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As I attempt to land this plane-this book I’ve been working on since mid December, 2017-it’s funny that I’m writing yet another chapter on the media and it’s Hillary Derangement Syndrome. For much of the time I’ve written this my discussion about the media’s Clinton Derangement Syndrome was historical-looking back to their bias against her in the 2016 election after 25 years of anti Clinton bias since she and Bill went to Washington in 1993.

But lately we’ve had some new timely examples of CDS in action. As I argued in a previous chapter (Kavanaugh chapter) throughout much of the last few years the media coverage has been quite good, at least in terms of investigating the Russia scandal. True the MSM has been a step behind throughout. This is probably necessarily so as we noted in (CH M) that the media is congenitally timid and perhaps that’s a good thing-as it makes them on guard about getting things wrong.

FN: However even if there have been 200 great pieces of original reporting on Russian collusion, what’s been missing is to connect the dots and look at the bigger picture-each story has been treated like a stand alone where the previous 199 bombshells are forgotten.

The Russia investigation gets them nervous as covering it puts them out on a limb-in case anything turns out to be wrong. Indeed, as noted in the previous chapter, Scott Stedman just this morning warned that there is a sophisticated GOP effort to discredit journalists who cover the Mueller investigation.

But as I noted in (chapter N) the media coverage has notably regressed into some of their bad habits with the start of the Kavanaugh fight. It was the return of he said she said journalism.

Of course, the GOP framed the accusations of Christine Ford and other accusers as ‘he said she said’ and structured the hearing that way-by having no witnesses besides her and Kavanaugh-yet in the same breath insisted that there was ‘no corroboration’-kind of like when Nunes’ House GOP declared ‘no collusion’  and they hadn’t even interviewed Papadopoulos.

But even while the GOP operates in bad faith, it’s on the media not fall into the trap which they did hook, line, and sinker. And the media coverage hasn’t gotten better since the end of the Kavanaugh fight-somehow the Kavanaugh fight led to their retrogression and the bad habits have stayed past the Kavanaugh nomination.

FN: Looking back how much of it was retrogression rather than them just being themselves is another question. I tended to give them credit for all the great Russia investigating but again, what was missing was a real focused attempt to connect the dots-indeed, once Barr put out his fake exoneration letter they were very quick to declare Mueller is over which is good as we have Russia fatigue and the Democrats need to avoid re-litigating this effectively taking all their great Russia investigative reporting and shutting it away on a shelf somewhere.

Besides the he said she said game they’ve played the related game of being the GOP’s court stenographer. The idea that the Kavanaugh fight greatly benefitted the GOP was accepted as an article of faith because: Mitch McConnell, Trump, etc, said it benefitted the GOP. 

As we saw in (Chapter J) it’s a mixed picture but overall it hasn’t. It only ever showed itself in Senate races-not in House races and if anything the Dems generic advantage increased. Now even the Senate polls are looking better for Dems-certainly in Tennessee where a few days ago based on an outlier that had Marsha Blackburn up by 14 the media acted as if this race was essentially over.

For the most part the coverage since has had the tone that the GOP is winning. A lot of the same niggly criticisms of Clinton in 2016 are back: there’s a lot of talk that the Dems don’t have a message even though they clearly do.

Very true. In 2016 the media simply ignored Hillary’s many policy positions and her discussion about the economy-as we saw in (Chapter A) going as far as suggesting that her discussion of the economy could actually hurt her. Then after the election they developed a new canard: she’d lost because she didn’t discuss the economy. But as Krugman says the media doesn’t like discussing policy in any case-they like to don their amateur political strategy hats and say ‘That sure was terrible for ‘President Trump’ to joke about Gianforte attacking a reporter but  is it a successful political strategy?’

FN: PACE Jay Rosen they think it makes them sound savvy. 

By the way’, I wish this was a joke-Stephanie Ruhle was literally asking this question this morning on MSNBC. She seems to feel that Trump has this simply Svenaglian power of political persuasion. All she ever says is ‘Yes that was wrong what President Trump said but his base loves it.’

UPDATE: Here in late September, 2019 now that impeachment hearings have finally begun, Ryan Cooper has a new piece pointing out that Trump is anything but some stable political genius-as he argues and much of the MSM-and Dem leadership-seems to think. 

While I’m relieved the Dem leadership in Congress has finally gotten here-see here for more on how they did-if you can believe it Andrew Cuomo was hanging out with Chris Christie last night bemoaning yesterday’s-excellent-hearing with the acting DN Director-who chose to take an urgent and credible whistleblower complaint against Trump to-Trump

–as the end of civility and the start of gridlock. 

LOL-where have you been the last 27 years Governor Cuomo? And Chris Christie, Mr. Shut Up and Sit Down is now the expert on bringing back civility?

End of UPDATE.

The idea that you can never say anything was wrong and not right away give his base veto power never occurs to her. What she doesn’t get about his base is that yes it supports him-by definition that’s what a base does, but it’s getting smaller. If 40% of the public supports him that doesn’t mean his base is 40%. A good part of that number is soft support. I believe when the full truth about Russia collusion comes out it will be closer to 20% than 40%.

UPDATE: Time will tell about this, to be sure. Trump’s approval rating remains where it’s been the last few years-the low 40s. Of course, if he gets 42% of the vote in 2020 that’s a landslide loss. One number that already has started to move is support for impeachment. For a long time the savvy MSM insisted that if support in opinion polls for impeachment is in the high 30s it will always be in the high 30s as there’s no smoking gun. With Nixon, the premise went, you had the Watergate tapes. Of course, now we have something on that level-the Ukraine transcripts.

An argument I had made myself previously has now gone mainstream-support for impeachment can go up just based on the percentage of voters who disapprove of Trump yet hadn’t previously supported impeachment.

End of UPDATE.

The other day I wrote a chapter (get link)  about the media freaking out on Elizabeth’s actually pretty deft trolling of Trump on his despicable racism in calling her ‘Pocahontas.’

FN: I had thought it was deft and even in retrospect I don’t really get why it was supposedly such a disaster-again this is just like the emails. And even after her apology I still think there’s really something wrong with the way the media has covered this. 

No, the media reaction was not only did her troll fail but somehow it endangered the Dems Nov 6 chances-I have no idea.

You don’t get the media freaking out over Chaffetz. This is just classic making fun of the victim for her response to bullies while giving the bullies a pass.

FN: In retrospect Warren’s move was never seen as deft-though I still read it as an Obamaesque response-he had gotten the Birther story out of the news by showing his long form birth certificate. This was likely because her DNA test didnd’t show a very high level of Cherokee blood-about .85 of 1%. I’m still not sure this makes her claims specious-there are differences even among Cherokee activists themselves about this. Some activists, however, did criticize her and so she apologized and has since totally transcended the furor-here is the recent odds in the betting market.

End of FN

The media also freaked out because of Hillary’s accurate comment that the GOP understands only strength. Sure-I can think of all these times where Mitch McConnell chose not to exploit GOP partisan power where he had it-Merrick Garland, the debt ceiling fight, the Kavanaugh’s confirmation…-oh wait.

Then there was the faux outrage that she didn’t demand that her husband should somehow retroactively resign 20 years later. Note these same outraged journalists have nothing to say about Trump or Kavanaugh. Which underscores a key point about Clinton Derangement: Bill’s affairs and womanizing were always a convenient foil but it was never sincere feminist concerns driving the criticism but the media’s hatred of the Clintons.

The misogynistic GOP who recently didn’t even allow one of their own sister Senate GOPers to question Christine Ford-in light of their feeling they needed a girl to interrogate another girl-instead they farmed the role out-has been very pleased to utilize the #MeToo movement for its own anti feminist purposes-as noted in (chapter B)

When the charges against Clarence Thomas came out in 1991 the GOP was outraged over ‘radical feminism run amok’ seeking to ‘destroy all men’ and ‘accuse all men of being sexual harassers.’

Back then they very straightforwardly dismissed feminism and #MeToo-before it got the hashtag-out of hand. However, with the rise of Bill Clinton they changed their tune. Suddenly they were outraged that Hillary failed to show feminist solidarity with the accusers the GOP was paying as they accused her husband of various things.

Regarding Paula Jones, it’s forgotten-of course the media would forget-that Kellyann Conway’s husband and his friends funded Paula Jones lawsuit who had previously been willing to settle. By the way, one more thing the Democrats need to investigate next year: what exactly the accusers were paid who showed up at Hillary’s debate just after the Hollywood Access video broke in October, 2016. Persons of interest are Roger Stone, David Bossie, and Chuck Johnson for  starters.

FN: Typical for the Party of Nixon Stone and friends have been fighting over who gets the credit.

#MeToo often has let the GOP have it both ways as they get to accuse Democrats of hypocrisy-while they defend any Republican accused of any thing under the sun to the four corners of the earth-up to and including sexual assault and pedophilia.

Speaking of Clinton hatred masquerading as feminism, enter Ruth Marcus. Today MSNBC-October 19, 2018-has been Hillary bashing all day.

Yes, MSNBC is a liberal network. If you actually watch it during the day you know this doesn’t even pass the laugh test.

https://twitter.com/JWadeTaylor/status/1053027443773194240

This morning there were two different anti Clinton articles MSNBC was following. You had Annie Karni’s snarky Politico piece.

FN: Avenatti, of course, went on to sink any real chance he had in a Democratic Presidential primary when he declared that to beat Trump in 2020 you need a white male-suggeting maybe he was in the wrong party-then the accusations of domestic violence fatally sunk his campaign along with any public standing he may have had.

End of FN

Yes Hillary is a problem-this is the allegedly universal view-it’s the MSM narrative treated like reality itself. Her continued existence that she breathes at all, Karini and her media friends see as this terrible ‘problem.’

As usual this totally ignores her many supporters who are #StillWithHer to this day as I documented in (Chapter B).

Karini’s question on how to handle the problem that Hilary Clinton won’t ‘shut the F up’ is more tactful, of course, than the way it was phrased in this DailyBeast piece.

But the message is the same-she needs to shut up. The hostile message from the media to Clinton has morphed and expanded. Before the message as we saw in -chapter ( X)-was she has every right to speak her opinion-certainly big of them-but it’s just too close to the election.

So while the Times in this hit piece parsed their words a little ‘she has every right to speak, God damnit, but just not now’-now they ARE just telling her to shut up. Some a little more politely than others.

But then MSNBC came in with the one two punch-not only is her continued existence-or at least given any sign of her existence-itself a major provocation-a terrible problem to be solved-but now they again played the faux outrage card, the media is outraged that she refused to say that Clinton should have left the WH in 1998.

Of course, we know the media is sincere by demanding that Trump and Kavanugh also resign now-oh wait. Enter Ruth Marcus one of the media’s most prominent Clinton haters pretending to be feminists:

Right away Marcus hits Hillary with both barrels-she’s even worse than Donald Trump.

Why Hillary Clinton’s comments were even more painful than Trump’s

Of course, I mean the first female Presidential candidate of a major party is a worse sexist than Donald Trump who has at least 20 credible accusations of sexual assault against himself, who rammed through a ‘Justice’ who’s also accused of sexual assault multiple times, and for who even this sexist victory wasn’t enough-he had to mock Christine Ford as well as Stormy Daniels-who while Trump claimed to not have had an affair with, Trump’s lawyer recently pled out to violating campaign election law in hush payments to.

But certainly women can’t trust Hillary. They’re lucky they have Trump over in the Russia House a sexual assaulter who was just plowed through to the Supreme Court who is now quite possibly the 5th vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Makes sense to me.

But it seems the media has it’s new cudgel to beat Clinton with. In 2016 it was the damn emails. Now it’s -‘Should Bill have resigned? No? You’re worse than Donald Trump.’

Marcus argues that Clinton should have apologized. Here’s her analysis of the exchange:

Speaking of Bill Clinton, there was his wife on CBS’s “Sunday Morning,” being asked about workplace conduct in the clarifying light of the #MeToo movement. “In retrospect, do you think Bill should’ve resigned in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal?” asked correspondent Tony Dokoupil.

Clinton, without hesitation: “Absolutely not.”

Dokoupil: “It wasn’t an abuse of power?”

Clinton: “No, no.”

Dokoupil: “There are people who look at the incidents of the ’90s and they say, ‘A president of the United States cannot have a consensual relationship with an intern, the power imbalance is too great.’ ”

Clinton, interjecting mid-sentence: “Who was an adult. But let me ask you this: Where’s the investigation of the current incumbent against whom numerous allegations have been made and which he dismisses, denies and ridicules?”

Who was an adult . How can she say that, as if that is relevant in any way? Lewinsky’s technical adulthood is no defense for Bill Clinton’s behavior — in the workplace, as her superior (not to mention president), as a man old enough to be her father. And whatever the reasons for Hillary Clinton’s instinctive defense of her husband’s behavior then, her summary dismissal of it now diminishes her claim to feminism.”

But it’s simply not true to say it isn’t relevant in any way-certainly wether something is legal or not in the eyes of the law makes a huge difference. She was the age of consent and is clear in her own book that Clinton did not coerce her into the affair. I think that the question of wether or not an affair with a subordinate in principle is sexual misconduct is a moral question with at least some murkiness in it. You can certainly make a good case that it’s ill advised for any number of reasons. But if simply having an affair with an underling is something that requires resignation then there is a lot of people who need to resign-probably many of them in the same newsrooms pretending to be outraged over Monica Lewinsky.

But what Bill Clinton did in having an affair with Monica Lewinsky is not on the same moral level as what Kavanaugh and Trump are accused of doing. So maybe the media has a new cudgel to beat way  Clinton with now: why won’t you say Bill should have resigned?

But let’s be very clear: they could care less about #MeToo-if they did they wouldn’t say ‘It sure was terrible what Trump said about Dr. Ford’ but then take it back by asking ‘But his base likes it so maybe it’s smart politics.’

And the media is not demanding that Trump or Kavanaugh who are two of the most powerful people in the world resign. Demanding that someone who’s no longer in office ‘resign’ while those currently in office are referred to as ‘President Trump’ and ‘Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh’ proves it’s not feminism-it’s Clinton hatred.

Indeed, even Kirsten Gillibrand isn’t doing this. She’s not after Kavanaugh the way she was after Franken. Only Democrats are to be held accountable apparently-to a pretty stringent standard.

FN: The Northam fiasco shows again only the Democratic party is held accountable for behaving badly.

When Ruth Marcus was on Hallie Jackson this morning she piously intoned that she’s not demanding Clinton not speak just she answer the media’s new cudgel-that,, like the faux outrage over the emails,  never has an answer that will please them. But in summation, that’s what it adds up to. There’s outrage that she speak at all. The media feels she lost because she was a bad candidate-any other candidate would have beaten Trump now she should shut up forever. 

It’s a division of responsibilities-a few pundits demand she shut up, some more crudely and some more refined, the Times claims she can speak-big of Dean Baquet and Friends-just not before an election; meanwhile Marcus pretend she’s cool with her speaking as long as Clinton’s words are that her husband is a sexual predator who must resign retroactively.

The cumulative effect of all this is she should shut up-at least until she demand Bill’s retroactive resignation.

If the media is wrong that means they share some major responsibility for Trump’s illegitimate ‘win.’ This is why for their purposes Clinton has to have been a bad candidate-if not it would mean they’re Emailgate freakout in 2016 is culpable and this they can never admit.

If Marcus claims she’s not telling Clinton to shut up just apologize to her satisfaction-that’s a feminist message circa  2018 the first female major party nominee doesn’t have to shut up so long as she apologizes properly-Annie Karni is saying so: Hillary should shut up. Ok, she seems not to be willing to do so and that is a real problem.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Hillary?

“She’s not going away—and Democrats aren’t sure what to do about it.”

We all agree she’s a problem the question is how to you solve it. There we have some differences of opinion.

She has systematically outlined her theory of the case against what she calls Trump’s “assault on our democracy” via a new afterword to her campaign memoir, “What Happened.” The chapter has become something of a post-campaign stump speech, which Clinton has rolled out in appearances on the “Rachel Maddow Show” and at the Atlantic Ideas Festival in Washington, D.C.

“She has also participated in extended interviews on CNN and CBS, during which that message has been interrupted by questions about the Clintons’ past. Last week, for instance, she said in a television interview that her husband’s affair with a White House intern in the 1990s did not constitute an abuse of power because Monica Lewinsky was “an adult.”

“In just one example of the liberal groans that greeted Clinton’s comments, New York Times editorial board member Michelle Cottle blasted the former nominee in an op-ed Thursday, urging her to keep quiet.”

I don’t know that I’d call the Times snarky attacks ‘liberal groans.’ More like the snark of Clinton haters. But again, it’s clear the media has found the way it’s going to do everything in its power to shut her up-ask her about Bill and Monica-that’s the new Emailgate.

In truth no more did more to ‘defeat’ her than Baquet and Friends.

She and former President Bill Clinton recently announced a 13-city arena tour, produced by Live Nation, billed as “An Evening with the Clintons,” which will launch in late November. Tickets to the events are on sale for between $120 and $370, with the proceeds going to the Clintons.

“Democrats watching Clinton’s moves are conflicted about what to make of her post-candidate public life. On the one hand, they argue, Clinton’s attacks on Trump, and interviews that inevitably revisit the transgressions of the 1990s, are widely seen as unhelpful to the Democratic Party at this juncture—a selfish pose for someone whose approval rating hasn’t budged above 38 percent since the election, and who remains a ready target for Trump to use to whip up his base.

I have no idea who these Democrats are. I can tell you that she still has millions of supporters many who want her to run again-I don’t think she will. Indeed, Hallie Jackson was attacking her this morning because someone else-not her-refused to put her chances of running in 2020 at 0. This lead to the usual Beltway freakout. All she does is fire up the Trump supporters! How selfish not to say 0. 

It wasn’t her. No doubt the Beltway response to this is It doesn’t matter she shouldn’t have such selfish, clueless friends. 

I also note the same pathetic premise for why Dems have to bury Pelosi-after all, the Republicans say she’s a terrible person-is used against Hillary: the GOP attacks her so make her shut up. After all, the GOP wouldn’t attack her if they didn’t have a great reason!

UPDATE: Of course, since the Dems took over the House in January, 2019 the GOP relented its attacks on her and focused them on ‘the squad’-to use their vile, xenophobic phrase. After all, until last week it had looked as if Pelosi was Trump’s best friend in Washington-it looked as if she was determined to run the clock out for him enabling him to avoid any accountability before the 2020 election. We can debate wether or not this shows her to be a brilliant strategist-or that events forced her hand-but in a way her long apparent opposition to impeachment does give her a certain standing.

It’s been noted that Trump’s Twitter attacks on her  have been hitherto  somewhat muted at least.

End of UPDATE

 

What Hallie Jackson. Anni Karini, and Ruth Marcus don’t acknowledge is that actual Democratic voters don’t have the contempt for her they do.

But how could that be? Haven’t these respondents heard Trump call her Crooked Hillary? Surely once they hear that they won’t support her. Because whatever Trump and the GOP say is the God’s honest truth.

“Just guessing this isn’t the story Democratic candidates were looking for in the homestretch of the midterms,” David Axelrod, a former top adviser to President Barack Obama, tweeted in response to Clinton’s answer about Lewinsky.

By the way, Ruth Marcus is by far not the only hypocrite. I appreciate what Axe did for Obama’s campaign but he’s a total hypocrite here too. If Bill has to ‘resign’ 20 years after the fact then why does Axelrod refer to Trump as ‘the President.’

If the #MeToo rules apply to Clinton why not to Trump? The reason: Clinton Derangement Syndrome.

Then Karini asks some good questions-it’s about time someone in the MSM does regarding Clinton:

“On the other hand, some Democrats say, why should the woman who won the popular vote in 2016—62,523,126 votes, to be precise, the biggest number of votes in history with the exception of President Barack Obama—be silenced at a time of great public discourse? Why is it only Hillary Clinton, not Joe Biden or John Kerry or even Bernie Sanders, for that matter, who is seen as so tarnished by a presidential loss that she must sit silent on the sidelines?”

UPDATE: Karini’s number is wrong she got 65,853,514 votes-Trump got 62,984,828 votes.

If you compare Clinton’s moves with what Democratic presidential losers have done in the past, you won’t find much that is different.

Kerry campaigned in the midterms in 2006, two years after he lost the presidential election, until a gaffe—he told California college students that if they didn’t study hard they could “get stuck in Iraq”—got him benched for the rest of the season. But in 2012, he was the principal speaker on foreign policy at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

“Vice President Al Gore, after his 2000 presidential loss, famously grew a beard and launched a second career as an environmental activist and Silicon Valley rainmaker. But he was politically active during the 2002 midterms, and was a blistering opponent of President George W. Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq.”

What is the difference between Hillary and all these guys… Hmmm… Can I have a letter Y?

UPDATE: Talk about someone who doesn’t care about sexual misconduct he just hates the Clintons, check out who Ken Starr’s been defending lately:

This is on top of Starr looking the other way as Chancellor at Baylor.

UPDATE: I don’t blame Tapper for deleting this tweet.

UPDATE 2.0: Almost a year later what stands out in the MSM coverage of al this is the curious way they have buried the many accusations of sexual misconduct and assault against ‘President Trump.’

Recently a book came out about the Kavanaugh fiasco. Finally after a year the Beltway press was ready to discuss Debbie Ramirez’s allegations-they ignored them at the time-as did the FBI in their faux ‘investigation’-it was such a great investigation Trump gave the team awards.

With the revelations regarding Ukraine are you listening? it’s now emerging the extent to which high government officials in top agencies-the DOJ, State-were abusing their powers to protect ‘President Trump’ from political embarrassment.

Still while the Times-belatedly-had major piece on Ms. Ramirez’s credible allegations-the title of this piece was cringeworthy-as is often the case with the Times-yet Baquet scoffs at the idea they need a public editor anymore.

Meanwhile while some Dems vowed in the immediate aftermath to open a new investigation of Kavanaugh-or at least investigate the Trumpland’s FBI’s fake investigation-and possibly impeachment hearings for Kav-Pelosi and Friends quickly nixed the idea.

Yes at least now she has opened an impeachment investigation-though arguably she is construing it too narrowly in focusing on only Ukraine.

While it seems I’m in the minority-at least so far as the conventional MSM ‘wisdom’ goes I don’t get why you only want to impeach on Ukraine.

There’s a clear pattern-it was clear before Ukraine if you’re listening-though the way the MSM covered it and the Dem leaders spoke about it totally obscured this. With the revelations of Trump’s attempt to extort Ukraine in exchange for them colluding with him in 2020 being admittedly really clear-the phone call is Trump’s Nixon Tapes-it’s child’s play to showing how this was just part of a larger pattern of colluding with foreign powers to win American Presidential elections.

Ukraine if you’re listening is obviously not a totally new story but the natural logical procession from Russia if you’re listening.

Again he literally made that call that we now know John Pompeo was listening in on the very next day after Mueller testified.

I got away with 2016 now let’s do 2020. 

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/01/impeachment-house-democrats-investigation-trump-013647

OTOH she is definitely trying to move too fast-even if you can while doing a comprehensive and thorough job impeach him before the end of the year, it would be a major tactical and moral mistake.

At least for now a widely expressed sentiment is the Dems will only focus on Ukraine. There is some logic to this-clearly in Ukraine we really do have a kind of smoking gun but I agree with Josh Chafetz-Ukraine if you’re listening is part of the larger pattern of Trump’s willingness to collude with a foreign power to win an American Presidential election-it’s just the next level after Russia if you’re listening and it’s this pattern of behavior the Democrats need to draw for the public.

However, at the end of the day the desire to get impeachment over soon-preferably before the end of the year-which again is a huge tactical mistake as impeachment has already given the Dems the leverage via Trump-previously their leverage was zero-and the idea that they should limit themselves solely to Ukraine are related-the only way they have a chance at ending before the end of the year is if they focus only on Ukraine-indeed only on the one phone call-and ignore all new findings they learn in investigating the phone call.

Already we’re seeing that Trump’s phone call to the Ukraine President is just the tip of the iceberg-it’s since emerged that he explicitly told the Russians in that Oval Office victory dance the morning after he fired Comey that there’s nothing wrong with them interfering in our elections.

There’s also the story that broke last night-that Trump’s State Department has been on a-ahem-witch hunt against  Clinton’s former aides.

Guess  Mike Pompeo and Friends really want to help Trump keep his campaign promise to Lock her up. 

On Friday, Pompeo was the first Trump stooge the Dems subpoenaed. 

Among the many questions they can ask him is why they are misusing the power of the State department to investigate Hillary Clinton’s aides.

This, to be sure, is just one more example of State being politically weaponized to benefit this fake ‘President’s’ political interests. Pompeo and Friends are implicated in Ukraine if you’re listening.

I have to disagree with the MSM hot take-what else is new?-that the Democrats spent ‘too much time on process’ Thursday in questioning Trump’s Acting DNI Director about the rather outrageous fact that in response to a whistleblower complaint about Trump and his AG Bill Barr, Joseph McGuire disobeyed the law that says he shall give the complaint to Congress but instead gave it to: Trump and his AG Bill Barr.

UPDATE: Now we know that Barr was trying to get foreign leaders to help him investigate the investigators.

What this all points to is something I’ve certainly suspected the last two years-that many of the agencies have been totally penetrated by Trump-DOJ; the FBI was already Trumpland before he effectively became their boss; the IG-which still hasn’t released the report into the leaks of rogue anti Clinton pro Trump agents in 2016-while having the time to release a report on Andy McCabe and on Lisa Page-Peter Stroz’s texts and then  on Comey-and which saw Emailgate as worth an investigation but not Trump trying to extort Ukraine for political help in 2020 in contravention of American foreign policy interests;  now we’re learning to the extent that State has become yet another political arm for this illegitimate ‘President.’

The coverup and the super secret filing system really are as outrageous as the crime itself.

“This is a cover-up,” Pelosi declared Thursday. The speaker based her charge on information that had been quickly provided by the White House — the record of the Trump-Zelensky call, the whistleblower complaint, a Justice Department opinion, and related correspondence — but Democrats nevertheless maintained that the administration was engaged in covering up what had happened. The charge was quickly echoed in the press; the New York Times ran a giant headline, “COMPLAINT ASSERTS A WHITE HOUSE COVER-UP,” while the Washington Post ran a giant headline, “Trump, GOP hit back as coverup is alleged,” and the Wall Street Journal ran a giant headline, “Whistleblower Alleges Coverup.”

The main basis for the cover-up charge is the whistleblower’s contention that the White House took extraordinary steps to restrict access to records of the Trump-Zelensky call. “White House officials told me that they were ‘directed’ by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored for coordination, finalization, and distribution to Cabinet-level officials,” the whistleblower wrote. “Instead, the transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature. One White House official described this act as an abuse of this electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective.”

I don’t see how the Dems can focus solely on just the one phone call-without looking at all the new bombshells discovered while investigating this one bombshell-starting with those included in the complaint itself.

Of course, Trump’s act of cancelling the military aide to Ukraine was itself a political boon to Russia-how do you ignore this fact? Prior to the whistleblower complaint Schiff already planned to investigate the question of wether Trump is national security threat-Mueller revealed the FBI has an open investigation into this today-though Trumpland has not been cooperative in releasing information to HSPCI.

With the revelations regarding Ukraine if you’re listening it’s a clear case of asked and answered. So does Schiff attempt to put all this information together?

UPDATE: National Memo has a good answer to the dilemma-do you impeach fast and focus just on Ukraine or look at all Trump’s impeachable offenses-which necessarily will take much longer? NM’s answer is both.

But the question as to wether all the evidence from Mueller and Russia collusion is part of the impeachment hearings-I believe they should be-remains very much open let alone the question as to wether they will do a serious investigation-preferably an impeachment investigation-into Kavanaugh.

I do acnwoledge this is a stunning level of volume in terms of investigation worth not to mention impeachable items for Trump as well as Kavanaugh and Bill Barr.

But if the Dems were going to think strategically they really need to do something about the GOP Supreme Court-who, of course, handed the GOP the Presidency in 2000.

To quote Elizabeth Warren I get it. Impeaching Kavanaugh probably wouldn’t lead to removal. But at least it’d place a scarlet asterisk next to his name the next 30 years-that litigants could point out every time they appear before him.

Beyond that they need to end the filibuster and consider court packing.

As for the MSM, more broadly there is a quite shameful legacy regarding Trump and sexual assault-they tend to bury such allegations. Prior to the 2016 election a woman had claimed that Trump raped her when she was 13 years old. The Beltway never reported on this complaint.

In that case they had the convenient excuse that she refused to make her accusations publicly. A week before the election she had changed her mind but at the last moment got cold feet-probably all the threats by Trump’s Deplorables and his lawyers.

The MSM had similarly dismissed Stormy Daniels’ allegations-nobody cares about a consensual affair; unless it’s Bill Clinton..

They ended up with egg on their faces it’s true-as thanks to her Trump is now an unindicted co-conspirator.

But this year there were two accusations against Trump that were made publicly of sexual assault-Chapter A for more-and in both cases the Beltway covered it for two days then let it drop.

Quite a contrast with the demands for Clinton’s retroactive resignation.

After the Monica Lewinsky revelations, over 100 newspapers demanded Clinton’s resignations. Comparatively the MSM silence on demanding Trump resign has been deafening.

Finally last week post impeachment inquiry there’s been a breakthrough.

 

 

 

 

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

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