520

So Omarosa declared on Don Lemon yesterday and at this point who can deny it? Is she going to be the one to take Trump down? If so it’s entirely fitting and ironic.

On a number of levels. First of all, she’s a black woman and Trump called her ‘vicious and not very smart’ as he has insulted many black women and black people in general as not being smart. 

But if you look at how she’s played this so far you have to say it’s been very smart. Even Fox News has to admit that she outsmarted illegitimate ‘President Trump.’

She has tapes, lots of tapes, as many as 200 tapes. 

If you listen to Lara Trump’s offer of a job to Omarosa on the recording, it’s clear that she knew Omarosa had tapes.

Lara Trump says: “It sounds a little like, obviously, that there are some things you’ve got in the back pocket to pull out. Clearly, if you come on board the campaign, like, we can’t have, we got to,” she continues, before Manigault Newman interjects, “Oh, God no.”

Indeed, the WH must have been bracing for this for months since Omarosa left. If you read her book-I’ve just started-she asserts the reason she was fired was because she knew about the ‘N word’ tape and there was fear she had all this ammo.

“A producer at ABC told me to my face that she had multiple sources confirm the Christmas party meltdown. And yet . . . no one in attendance took a picture? I haven’t walked into an event in fifteen years without someone snapping my picture. Thousands of photos and videos of the event were posted on social media and news outlets, but not a single one of me, flipping tables and shouting curses? Someone would have tweeted. A video or photo would have been worth serious money. But it didn’t exist. It didn’t happen. I wasn’t there.”

“I suspect that it came from the chief of staff’s office. He’d threatened me in the Situation Room that it might get ugly and there could be “difficulty” to my reputation, and there was. That would explain the clandestine meeting, so no one else would see how it had really been handled. In their effort to discredit, distract, and deny—their usual pattern—they had the added bonus of making me look crazy to frighten away the anonymous N-word tape source.”

Location 135 in her book.

“General Kelly attempted to assassinate my character. I asked myself, Why? Given the circumstances and timing, I had to believe that the purpose was to prevent me from getting the N-word tape, which, by logic, I was now convinced had to be real. While all this was going on, I called my sources about the tape and couldn’t reach any of them. As soon as the fiction hit the news, the trail went cold. Ice cold.”

Locations 145-154.

This also explains Kelly’s cryptic words in the Situation Room-his warning about her being under significant, legal jeopardy.

General Kelly sat down and said, “We’re going to talk to you about leaving the White House. It’s come to my attention there have been significant integrity issues related to you. The integrity issues are very serious. If this were the military, this would be a pretty high level of accountability, meaning a court-martial. We’re not suggesting any legal action here. It’s a pretty serious offense. I’d like to see this be a friendly departure. There are pretty significant legal issues that we hope won’t make it ugly for you. If we make this a friendly departure, you can look at your time here in the White House as a year of service to the nation. You can go on without any type of difficulty in the future relative to your reputation. But it’s very important that you understand there are serious legal issues that have been violated and you are open to some legal action that we hope we can control.”

It was a warning about the tapes.

And tapes are nothing to sneeze at-tapes are what took down Nixon; if there were not tapes Nixon would have gotten away with it.

“The tapes of Ms. Manigault Newman’s private conversations with Mr. Trump and other officials connected to him have rattled the White House in a way that few things other than the special counsel investigation into possible campaign collusion with Russia have. Mr. Trump’s aides have been concerned that they will make appearances on other tapes, of which Ms. Manigault Newman is believed to have as many as 200.”

“Her willingness to slowly deploy the tapes for maximum effect is straight from Mr. Trump’s playbook, which includes boasts of relying on “truthful hyperbole” to engage people, of threatening to expose people with recordings and of claiming to have scurrilous information about people that he might reveal at any moment.”

Truthful hyperbole. That’s the other reason it’s so fitting, yet it makes perfect sense: if you want to take down a reality tv ‘President’ you need a reality tv star. For Trump himself who’s more appropriate than Omarosa-the arch villain contestant from the Apprentice? The Apprentice is what really made Trump a household persona for millions of Americans and Omarosa is by far the most (in)famous contestant.

So it’s fitting that she of all people is who is most getting under his skin and may be the one to take him down. 

“Good Lord, Will Omarosa Actually Be the One to Take Down Donald Trump?”

“Omarosa is not the hero we want, but what if she’s the one we get?”

“While Omarosa is clearly a reprehensible person, I can’t help but root for her to take these bastards down. It’s the classic Enemy Mine trope playing out in real life. Like when Spike joins Buffy to defeat Angelus, or Hannibal Lecter helps Clarice Starling to catch Buffalo Bill, Omarosa is looking at us from behind the glass, goading us towards more negative publicity around this trainwreck of a presidency. And instead of telling her about the lambs, we have to buy her book. There’s always a price.”

“And in a way, Omarosa is the perfect person to take down Trump. Think about it. We tried going high when they went low, and it failed. Democrats repeatedly try to make good-faith deals with a party that is relentlessly breaking the rules of government. The republican party is Lucy with the football, and democrats are Charlie Brown, continually falling on our asses when we try to kick a field goal. Maybe, to beat them, it’ll take someone who’s willing to go lower. As Jack Donaghy says on 30 Rock, we have to “deeper into the crevasse” to find our way out.”

Exactly. They go low, we go high, and they hit us again. The idea that the Dems have to play rougher and tougher in the future-an idea I totally subscribe to-is also a maxim of another guy who’s pretty good at ‘truthful hyperbole’-Michael Avenatti.

Recently at the major Dem event in Iowa Avenatti declared when they go low hit them harder.

Avenatti, said former Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), is “tapping into a Democratic rage that Trump must be defeated and it doesn’t matter how.”

“They think the low blow beat the high ground in 2016,” Israel said, adding that Trump has created “an electorate that is angrier, nastier and more desperate.”

“That likely means more attacks and a pugnacious 2020 primary season, say Democrats.”

“We have no other choice,” said one political strategist who has been having preliminary conversations with candidates about running for the presidency. “You can’t kill him with kindness. That doesn’t work. So you have to go the other way.”

 

There are some, to be sure, who still argue the Dems should try to kill them with kindness. They argue that if no one is observing the norms of political engagement that makes things even worse. But what this misses is that a system of norms is only effective if most people observe them. When you have one of the two major parties systematically flouting them, and more barefacedly every election cycle, ultimately it’s on the other party-the Democrats-to make them pay for it. If there’s no price for deviant behavior it will continue. And remember I only benefit from norm breaking to the extent that I can be confident others will observe them. If we ultimately want to get back to being a country of shared norms we have to show the GOP that a very heavy price is paid in their aggressive norm breaking-not just of Trump but of Mitch McConnell, etc.

Omarosa and Avenatti are similar in many ways. Both are effective in a way that others have not been by playing by his tactics in terms of employing the media and truthful hyperbole.

Indeed, when Avenatti first came on the scene with Stormy Daniels, he was dismissed much as Omarsoa was initially-before she started showing she had the goods(tapes proving her assertions).

Many in the MSM insisted that the Stormy Daniels scandal was a one day nothingburger-no way would it go beyond two or three days as ‘Americans knew who Trump was yet they elected him. Do you think they are surprised he had an extramarital affair?’

Interestingly, this argument tacitly assumes Trump’s narrative: as he ‘won’ the election anything he did clearly was good and ok-and, indeed, is why he won. 

It was immediately clear to me that the media frame was wrong that this was about a lot more than just an extramarital affair-though that was enough to impeach Clinton. But this wasn’t just about an extramarital affair it opened up two different rabbit holes for Trump.

1. His treatment of women, there had been many accusations of sexual assault and sexual misconduct against him at the end of the 2016 election. Yes, this instance was consensual but it could still be placed on the larger contiuum of the way he treats women.

2. Potentially major campaign finance violations. Was this an in kind contribution? Many questions were raised as Michael Cohen insisted that he paid it out of his own money without telling Trump. Later he released a tape that showed the opposite.

UPDATE: Now it turns out that Cohen initially didn’t want to pay Stormy Daniels until the Hollywood Access video hit. 

It was also violated a law against trying to influence an election. It was clear that there were any number of campaign violations involved and that it wouldn’t be a one day story.

And it surely hasn’t been. At this point whatever you want to say about Avenatti it’s thanks to him that the SDNY is investigating Michael Cohen’s hush payments to various women on Trump’s behalf.

When they go low hit them harder.

As for Omarosa she says Trump has met his match in her and who can deny it at this point. Yesterday during her interview with Lemon, he told her that the news had just broke that Trump is on a ‘death spiral’ at the Russia White House and wants to arrest her.

Her response was:  ‘every action that Mr. Trump takes against me jeopardizes him and his Presidency.’

When they go low hit them harder.

FN: Yes I fully acknowledge in retrospect Avenatti turned out to be a pretty imperfect messenger but I do believe the Dems leadership gets it wrong in trying to avoid confrontation with Trump at all costs. It’s clear the Dem base wants someone to take the battle to the enemy-fake ‘President Trump.’

Omarosa has fizzled after her fast start-was she bluffing about the ‘N word’ tape and having ‘hundreds of tapes?’

An interesting and open question-it could be or it could be that she has been silenced by Trump’s legal team.

I’m willing to admit Avenatti and Omarosa disappointed but I was correct in my initial reaction that Strormy Daniels wouldn’t be a 1 day story-it’s thanks to her that Michael Cohen is in prison and Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator-though it’s pretty outrageous that Cohen is in prison for crimes Trump directed him to commit and were in Trump’s and not Cohen’s benefit while Trump is hailed as the ‘President’-ignoring that he didn’t win it legitimately.

FN: Happy to see the Dems are asking the right question: did the SDNY choose not to charge Trump for the same reason as Mueller-DOJ policy argues against it?

Now how much credit Avenatti deserves for Stormy Daniels being who made Trump an unindicted co-conspirator-though it’s a piece of injustice he’s not an indicted co-conspirator-even the Dem opposition doesn’t want to indict him in their own way-impeachment-is another question. She’s now broken and sued him so what this suggests about his contribution can be debated. But even if Avenatti and Omarosa have proven to be the wrong messengers the MSM has major egg on its face for wrongly dismissing the Stormy Daniels’ payment story when it broke.

Instead it’s been the gift that keeps on giving. 

So this book is about ongoing political history and as it is a moving story things I wrote one month will look different the next-often things will look different from one day to the next. I could just erase prognostications that didn’t quite turn out as I had thought but  to me that would be cheap. I’m happy to see how things have unfolded relative to where I and others thought they would go at previous moments in time.

But I’ll certainly take my record vs the MSM who all dismissed the Stormy Daniels story as a nothingburger-to say nothing of them burying Russia before the election and their Emailgate obsession.

I was wrong on some of the details-Orarosa and Avenatti proving to be heroes-interestingly Omarosa was on Donnie Deustch last night, the very night I was writing about how she hasn’t really come through.

Clearly I-as most in the #Resistance did-I had way too much in Mueller though unlike many resisters I never put as much stock in Trump going to prison as they did-just seemed Mueller and Friends would be pretty conservative about that-with that DOJ regulation etc

But in reading the report it’s impossible to disagree with Ron Klain-Mueller constructed his report to minimize Trump’s wrong doing. This is why I worry the Dems are beating themselves before they even question Mueller-they need to do a lot more than just let him read his own report word for word

OTOH listening to Schiff gives you some cause for optimism

I also never anticipated how reticent a Nancy Pelosi led Dem Congress would be to hold Trump accountable or even do the most basic oversight

Still I was right about Russian collusion right from the start-Russia if you’re listening. Everything I suspected back in July, 2016 and-a whole lot more-has been confirmed by subsequent reporting and now the Mueller Report.

The MR really is very damning but the Russian collusion part has barely caused a wrinkle in the MSM-who has completely botched its reporting-they got suckered by Barr’s fake Exoneration letter and even now that Barr has been discredited the press still talks of how ‘but the narrative has been set that Trump was exonerated that there was no collusion at least’-ignoring the little fact that they are who sets the narrative.

Here’s a radical idea: if your narrative is wrong change your narrative! 

 

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