George Rebane
The War on Trump – yes, I believe that it’s now a full-fledged war in which the objective is to remove a duly elected sitting president – is steaming full speed ahead. Yesterday’s clarion claim that the president had “shared sensitive intelligence” (supposedly the name of a middle east city) was modified today to have really been secret “code words” according to NPR. The whole thing was sourced to unnamed WH officials who were also supposed to have contacted the CIA and NSA to give them a heads-up on the Russians’ Oval Office visit. Now understand, no one has presented evidence that the president did anything wrong. In fact, three senior officials “trotted out” by the White House – National Security Advisers McMaster and Dina Powell (for strategy), and SecState Tillerson – who were actually in the room, all denied the story calling it “false” and “It didn’t happen.”
But that makes no never mind to those dedicated to the destruction of this presidency. All the miked politicos and talking heads continued lecturing the nation on what should and should not be said by the president, and what damage such revelations would do to our intelligence apparatus and relationships with allies, and on and on. The careless listeners heard that such revelations actually happened; in no such breathless reports was mentioned that there still was not one shred of evidence on which to base the manufactured hysteria. One Democratic MoC even called for another special prosecutor to be immediately commissioned to discover if Trump had committed an impeachable offense. The hysteria of accusations and CYA statements by politicians of all stripe that now blanket the news cycle knows no end.
To illustrate the extent of the froth on this stormy sea, one worthy’s looney logic presented conclusive evidence of wrongdoing based on, McMaster’s and Tillerson’s statements denying that “Mr Trump disclosed any sources of US intelligence services or those of US allies”. He claimed the allegation must be true since neither gentleman specifically “denied” that any city name was mentioned, therefore it must have been mentioned – say what?! By that logic, since the mention of secret agents’ names were also not specifically denied, it must be true that such names were in fact also revealed by Trump. And once allowed, this ‘logic’ of guilt by omission has no end to it.
Is that the end of this volley? By no means, since tonight’s pile on is Comey’s allegation that last February the president asked the FBI director in private to halt the investigation into former National Security Adviser Flynn. Somehow Comey failed to share that little tidbit with anyone else until conveniently after he was fired. But now the Dems are screaming “obstruction of justice” and demanding that another special prosecutor be named. Soon the main reasons for Washington’s gridlock will be the shortage of cops on the streets to direct new special prosecutor traffic.
Will we ever get back to fixing healthcare, tax reform, regulatory reform, filling federal appointments, revisiting our trade policies, immigration reform, … ? Not if Team Chuckie has its way.
[20may17 update] Again political cartoonist Ramirez communicates concisely.



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