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He’s now reportedly doubling down on yanking security clearances of those who criticize him or who are connected to the Russia probe.
“The White House has drafted documents revoking the security clearances of current and former officials whom President Trump has demanded be punished for criticizing him or playing a role in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to senior administration officials.”
“Trump wants to sign “most if not all” of them, said one senior White House official, who indicated that communications aides, including press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Bill Shine, the newly named deputy chief of staff, have discussed the optimum times to release them as a distraction during unfavorable news cycles.”
It’s bad enough that he wants to use taking away security clearances as a tool for punishing political enemies, but he also wants to time it in a way to control the media narrative.
Some aides reportedly are warning against such Nixonian actions:
“Some presidential aides echoed concerns raised by outside critics that the threatened revocations smack of a Nixonian enemies list, with little or no substantive national security justification. Particular worry has been expressed inside the White House about Trump’s statement Friday that he intends “very quickly” to strip the clearance of current Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.”
These aides, of course, won’t be listened to. Trump admires Nixon and has already so many parallels with Tricky Dick why not go for more? He’s long since been on a Nixonian path.
Of course, like Marx said-he was right about some things-history repeats itself first as tragedy-Tricky Dick Nixon-and then as farce-illegitimate ‘President Trump.’ The clear difference between Trump and Nixon is that Nixon didn’t do make his enemies list public and we only know about it because John Dean volunteered it in his Watergate Congressional testimony-no one asked him about it, he just revealed it of his own free will.
Trump’s one big article of faith is that he possesses exceptional political instincts-after all he ‘won.’ Because ‘he won’ anything he did in 2016 clearly worked-after all he won. Everything he did ‘worked’-if it didn’t he would not have ‘won.’ So during the election Trump would just say things in public, in plain sight, that no one in their right mind would ever say in public. First and foremost, Russia if you’re listening.
FN: To be sure more than ever in 2019 it’s become clear that not only has much of the MSM bought this canard of Trump’s ‘exceptional political instincts’ but so has much of the Dem leadership. There’s this feeling that you have to avoid confrontation with the faux ‘President’ at all costs because he’s this undefeatable political genius who will win any confrontation-rather than an illiterate who’s just throwing the chess pieces around the board in Masha Gessen’s apt analogy.
When Donald Trump first tweeted his racist screed against four American congresswomen of color, telling them to go back where they came from, a lot of pundits and Democratic consultants couldn’t tweet fast enough that going after Trump only risked playing right into his hands, foregrounding a fight that Dems were sure to lose.
To them, Trump doesn’t just say racist things. When he does so, there has to be a master strategy. Maybe he’s distracting from the Jeffery Epstein case. Maybe he’s trying to rally voters. The chattering class’ rationale for his tweets was varied, but very few, if any, just believed he’s a racist who says racist things, as racists do.”
Both the MSM pundits and the Dem consultants insist on believing he’s this master chess player-rather than just throwing pieces around the board.
End of FN.
But, you know, he won, so there was nothing wrong in saying that, to the contrary his doing that was part of his brilliant political strategy. After all-he won. Trump has never heard of the basic idea in science that correlation doesn’t prove causation. And this is a case in point. Trump didn’t win because he said Russia if you’re listening but despite it.
After he said that he raised suspicions of collusion between him and Russia greatly-and it actually led to the ramping up of the counterintelligence investigation into Russia and his campaign. So the effects of this were not good-quite the opposite. To be sure, there may have been positive effects of that too-maybe Russia was listening. Indeed, we know have reason to believe they were.
https://lastmenandovermen.com/2018/07/14/the-day-trump-said-russia-if-youre-listening-was-the-day-the-hacking-of-clinton-associates-began/
During the primary Trump had declared that he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th avenue and get away with it. But he’s dead wrong. True in compiling what is effectively an enemies list Trump is following Nixon’s lead-though even Nixon didn’t weaponize security clearances in this way. But Nixon hid his enemies list under the understanding that if it came to light it would not somehow work for him. He didn’t think the way to commit a crime is to hide it in plain sight. And he was right-if not for his own mistake in taping himself and Dean’s ratting him out he’d have gotten away with it.
FN: When I’m wrong, I’m wrong. I claimed Trump was dead wrong back on August 20, 2018 and on this I will attest to being fully debunked. Since then we’ve seen the MSM fall for Barr’s fake exoneration letter hook, line, and sinker-even now that it’s been debunked the MSM still acts as if Trump has been totally exonerated.
But as Ron Klain says-quoted above-the Mueller Report largely minimized Trump’s wrongdoing-much of it is there in plain sight but constructed in such a way as to make it hard to see without a magnifying glass-and many of his declination decisions are highly questionable. For more on this Marcy Wheeler-who else?
As Wheeler argues there’s reason to worry the Dems are setting themselves up for failure-giving up on getting Mueller to say anything beyond the for corners of the report before they even speak to him.
End of FN
Trump’s political turrets is the gift that keeps on giving for his opponents. If he hadn’t so loudly and clearly called for a Muslim ban during the campaign, it’d not been nearly so easy to have convinced the federal courts that this is what his ‘travel ban’ really was. His stating barefacedly that he fired Comey because of Russia didn’t help him-to the contrary it was a big part of what lead to Mueller’s appointment and gives Mueller a huge piece of prima facie evidence that his firing Comey was clear obstruction of justice.
Regarding his own enemies list, Trump is far from ‘admitting it’ he’s boasting of it. He found cracking down on free speech and obstructing justice to be invigorating after the drubbing he’s taken from Omarosa all week with her tapes. Speaking of Nixon, when she was told the other day that there were reports Trump wanted to arrest her she responded ‘every action that Mr. Nixon, I meanMr. Trump takes against me jeopardizes him and his Presidency.’
Yes, he’s met his match.
FN: As I argued in chapter A this seemed plausible after her first few tapes but Omarosa later melted away.-why is an interesting question.