parody.
“No one cared”. But this isn’t true. He won because Clinton was an unpopular candidate, and James Comey. Just saw he won true independents ~50-55 to Clinton’s mid-20’s. 15-20%(!!!) true independents went third party (taking away leaners and weak/strong partisans).
How did the comment about Ted Cruz’d father interfere in any with his win of the GOP nomination?
The only differences I see, and I’m not sure if they’ll be enough, but maybe, is:
1) Trump the Candidate Without Any Chance of Winning was held to a historically-low standard of candidates-withouth-any-chance-of-winning. Trump the Republican President is held to a (slightly) higher standard. (I know that the only standard that matters is that of the Republican House, and that the Republican President’s approval rating is still v. high among his base, but at some point, this stuff is going to knock him down to the mid 70s …)
Hm. I think I might’ve just made your point by accident. My #2 was going to be the difference between making outlandish, clearly hyperbolic/insane, claims about Raphael Cruz and accusing, from the Oval Office, the current IC of breaking the law.
Yes, the Trump is an ignorant boob (which he is) and he’s an impulsive and intemperate tweeter/speaker (which he is) and this is going to take him down in the next few days has been a constant refrain from the opposition since July 2015.
However, I’m not so sure that “nobody cares” about his craziest sounding pronouncements is the whole reason why they don’t stick. WRT Cruz’s father, his story is a bit dodgy, but the general public no longer pays any attention to new finger pointing about JFK assassination participants. They go directly to the mental round file. A lot of the Trump “this is going to do him in” moves haven’t because there’s some truth in them that others dare not speak. ie McCain the war hero. Out there was his denial that the ’17 inauguration crowd was smaller than the ’09 one. The reality was obvious to all but the conspiratorially minded. Unfortunately, that’s a large portion of the US population. Are Democrats currently engaged in normalizing GWB as a good guy from what he really was denying reality any more the Trump seeing similar crowd sizes?
Nobody deserves unrelenting attacks, both true and false, more than Trump does. However, it seems to me that to be effective, it can’t be seen as a proxy fight for the loser in the last election. Republicans never do that; they shirk off their loser and regardless of how far down get to work on making gains in the next electoral cycles. Has worked well for them since ’64.
To be effective the attack has to be linked to something that effects people’s day to day lies.
In debate you always have to describe the impact of your argument. Why do I care about your argument? What is the real world consequence?
I think this is the mistake people have made wrt since the beginning.
Or spun as directly and negatively affecting people’s lives. How half the people in this country have bought into the notion that their lives would be worse if the 1% are denied a third, fourth, etc. mansion, super yacht, etc. has worked like magic.
Not like me, mine, also works. I’ve often thought that “expletive deleted” offended more people than Nixon’s crimes. Profanity was simply not part of most people’s everyday speech back then. Before the internet and proliferation of porn, a thrice divorce, adulterer, pussy grabber like Trump would have been an impossible sell to rural America. Jimmy Carter’s ’76 Playboy interview, “lust in my heart,” may have cost him a few states and/or a few percentage points in the popular vote. What an opening that gave for the fundies to go after the most overt Christian POTUS in the twentieth century.
Are Democrats currently overly cautious wrt to personal morality? After Clinton and Edwards? Or realistic. Was it just serendipitous that Hunter Biden’s wife waited until December 2016 to file for divorce?
Thank you very much indeed. That’s very flattering.
I do think this is the main point, here: his structural ignorance. (It’s been his conspicuous Achilles’ Heel all along.)
I just realized (reading this BooMan post) that, if Nixon had been like Trump, during the GAO report and the indictment of the burglars, Hunt and Liddy, he would have said, “This is a witch hunt — and I’ve got a taping system in the Oval Office to prove it!”
Let’s not get all fastidious.
What Trump did in demanding that Congress investigate whether, why and how he or his associates were surveilled during the campaign, is to decisively rip the scab off the Obama administration’s shameless extension of domestic surveillance.
Sure, it’s Trump. But you have to take your allies where you can find them.
It’s like back in ’09-’10 when the GOP tried to dynamite the Great Health Insurance Industry Bailout Bill. But were progressives willing to reach across the aisle? Had they done so, we’d have an American NHS by now.
That’s complete fantasy.
Aw, c’mon, friend, you’ve been around this joint for quite a while, surely you’ve figured Davis out by now?
This is so absurd I’m surprised anyone could get the words to come together on the screen.
As is now widely understood, McConnell, McCarthy, and a few other influential Republicans agreed on Inauguration Day 2009 that Republicans in Congress would support nothing Obama proposed, regardless of its nature or the cost to the country. Their goal, as McConnell made clear, was to make Obama a failure and a one-term President.
Unaware of this attitude until far too late, Obama and the Congressional Democrats did everything but walk over broken glass on their knees to get Republicans involved in framing the ACA. That was one of the main reasons for the incredibly protracted drafting process. They were turned down flat in the end after being led down any number of garden paths earlier.
And if you think that Republicans would have cooperated in creating anything like the NHS, you really should go in for some serious political education before posting further comments.
It’s the best cost/benefit way of delivering health care to an advanced country. Vastly superior to any public option on the exchanges, or single-payer.
The sheer unassailable rightness on policy terms alone, never mind the cost savings, makes it a natural focus for a righto-leftist coalition.
But Obama. Didn’t. Even. Try.
Dammit, man, you really need to include a /sarcasm tag on every post; it’s downright cruel of you to get all those earnest knickers in such an unnecessary twist.
I’ll fess up. I have a garage of orange ‘Kill the Bill’ merch I’m still trying to shift.
Jeebers, man, just how long have you been hoarding that? And just what do your attic, basement, garage, and backyard shed look like?
….on second thought, never mind….
I can also get you superlative deals on Wes Clark biographies, and Weiner/Grayson 2012 stuff.
Stop, stop, my ribs hurt.
Geez Louise, guys, haven’t you twigged Davis’s schtick yet? He’s lampooning the outer fringes of True Progressivism.
You need to read at least 95 percent of what he writes with tongue so far in cheek it’s protruding through.
Trump’s ignorance of government is what will do him in. He was unaware of how to use his office, and because he alienated people/surrounded himself with sycophants, he was unable to get the real advice he needed.
He will be quickly white-washed as the Republican Carter. His presidency is being crippled so quickly Democrats might need to slow-walk revelations.
>>Trump’s ignorance of government is what will do him in.
yes. Not just him, all of his top staff.
AG said a couple weeks ago that the whole Trump team looked like minor-league talent. Which I agree with, and it’s worse than that, because none of them understand how the game is played. But no one good would work for him anyway because they know Trump won’t listen.
They think they’re playing tennis when their adversaries are playing tackle football.
I guess that maybe AG is thinking that “PermaGov” isn’t looking so bad after all?
Yep, the donald took the bait. He may have forced the 2 intelligence committees to have open hearings. If the Dems want a special prosecutor, they need to find a way to shine some light on Russian money and the donald. That is the only way we will get to see those tax returns.
If the Dems want a special prosecutor, they need to find a way to shine some light on Russian money and the donald.
For the love of God, an independent special prosecutor isn’t The Big Chicken(aka Chris Christie). I saw some supposed Democrat pushing that on Twitter this weekend. Just, no!
Good.
If Trump wasn’t clearly deranged one could think he was innocent when calling for this probe. But he is, so one shouldn’t.
If he is guilty: you get insight in what is actually underpinning the Trump-Putin allegations and remove a clearly deranged man from the nuclear button. However, you also get a more efficient right wing president.
If he is innocent: you get insight in what is actually underpinning the Trump-Putin allegations and some insight in how the surveillance state is used.
Schooley
@Rschooley
White House Communications:
9:08 AM – 5 Mar 2017
It’s no surprise this Administration is leaking like a pitcher with no bottom. Look at this summary from a New York Times reporter assigned to cover the Trump campaign:
Maggie Haberman
@maggieNYT
Trump fumes at staff yesterday. When things aren’t going well, Trump never shoulders blame.
8:29 PM – 4 Mar 2017
Maggie Haberman
@maggieNYT
During the campaign, Trump would routinely kick aides off the plane as a time-out. “They hate me because they hate you,” was a refrain.
8:30 PM – 4 Mar 2017
I think this is a classic case of blow-back.