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Giuliani dismissed the quite legitimate concern yesterday about Trump trying to shut down the special counsel by arguing yet again that Trump can’t obstruct an investigation via Twitter. No, he’s just expressing his opinion. When asked about it, Jeff Sessions and Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the same thing. 

“However, Trump lawyers Jay Sekulow and Rudy Giuliani argued to The Washington Post that Trump was merely expressing an opinion.”

“The president has issued no order or direction to the Department of Justice on this,” Sekulow told the Post.

Giuliani pointed to Trump’s use of the word “should” and added that the president “uses tweets to express his opinion.”

And at Wednesday’s press briefing, Sanders said the tweet was “not an order. It’s the president’s opinion.”

For some reason if it’s on Twitter it’s not supposed to count. This is more generally how the GOP tends to always respond-‘I can’t comment on his tweets everyday’ or ‘I’m not going to be regularly responding to his tweets.’

Mitch McConnell-the most cynical man in Washington who puts party above country, party above everything-just chalks it up to Trump having a bad habit-‘I always tell him not to tweet.’

This is a variant on an argument Trump defenders have used since the election-‘Take him seriously, not literally’-as if that’s possible. Dismissing something as ‘just a tweet’ is a variant of dismissing anything Trump says: during the campaign, particularly during the furor when the Hollywood Access video came out, Trump himself would dismiss the firestorm as ‘They’re just words’ as if there are no connections between words and actions.

When Pompeo was rightly grilled before the Senate Judiciary Committee, it took a lot of doing but Senators Chris Murphy and Bob Menendez finally got him to admit that, yes, Trump’s words are policy, though he still thought there were some words that were less serious than others-that when he said something ‘informally’ they somehow don’t count or count less. So when he called for a Muslim ban during the campaign was that ‘informal?’ As time would prove, surely not.

When he said ‘Russia, if you’re listening?’ was that mere words? With all the evidence of contacts his campaign had with Russia, and how he’s conducted himself while in the WH-the morning after he fired Comey-he called our fired FBI Director who was investigating himself ‘real nutjob’ to the Russians; when you look at the #TreasonSummit in Helsinki, it’s hard to dismiss it as mere words.

UPDATE: Between the indictments of the GRU operatives and the release of the redacted Mueller Report it’s clear that Russia if you’re listening was anything but mere words-the same day Russia attempted to hack Clinton’s office and Trump directed Flynn to find her deleted emails-we also know, of course, that Flynn was working with Peter Smith to do just that.

FN: As we know from Chapters A and B the top senior staffers in the Trump campaign were all aware of Smith’s efforts to commission very serious computer crimes-hacking.

Indeed, what Trump and his defenders never get is that when you’re President, everything you say matters; anything you say no matter how ‘informal’ is of great consequence; and indeed, with Trump, it’s often what he says ‘informally’ that is most significant.

On the other hand, this does point to a clear tic with Trump: he somehow thinks that the best way to hide something is in plain sight. Somehow if it’s said publicly, he can’t be held accountable for his words. It goes back to when he said he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it. Indeed, while Giuliani would call that-what? an opinion?-Rudy himself later asserted that even if Trump had Comey assassinated that would not be murder and he could not be charged, though he could be impeached. 

Of course, what confidence do you have that this Congress would impeach Trump for shooting Comey?

FN: As it has turned out at least til this date-June 23, 2019 the Dem Congress that succeeded Ryan and Nunes is no more eager to impeach this fake ‘President.’

Paul Ryan would no doubt say keep it in the family. 

But that is Trump’s theory-that if he says it publicly, he can’t be held accountable. So ‘Russia, if you’re listening’ was just a joke, as was ‘I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it’-just words. Now he says Sessions needs to end the special counsel now and he’s just expressing his opinion.

For a thought experiment, imagine if we found Nixon saying this on his tapes? What if-as someone on MSNBC pointed out last night-Bill Clinton in the late 1990s wrote an op-ed telling Janet Reno she should fire Ken Starr? I’m sure the GOP and MSM would be fine with this if he explained ‘it’s just my opinion.’

Of course Bill Clinton was a democratic-small d-President.

Remember, though, an authoritarian tells you what they will do.

Like Maya Angelou warned when someone shows you who they are believe them the first time. 

UPDATE: Of course, Trump never fired Mueller which likely would have backfired but he did find his Roy Cohn-or RFK-a partisan hack to lead the DOJ.

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October 28, 2016: a Day That Will Live in Infamy Copyright © by . All Rights Reserved.

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