I kind of love the failed effort at nonchalance the White House produced today in response to the news that Paul Manafort has become a cooperating witness with the special counsel’s office.
NEW: Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani on Manafort: "Once again an investigation has concluded with a plea having nothing to do with President Trump or the Trump campaign. The reason: the President did nothing wrong and Paul Manafort will tell the truth.” https://t.co/I07uCEa5JX pic.twitter.com/8BO9G6SCdG
— ABC News (@ABC) September 14, 2018
Which, of course, was followed up almost immediately by a more realistic response:
Trump legal team re-sends Manafort stmt, removing the words "and Paul Manafort will tell the truth."
"Once again an investigation has concluded w/ a plea having nothing to do w/ President Trump or the Trump campaign. The reason: the President did nothing wrong." – Rudy Giuliani
— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) September 14, 2018
Obviously, someone told Giuliani that if Manafort told the truth they would have to call him a liar. But this is an example of the cat already being out of the bag. It’s just one more glaring, obvious, self-injurious and self-incriminating piece of idiocy that has became the regular method of operation for this administration.
They’ve said all kinds of nice things about Manafort in what is now a retrospectively doomed attempt to prevent him from cooperating. If they thought he’d tell the truth and that it would help them, they’d have encouraged him to cooperate from the beginning. That’s so obvious even a Trumper has a faint chance of understanding it. Right?
If there is one thing I am happiest about today it’s that we won’t need to worry too much anymore about all the talking points the Republicans have been using about Manafort. He’s talking, and that’s all that matters. The president’s spin doctors have to sit and wait like the rest of us to hear what Manafort says, and they don’t have much reason to keep talking about how the charges against him are trumped up or old news or don’t have a thing to do with the president.
It’s just one bit of annoying stupidity that we can put to bed, to be replaced, obviously, with a new litany of hypocrisy and self-contradiction that will badly insult our intelligence.
Onward!
Clearly the next talking point will be, “Manafort is another victim of an overzealous prosecutor, forced to embrace false charges in order to protect his family and himself from persecution.”
Hopefully Trump will undermine said talking point with a few toddler rants about that horrible rat-fink, Paul Manfort.
Who is the audience for this “not about Trump, nothing to see here defense?” Are we expected to believe that the MAGA hat wearers listen to what Giuliani says about anything?
Anyone else who knows anything about how criminal prosecutions work knows that you don’t get a cooperating witness deal unless you offer the prosecution something of significant material interest in the matter that they are investigating.
Manafort isn’t just pleading guilty to the various criminal financial scams in his past. He’s now telling the special prosecutor things that the special prosecutor is interested in hearing about.
. . . anyone else who tells them what they want to hear. Confirmation bias is a bitch that way. It’s not the messenger that counts, it’s the message.
I think the messenger matters as well. Trusted sources is everything to those who live in their confirmation bubble. They turn to their ‘trusted source’ for the message because they know the message is going to confirm their bias. They’re not that self-aware, clearly, but that’s the mechanism. For the far right, the trusted source is the church followed by Fox News, Brietbart, etc. The only message that gets through is the one that comes from the trusted source.
. . . sources because they consistently feed confirmation bias. If they deviated from that significantly (either by volume or duration), they’d cease to be trusted sources.
Chicken or egg.
For the time being, Giuliani passes as a trusted source, because he feeds their confirmation bias.
Speaking of protection, does anyone know if Manafort and his family are being protected from those who mean them harm? Witsec?
Yep, as part of the plea there is protection for Manafort and his family. I am sure that was one reason Manafort decided to cooperate. Manafort’s move shows he trusts Mueller more than he trusts the donald with his future.
Manafort’s attorney: plea is “to make sure that his family was able to remain safe and live a good life.”
I’d hear somewhere recently that “law enforcement” was stepping up it’s protection of Russian defectors. If there’s a new push to protect people from Russian assassinations that would fit well with this turn of events.
Here is a NBC item:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/concerns-grow-about-russian-defectors-safety-u-s-
after-brazen-n898081
Would it be ok to shoot a few of those Russian spy fuckers.?
Thanks.
Yes, one would think that L’affaire Manafort should be the final nail in the “Witch Hunt!” coffin. I suppose the corpse will continue to twitch about for a bit, but certainly even the National Trumpalist brain trust must understand that some new shit for the shit brains is called for. Think, Rudy, think!
The level of political ads has already become a plague, yet none of them make the slightest mention of the elephant in the room: namely, what does one think should be done about the political criminal in the WH? Instead it’s all high comedy, with “conservative” extremists blathering to a man that they have “stood up to the Republicans!” So for the majority party of the country, campaigning is always an insult to one’s intelligence.
The American right long ago threw their brains into the trash, so the reaction of the self-proclaimed “independents” is the only determinant. Can they, as people who stubbornly refuse to understand the most basic things about American politics, continue to delight in having their intelligence insulted? Because that is the singular modus operendi of the hopelessly failed “conservative” movement.
Oh Trumper, where is thy tweet? Quite chapfallen? The hive mind becomes anxious for its daily dose of shit….
. . . Tell the Truth.” Trump legal team edits him to rescind that promise.
Hilarious.
“It’s just one bit of annoying stupidity that we can put to bed, to be replaced, obviously, with a new litany of hypocrisy and self-contradiction that will badly insult our intelligence.
Onward!”
That’s the spirit ! Doesn’t it remind you of GW Bush and Karl Rove manipulating the public perception ? We knew all that corporate ‘personhood’ and ability to swing policy with unlimited funding to PACs was going to have a rapid and corrosive effect. It isn’t just Trump ! The thieves own the swamp.