THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 5/10/17
New FBI director McCabe compromised by serious conflict
Rachel Maddow reviews how new Acting Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, improperly discussed the investigation into the Trump Camp’s ties to Russia with Reince Priebus and became part of the Trump disinformation campaign.
So – I did not see the testimony live today. Did anyone bother to ask McCabe about this? Maybe Priebus made the entire thing up – then would it not be an obligation of McCabe to refute it? The other fishy thing is I see he told the committee that the investigation is adequately funded. Comey wanted to ramp it up – this guy is content to leave it underfunded. I really think he is a Trump mole.
I’m consistenly amazed at what a complete bumbler this “business genius” is proving to be. As if firing Comey two days after he signaled that he was going to need more funding for the Russia investigation weren’t enough, Trump turns around the next day and holds a chummy meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister and Ambassador, from which U.S. media are excluded. What brilliance!
That is an insult to Nixon (which is really saying something.)
Nixon was a deeply flawed man who appointed competent (and in many cases highly principled) people to his administration, and said and did a lot of good things, but he let his need for control and the resulting paranoia get the better of him and he later admitted as much. I’m not apologizing for Nixon in any way shape or form, but…
Trump is a Narcissistic Psychopath who is batshit insane and has filled his administration with the WORST PEOPLE he could find and will fucking kill us all if we let him.
TRUMP: We have to prime the pump.
ECONOMIST: It’s very Keynesian.
TRUMP: We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world. Have you heard that expression before, for this particular type of an event?
ECONOMIST: Priming the pump?
TRUMP: Yeah, have you heard it?
ECONOMIST: Yes.
TRUMP: Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just … I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It’s what you have to do.
Why not refuse to go? Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, when dismissed by Andrew Johnson, barricaded himself in the War Department and would not come out. The incident triggered Johnson’s impeachment.
Agreed. Nixon could be a fairly unpleasant man, but he was no dunce, and I never had the feeling that he imagined himself as the deity in some fantasy world of his own creation. A bit less paranoia, and history might not have been too unkind to him.
With this, I concur. Both Comey and McCabe should have cleared this thing up when it happened. Then again, it’s hard (I mean, nearly impossible) to buy Priebus’s claim either. Did the FBI initiate the move or did the WH pressed the FBI to refute the story? With the large picture of their repeated patterns in mind, I just think the latter was much more likely.
That was Mark Felt, who headed COINTELPRO. My Dad worked for him. Even strong supporters of Nixon (like my Dad) were very unhappy with Nixon and his crew and what they did.
What would we do without Nixon. He makes for interesting bios and analysis, interesting as the subject of movies and don’t forget Tricia’s Wedding by the Cockettes. And the timeline of Nixon’s election to resignation provides a template for how trumpp’s downfall might go. Took office January 1973, resigned August 1974. Patience, people, patience.
I guess McCabe is prepared to lose his job, since he just politely called Trump a liar in a very high-profile venue.
In fact I would say this amounts to daring Trump to fire him. Any other president would probably take this kind of polite dissent in stride, but Trump’s ego eclipses all other Presidents combined. And surely McCabe knows this. So it almost looks like a case of attempted “suicide by cop” (as in pointing a gun at a cop for the express purpose of making them shoot you).
Of course McCabe is not without some leverage here, since firing McCabe now – after he has just said he will be proceeding with the Russia investigation, and without even the fig leaf of Comey’s wrongful actions in the Clinton e-mail investigation to cover Trump’s fat, overexposed ass – would just plunge Trump off an even higher cliff. But, Trump being Trump, he believes he is invincible, so I wouldn’t rule it out.
Trump may wait a couple months so that they can come up with some other excuse to fire McCabe, and have his new FBI director, whoever that is, do the dirty deed. Or they may just send McCabe into obscurity within the agency. But rest assured, if McCabe follows through on his promise to continue Comey’s work on the Trump-Russia connection, he will be retaliated against at some point. Hopefully, and fairly likely, in a way that backfires on Trump.
