18

From no collusion to yes collusion:

Located at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London leaving zero doubt as to the identity of Org 1 or it’s head.

Well done. Who said those words?

The October 7, 2016 dump of Podesta’s emails is as clear a case of ‘collusion’-really coordination- as you can get as the timing of the dump was so optimal for the Trump campaign-under 2 hours after the public release of the Hollywood Access video.

While it’s clear that Bannon was the ‘high ranking Trump Campaign official’ on October 4, Seth Abramson points out that the person who directed Stone on July 22, 2016 was quite possibly Manafort.

Indeed, just recently we learned that Manafort gave polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik so it’s quite possible that he and Stone were coordinating their own  activities closely-Stone did a victory dance after he got Manafort installed as campaign manager.

So why has there been so little discussion about the possibility that Manafort was involved in these July discussions directing Stone to find out what else Assange had?

Abramson has a pretty decent theory:

The media wants to stay away from the possibility that at the time the Trump campaign was directing Stone to to speak to Assange the then campaign manager, Paul Manafort who was also a 37 year friend and business partner of Stone was involved and could have been the senior campaign person Mueller referenced.

Regarding why the media has been so squeamish regarding the Guardian story:

The only respectable reason is number 3 though I think we all know this wouldn’t be a problem if the subject were the Clinton campaign rather than the Trump campaign-Clinton scandals were always presumed true unless other outlets could disprove it and often not then.

Congressman Castro is, of course, on the House Intel Committee.

It’s very hard to believe he didn’t now about this in real time-Russia, if you’re listening! 

As Politico documents in their reporting, Roger Stone and Donald Trump have talked pretty much every week for the last 40 years, the idea that Stone would have left this out goes beyond straining credulity:

“Stone first met Trump in 1979 through Roy Cohn, the former chief counsel to anti-communist Sen. Joseph McCarthy. By 1988, Stone was considered one of Trump’s closest political advisers and helped arrange for the New York businessman to travel to New Hampshire as he considered a White House campaign that ultimately never materialized.”

“The best one he’s ever had for years and years,” said Charlie Black, a former Stone business partner along with Paul Manafort. “I doubt there’s many weeks in the last 30 years they haven’t talked.”

Roger Stone’s arrest is rich with ironies on all kinds of levels.

UPDATE: Speaking of Stone’s Nixon connection, the Nixon Foundation took the trouble today to dismiss Roger as Nixon’s Coffee Boy.

Speaking of which, it should be said:

https://twitter.com/B52Malmet/status/1088795424461344769

Another rich irony is Lindsay Graham, Mitch McConnell and friends now dismissing ‘mere process crimes’ as no biggie:

Beyond the rich ironies, there’s the Poetic Justice of it all:

All those screaming from the rooftops Hillary was going to prison are now in prison or in danger of.

Guess Karma is a bitch, God don’t like ugly, and She’s pissed. 

 

Nancy Pelosi:

Regarding the issue of impeachment-you know my feeling about it. I do get the idea of waiting for public opinion-Trump himself with his disastrous shutdown has started the work of tanking his own numbers, but, again, the thing to remember is impeachment is a process not a destination-which is why it’s folly not to begin the process because you don’t think the Senate will convict-the process itself could change that, and in any case the process matters and is necessary and  publicly beneficial wether or not it results in conviction/removal. And the process takes time. You don’t impeach in one day, it takes months. The Dems may not want to impeach yet and maybe they’re right-but they should at least be discussing doing it and what their timing needs to be-certainly they can’t escape 2019 without opening it depending where the facts lead.

Back to Politico:

Stone maintained a strong media presence on behalf of Trump. He paid for a 55-foot digital billboard, displayed in Times Square, depicting Trump as Superman. In an August 2016 interview, Stone rallied behind Manafort, his former business partner and childhood friend who had become the Trump campaign chairman, in the wake of news reports that he had kept a secret ledger for his accounts while working in Ukraine on behalf of pro-Russian politicians.

“The story is a nothing-burger,” Stone told C-SPAN a day before Trump fired Manafort. “Manafort is not the subject of an investigation.”

Stone also kept talking throughout the campaign about WikiLeaks and the hacking of Democratic emails.

On Aug. 5, 2016, he published an op-ed in Breitbart — which at the time was still run by Steve Bannon, who’d go on to become Trump’s campaign chief executive after Manafort — calling the Democratic hacker Guccifer 2.0 the “real deal” and arguing that the internet persona wasn’t Russian. U.S. officials would later determine with “high confidence” that Russian military intelligence had indeed used the Guccifer 2.0 persona to release the documents stolen from Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Footnote the Guccifer tweets about being independent election observers. 

 

Of course, Stone’s version of events surrounding Wikileaks and the various hacked emails has gone through many permutations. As noted in (Chapter A) there was a time when Stone admitted the possibility that the Russians were behind the hacks of the DNC. This was in July, 2016. But then on August 5 he did a major aboutface.

“Longtime Trump associate Roger Stone said several times in July 2016 that Russia was most likely the source for hacked emails released during the Democratic National Convention and that it was not far-fetched to say the purpose was to help Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, according to a CNN KFile review of Stone’s interviews and appearances.

“The comments, made by Stone from late July through August 1, 2016, show Stone stated at the time that Russia was the source of the emails — a sharp contrast to his more recent posture that Russia was not the source for hacked documents released by WikiLeaks throughout the campaign.

“By August 4, 2016, the same day Stone claimed in an email to have dined with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange the night prior, Stone abruptly changed his tune. In a conference call along with an interview with radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Stone said that Russia had nothing to do with the hacked emails and they were the sole work of hacker Guccifer 2.0.
Asked Monday for comment, Stone told CNN, “I’m publishing my own time line that will only make you look foolish.”
Ok but you’ve been saying that for two years, and now you’re going to jail. Even if you can make us look foolish at some indeterminate time in the future that never comes you are in jail today and even after you make us look foolish we still will not be in jail. 

So now we have documentation of high ranking Trump campaign officials directing him in July, 2016 to inquire about the stolen emails. We already knew that in late July Stone himself directed Jerome Corsi to obtain the emails from Assange.

Since the furor post the rigged 2016 election, Stone has claimed his back channel was Randy Credico. This was false-this is the lie he told the HPSCI that he was just arrested for along with attempting to intimidate and push Credico to back up the lie.

Randy Credico is not so bright himself:

As Paul Waldman says correctly-Even with the prospect of jail time, there’s a big a part of Stone that’s stoked that he’s on all the front pages.

This is because-as noted in Chapter A-while Stone might now want to go to jail there’s something even worse for him-to be ignored.

Yesterday he made that clear once again:

“Decades of Dirty Tricks Finally Catch Up to Roger Stone.”

Trump’s longtime adviser said after appearing in federal court, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”

He certainly is being talked about. In chapter A I finished with the thought that Stone is like Daffy Duck in the episode where he finally upstaged Bugs Bunny-by blowing himself up-Bugs complimented him-they love you!-but as Daffy’s  ghost left the building he said I know but I can only do it once. That’s Roger Stone-who for years has fought with other GOP dirty tricksters on who really deserves credit for the Brooks Brothers’ riots-it’s probably  both of them, Stone got the Cubans out-remember the Cubans Nixon’s crew got to burglarize the DNC?-as half the riot where the other GOP trickster brought in GOP aides from Congress-but that was what put the Brooks Brothers in the Brooks Brothers riots.

But bragging rights over who was the proximate cause of shutting down the recount and rigging the 2000 election has been a debate among GOP dirty tricksters for years:

Stone says the Brooks Brothers part of the riot, a group made up almost entirely of people outside of Miami, outside of Florida, who were Republican D.C. staffers flown in to cause a ruckus and stop a recount83, was just a small fraction, and a sizable majority were spanish speaking. This does not correspond with other observers. “There were two or three loud Cubans but most of the people I talked to were white, mostly men, from Oklahoma, Texas, mostly Southern states,” says Sunday Times correspondent Tom Rhodes. “They were talking on cellphones, probably to people nearby, telling them to get in there right away and bring as many people as they could.”84 In the room where the Florida operation was run, conservative journalist Paul Gigot would hear that a large group of Cuban-American activists were about to be unleashed. “One thousand local Cuban Republicans were on the way,” was what was said. One thousand local Cuban Republicans never showed up85. “How the Troops Were Mobilized for the Recount” by Dana Canedy and James Dao, has Republicans defending the mob against charges of the belligerence, without contesting who they were. “A group of out-of-state, paid political operatives came to south Florida in an attempt to stop county-wide recounts,” alleged a Democrat. “They crossed state lines and intimidated the counting in a federal election, which is a violation of the Voting Rights Act.” Emily Miller would reply, “This was not a threatening band of armed thugs.” Miller was a spokesperson for Tom DeLay, then the House majority whip. “They were idealistic, enthusiastic young Republicans who felt they were being shut out, that this was an unfair decision.” One of those in the Brooks Brothers riot was Tom Pyle, policy analyst for Tom DeLay86.

The most visible top level figure on the ground wasn’t Roger Stone, who is never mentioned in contemporary reports of the halting of the Miami-Dade count, but John Sweeney, a Republican representative from New York. When the vote counters decided to move to a room closer to the voting machines so as to speed up the count, Sweeney gave the order, “Shut it down,” according to Gigot, who was in the same room as Sweeney when the order was given. After that, the Brooks Brothers mob pounded the doors and windows of the tally room. “Stop the count. Stop the fraud.” Sweeney was giving these orders, according to eyewitnesses, in a room in the same building where the vote tally was taking place. Stone’s account is also disputed by Brad Blakeman. “I was the guy in charge of the trailer, and I coördinated the Brooks Brothers riot,” says Blakeman in the Toobin piece. “Roger did not have a role that I know of. His wife may have been on the radio, but I never saw or heard from him.” Stone scoffs at such doubts

It’s amazing to reflect occasionally on how much the Internet and social media has changed things, what it enables us to do. I spoke to Mac Stipanovich on Twitter in 2017. He was still quite pleased to acknowledge the role he and Katherine Harris played in shutting down the recount, though he disagreed with my characterization of it-I was suitably honored to speak to him, I told him it’s amazing to be able to speak to a great villain of History so casually. But if he protests me calling him a great villain of History, he himself had told Harris that ‘we will be hated for 100 years’ and he also states unselfconsciously that ‘On that day the majority of the votes were for Bush but the majority of voters intended to vote for Gore.’

So he essentially admits to my charge. Regarding Bush v. Gore the correct lesson is that any time you bring a knife to a fight with the Republicans you’re bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Interestingly while Stipanovich still defends, and indeed embraces-like Roger Stone would put it I’m not defending I’m saying-stealing the 2000 election he despises Trump. 

Regarding Brooks Brothers,  Stone’s role was dismissed or at least minimized. Then there was the second 2016 debate the Sunday after Hollywood Access where he and Mike Bossy continue to argue who gets the credit for bringing the Clinton accusers. The better question in my estimation is what were they paid-I am presuming. We know that in the 1990s, Paula Jones and Clinton were going to settle the case-but some deep pocketed GOPers-among them George Conway, Kellyann’s husband-paid Jones.

Now Conway like Stipanovich is #NeverTrump.

But now, finally, Stone has done something where nobody minimizes his role. And that explains why he was so clearly enjoying the day he was taken out of his house in handcuffs-finally no one is diminishing his role anymore; ironically, his only actual defense is for him to minimize his own role-yeah I said a bunch of stuff but no one takes me seriously-ie, he has to do a George Costanza.

The only real question regarding Stone is was he lying then or lying now?

Clearly no one has become more synonymous with Russiagate than Stone-you see this in the attitude of not just liberals and the media, but the Americans who came to his presser yesterday in order to chant ‘Lock Him Up’ and Mueller himself, the FBI who arrested him in such shock and awe style.

And quite rightly as Stone is the connection between the first Watergate and Watergate 2.0, Fittingly, then Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland was on tv yesterday and related to Ari Melber how he had ordered one of Roger Stone’s new t shirts Roger Stone did nothing wrong-again this is Stone’s moment-and then called the entity listed on his statement and got the head of the Proud Boys on the phone.

Regarding Credico vs. Corsi, this has been the point of contention since early 2017. Stone has done everything to get Credico to agree that he was his intermediary and Stone’s claiming this to the HSPCI is one of the lies Mueller is charging him with. It’s clear now that Corsi was the important intermediary. In the last few days Stone himself stated on Instagram that Corsi was diming him out to Mueller and that Corsi is a drunk and a whacko, etc.

There’s been some debate about what Mueller wants. EmptyWheel argues this is about compelling Stone’s cooperation-against Corsi. 

“The most important detail — by far — in the indictment reveals that a senior Trump Campaign official “was directed” to contact Stone about what else was coming from WikiLeaks.

After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign. STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1.

“I suspect that the senior Trump Campaign official was Rick Gates, though that’s a guess (Bannon is the very senior official named later in the indictment). The indictment doesn’t say, “directed by whom.”

A number of folks have argued that Gates is the ‘senior Trump campaign official’, and, of course, Gates was Manafort’s deputy in the campaign.

“And that, I think, is why Stone was arrested before dawn rather than permitted to self report, and why Stone was charged with obstruction plus five counts of false statements plus witness tampering (the latter of which carries real time, particularly given  Stone’s physical threats to Credico’s dog Bianca).”

This is an effort to get Stone to reveal who that “whom” was, and whatever follow-up contacts he had with that “whom.”

“The indictment also doesn’t charge Jerome Corsi, nor does it describe Stone asking Corsi to write a cover story for him back in August 2016. That may mean that Mueller now wants Stone to incriminate Corsi.”

So while Stone has been claiming Corsi is testifying against him, Wheeler actually thinks Mueller wants Stone to testify against Corsi?

However, there is a counter theory that argues that no way would Mueller trust Stone as a cooperating witness even if he could ever be interested in doing so-everything Stone says and does suggests he’s going for a pardon. Would Mueller really trust Roger Stone as a cooperator? The guy who basically wrote a manifesto on Kellyann Conway’s alternative facts regarding the 2016 election?

Credico pled the 5th at Roger Stone’s direction.

Pg. 19

Credico told Stone to ‘tell the truth there was no backchannel’-it’s not clear what made Credico presume that-probably blind faith in Assange but Stone’s response was: ‘I’m not talking to the FBI and if you’re smart you’re not either’-not exactly what you’d expect him to say if there were no back channel.

On Pg. 20 Credico rightly predicted Stone opened himself up to a perjury charge.

Adam Schiff makes a crucial point:

In terms of what is new in this indictment-as opposed to Mueller confirming things that were public knowledge, we didn’t know previously that ‘a high ranking campaign official was directed’ to direct Stone to see what else Wikileaks had on Hillary after the release of the DNC emails. This corroborates a higher level of Trump campaign involvement-ditto Bannon’s ‘well done’ post the start of the Podesta email dump.

The communications between Stone and Coris were public knowledge though now Mueller himself is confirming it but this is the first we’ve seen evidence that shows the clear involvement of the Trump campaign. As Schiff says, in the aftermath of the DNC leaks-which forced out Debbie Wasserman-Schultz-we have both Trump’s Russia if you’re listening along with the senior Trump campaign official ‘being directed’-by Trump himself? the question begs-to direct Stone to see what else Wikileaks has.

There is so much we can say about Stone-and Corsi-that we aren’t getting to in this chapter like his and Corsi’s other Watergate 2.0 scandal-Comeygate that Stone revealed in his triumphalist 2016 book. 

For more on the Comeygate side it’s not a secret where to start-in Stone and Corsi’s communications-Corsi, unlike Stone was smart enough to erase his pre October 13, 2016 emails. In a scandal so rich with irony here’s another one: Corsi and Stone were demanding Clinton be locked up ‘because she scrubbed her server’ while Corsi scrubbed his own emails that he knew were of interest to a federal investigation.

And Stone’s motivations are not even remotely hard to grasp-he wants attention and he got a hell of a lot yesterday afternoon. For years he’s wanted to be recognized as the most dirty GOP dirty trickster of them all, now he’s a made man in GOP dirty trickster purgatory-or as Stephen King-of all people-puts it: the (Roger(Stone Hotel:

What this follower says about Trump is also true of Roger Stone:

I think this explains so much about what makes both Stone and Trump tick and why they always leave us so much prima facie evidence-Stone became a suspect during 2016 largely because of his own public statements and tweets.

And again, until now, there’s been no awareness of what Stone said in his own book regarding Comeygate-he gave off major clues there too as we documented in (Chapter A).

Yes I’m going to quote Maureen Dowd-I go by merit and it’s that time of the day her busted clock is right:

“Always bespoke and natty, living by the mantra that it’s better to be infamous than never famous, Stone looked strangely unadorned as he came out of court to meet the press in a navy polo shirt and bluejeans.”

“As the master of darkness who had been captured in darkness stepped into the bright light of Fort Lauderdale, he was his usual flamboyant, unapologetically meretricious self. He proclaimed his innocence, flashed the Nixon victory sign and reiterated the old saw from his mentor, Roy Cohn, that any attention is good attention.”

But on Nicole Wallace this afternoon, Donny Deutsch pointed out that Stone actually prefers to be infamous than famous. Indeed, which is why Frank Figullizi proposed the perfect punishment for Stone-beyond a long prison sentence: part of his sentence should disallow him writing a book, giving speeches, or doing anything that profits off of his collusion, coordination, and conspiracy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/opinion/sunday/maureen-dowd-trump-roger-stone.html

I’ve worried lately about wether the Dems are going to be tough enough-are they going to  rule out impeachment out of hand-but I love what Nancy Pelosi said in response to the Roger Stone indictment:

This is strong, direct statement about the fundamental fact that a Presidential election was rigged. There will have to be accountability for this beyond simply ‘winning the next election.’

Again, as I’ve suggested in previous chapters, it may well be the case that the best scenario for Dems could be impeachment but no removal so they can both impeach him and defeat him. The optimal scenario could be impeach him in 2020 during the late stages of the election-perhaps 11 days prior like the Comey letter?-and on election day the Senate is in the middle of impeachment hearings.Regarding the media and Russia, Greg Sargent makes a good point:

I’ve discussed this in previous chapters (A). Many didn’t even begin to take the idea that collusion actually could have actually happened until news of the Donald Jr Trump Tower meeting broke in July, 2017.

On the other hand, we tinfoil conspiracy hat theorists have been proven right again and again-not in every detail or particular, and the MSM tends to focus more on the details and particulars than the big picture on most days, but-in the big picture. As noted in Chapter B I suspected something like this happened ever since Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was forced to walk the plank on the first day of the DNC convention, Russia if you’re listening, and soon it will be Podesta’s time in the barrel. 

Ok any day that starts with the headlines Roger Stone indicted is going to be a pretty darn great day.

The same day Roger Stone is indicted Trump caves on his shutdown. The obvious question is if these two things are related. As noted above, in another moment of perfect irony,  Trump’s build a wall canard was Roger Stone’s brainchild. And it seems quite plausible that Trump did this to change the subject from Roger Stone, though there were plenty of good reasons for him to cave already-like that his poll numbers have been cratering, his bill got fewer votes in the GOP Senate than the ‘House Democratic bill’-I use scare quotes as it’s actually the same bill the GOP Senate voted for 92-8 back in December-and that the GOP was totally over this and got pretty testy with Mike Pence yesterday.

Greg Sargent:

In a way saying Trump does not possess magical political powers is a pretty dramatic example of understatement. He doesn’t even have the political powers God gave a potted plant-which would have done a better job than Trump did.

I don’t see these viewpoints of Nate Silver and Sean T as in tension-Silver is right that at this point, this is the best choice of action for Trump but Sean T is surely right it would have been better had he never done this in the first place-the entire fiasco was a World Cup of Own Goals. Basically he should never have done this but once he did he was best off stopping it as soon as possible-naturally he’s such a poor learner that it went on for weeks.

Regarding his poll numbers that have taken quite a hit, Silver recently argued that time will tell if this is going to be short term or not. Let me go out on a limb and make a prediction: I believe it will be long term.

Over the last year-as documented in this book-I’ve argued that the MSM wrongly has a static view of things where because during his first two years, Trump’s approval mostly stayed in the low 40s that ‘his base will never leave him.’

Now to be precise about it, there’s a sense in which a President-or ‘President’-or any politician, never loses their base. Nixon never lost his base but it turned out to only be about 19%. But prior to Watergate picking up in intensity in 1974 it wasn’t clear how much of Nixon’s support was base-he had been quite popular prior to that-he’d ‘won’ the 1972 election 49-1-thanks in part to Roger Stone’s hand delivering the Canucks’ letter.

But the MSM coverage has made it sound as if the entire 42-43% are Trump’s ‘base’ when it’s clear that much of that-I estimate about half-is soft support. Indeed, you can argue that Trump has two kind of supporters: those who believe 98% of what he says and those who don’t believe 98% of what he says. The first group is his base, the second is soft support. The first group really believes the crazy stuff he says-build the wall, lock her up, a Muslim ban, the ‘very dishonest media”, ‘Russia if you’re listening’-while the second group laughs it off and insists Trump is just joking.

Now as plugged in as I and other members of the #Resistance are to Trump-Russia there is no question a sizable part of the public for who until now at least it has been mostly an abstraction. Not that it’s not important-what’s more important than the legitimacy of our elections? But these more casual voters and citizens haven’t really thought through the implications of this yet-once the public hearings get started-assuming Trump doesn’t just threaten everyone and intimidate them out of testifying in front of Congress-then they will start to think about the idea that our nation’s legitimacy itself has been put under question because of the actions of the Trump campaign-and likely Trump himself.

While many of us rightly have been warning about Trump and have rightfully had our hair on fire over the rigged election, the more casual voters-a large part of the electorate-haven’t really digested all this yet-and won’t do until the Democrats figure out a way to have the public hearings without Trump scaring all the witnesses away.

But these casual voters don’t like the #TrumpShutDown. They  see that it has hurt regular people like themselves-wether they or someone they know works for the government, or their tax refund has gotten delayed-everyone notices if tax refunds are delayed and everyone worries when air traffic controllers are warning flights are no longer safe.

While Trump has done many terrible things in the past-obstruction, the Muslim ban, splitting children from their parents at the border,  serial violations of the Emoluments Clause, the trans ban for the Armed Services-for large swathes of the public, these are still just abstract complaints-not things that effect them on a day to day basis-many are either so busy or frankly, so little interested, that unless something has an immediate effect on their own life, it’s not going to make much of an impression on them.

Which is fine-not everyone can be a political junkie. It’s a blessing that as human beings and members of society we have what the economists call ‘heterogenous preferences’-while it might not seem this way, if everyone had your exact tastes and preferences life would be a very tense and frustrating thing-ideally you want people around you that are neither too similar or different from you-somewhat in the middle-otherwise life would quickly descend into a Hobbesian war of all citizens over absolute and universal Justice-if we all had the exact same preferences there’s no way we could, most of us, on most days find things to be reasonable fair and equitable.

But I’m digressing into philosophical speculations…

Footnote: Maybe throw in something about Garry Wills and how society manages to settle for less than everyone in a Hobbesian war over absolute justice?

Of course, one nasty implication of this is that cynical politicians in the GOP count on the fact that they can get away with a lot of corruption and abuse of power before the average person notices.

But the #TrumpShutdown is no abstraction-people not getting paid or not getting their refund check is something they can relate to. And so with all the talk about Trump being teflon-ok, this MSM meme has it, he may not be popular but still his numbers have been stable even if low at about 42-43%. Until #TrumpShutdown. The reason is that Trump’s soft support has for the first time seen him abuse power in a way that hurts them-or at least people like them.

This is why for the first time Trump is seeing some damage to his soft support. You have some who voted for him for the first time giving voice to the fact that they’re reconsidering. Indeed, it’s gotten so bad that some are even ready for the status quo again. 

“Two years ago, Jeff Daudert was fed up with politics. He wanted to shake up the status quo. He didn’t mind sending a message to the establishment — and, frankly, he liked the idea of a disruptive president.”

“But the 49-year-old retired Navy reservist has had some second thoughts.”

“What the [expletive] were we thinking?” he asked the other night inside a Walmart here, in an area of blue-collar suburban Detroit that helped deliver the presidency to Trump.

“While Trump’s relationship with much of his base remains strong, two years after his inauguration his ties are fraying with voters like Daudert, the kind who voted in droves for Trump in key pockets throughout the industrial Midwest, flipping previously Democratic states to him in 2016. The shutdown fight, as it has played out over the past month, is further eroding the president’s support among voters who like the idea of beefing up border security — but not enough to close the government.”

This is what Trump evidently couldn’t differentiate even if you want a wall that doesn’t mean you want to shut the government down over it. Wether you agree about the wall or not is a policy dispute, for Trump to attempt to weaponize shutting the machinery down is in itself a shocking abuse of power, if not an impeachable offense-for another POTUS it probably would be, but Trump has done so many other things that are potentially impeachable…

Many here, even those who still support Trump, say they hold him most responsible. They recite his comment from the Oval Office that he would be “proud to shut down the government.” When he said it, they listened.

“It’s silly. It’s destructive,” Daudert said, adding that all he knows about 2020 is that he won’t be supporting Trump. “I was certainly for the anti-status quo . . . I’ll be more status quo next time.”

This is what you might call the Rick Wilson effect-everything that Trump touches ideas, including bad ideas like building a wall, populism, or destroying the status quo.

Then there were the utterly clueless, tone deaf comments from Trump’s staff-Wilbur Ross, his daughter in law, Lara Trump, etc, the let them eat cake attitude,   the tell Chase Bank Wilbur Ross told you to ask it for a loan, or as Pelosi likes to put it the ask your father for the money attitude.

But then it comes from the top and no one is more cluelessly insensitive and lacking in basic human empathy that the alleged ‘President’ himself. To say Trump lacks empathy is not a gratuitous insult. It’s what Rick Santorum himself admitted on CNN’s Chris Cuomo’s show-that ‘the President isn’t really empathetic.’

Santorum said this without irony, there’s no indication that he sees this as worrisome in someone who holds the awesome machinery of the American government in his hand. Santorum is Trump’s friend and supporter-or at least he’d paid to represent this on tv.

So Trump did what seemed to the MSM impossible-he did something that hurt him with his 42% support. Finally the softer support is beginning to be knocked free. I’ve argued that once the Democrats begin public hearings this will lower his support. I still believe this but what he did on the shutdown fiasco began the process himself. In answer to Silver much of the support he’s lost here he won’t get back as now these disillusioned supporters can more clearly see and admit that he did something that hurt themselves.

And with the start of this disillusionment some of them will be more willing to consider there is some truth in other criticisms and attacks on Trump they have previously ignored, they may even begin to open their minds to the merits of  the Trump-Russia scandal-as they now have seen him act in a way that’s harmful to them, they can begin to consider that maybe he acted harmfully in other ways. Far from having ‘exceptional political instincts’ his instincts are exceptionally awful. It’s not that he’s an idiot savant, just an idiot. 

Bill Kristol has a good term for this soft support-reluctant Trump voters. Post this shutdown fiasco the possibility of a primary opponent for Trump in 2020 is being treated as very much a live possibility in GOP circles and Trump’s own people are concerned.

“The longest government shutdown in history inflicted severe political damage on the president, dragging down his poll numbers even among Republicans and stirring concern among party leaders about his ability to navigate the next two years of divided government. Mr. Trump, close associates acknowledge, appears without a plan for mounting a strong campaign in 2020, or for persuading the majority of Americans who view him negatively to give him another chance.”

“Compounding the harm to Mr. Trump on Friday was the indictment of Roger Stone, his political adviser for several decades, on charges of lying to investigators and obstructing the inquiry by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The indictment was taken by some Republicans as the surest sign yet that Mr. Mueller’s investigation is likely to grow more painful to Mr. Trump and his associates before it wraps up.”

“Other Republicans view Mr. Trump’s political stumbles as an opportunity to lure a challenger into the race, with Mr. Hogan emerging as a new subject of their efforts. At a December conference hosted by the Niskanen Center, a right-of-center think tank, Mr. Hogan spoke briefly with William Kristol, an implacable Trump critic in the conservative press, who argued that the president is weaker than widely understood, people briefed on the conversation said.”

“Mr. Hogan, 62, is set to meet more formally in the coming weeks with Mr. Kristol and Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist helping marshal opposition to Mr. Trump. Mr. Kristol and Ms. Longwell have been meeting with Republican donors and potential challengers, sharing focus-group and polling data about the president’s vulnerability with what they call “Reluctant Trump Voters,” according to a copy of their presentation reviewed by The New York Times.

Again, you have to laugh at the idea that Trump peddles-that he has exceptional political instincts-his instincts have proven to be exceptionally awful. I mean Hippocratic Oath-first do no harm. Simply not doing this would have saved him tons of political pain.

He was exceptionally lucky-between the rogue anti Clinton agents at the FBI and Russian interference to the media’s absurd obsession over the emails and any faux Clinton scandal as they had-and have-been for 25 years-lightning was literally caught in a bottle. He didn’t expect to win either so now he’s had to convince himself he’s a political savant. It’d be funny if it weren’t so sad-and the country itself wasn’t so threatened.

But he’s always been unpopular-his peak was the 46% he got on election day-thanks in large part that the media gave him a pass the 11 days post the Comey letter. Until the Dem’s #BlueWave last November, the GOPers had no choice but to kind of accept Trump’s premise-that he’s an idiot savant rather than just an idiot.

As Hank Hill would say let me put this in words even a genius can understand: you are not a genius. 

In any case we have our theme song for Trump and his GOP co-conspirators-some folks were chanting it at Stone at his press conference on Friday:

Stephen King discussed the (Roger)Stone Hotel:

Get me Roger Stone, they’re playing our song!

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

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