Abhorrence of Arabia.
ETA
Thanks Ralph.
The Chuck Todd Stenographers Club never asks Followups
The GOP pre-2018 Congress didn’t do it either
There will be Followups in the future
Prince thought it would be an Entertainment Tonight type interview?
He looks totally gobsmacked that the issue came up, then flounders through a set of transparent lies, each one punctuated by an idiotic grin than that says: “We both know this is bull. Just leave it here, or mercenaries will show up at your door.”
What may save our country in the end is the lucky coincidence Trump’s fellow traitorous conspirators like Erik Prince are really stupid.
A reckoning is Cummings.
Al Jazeera will go where no American media outlet dares to go. I became a big fan of their’s when they did their pro-athlete doping scandal. In brief: Al Jazeera hired a British man who could have plausibly competed in the Senior Olympics to go undercover and try to find illegal or banned performance enhancers. The story took him to the Caribbean. When asking for assurances that these substances would help a man of his age, he was assured that they would and the name “Peyton Manning” got dropped as proof. The undercover reporter, being from England, hadn’t heard of Manning at the time. He followed that rabbit trail to the USA and right to the literal front door of America’s quarterback. Manning’s explanation of why these substances were delivered to his home was stunning. He claimed they were for his wife, not him. (Manning had recently endured a neck injury and his career was coming to a close.) The NFL later did a cursory investigation, which did not include the investigative reporter, and cleared the face of football.
Hmmm. He seems to have forgotten about the “dirt on Hillary” part of that infamous meeting.
A ha ha ha… hee hee… ho ho… and I thought my jokes were bad.
Iran policy, yeah, that’s the ticket!
Mehdi Hasan is one heck of an interviewer. He was extremely well prepared, asked the hard questions, didn’t accept bullshit answers, and kept pushing and pushing until Prince finally answered the question. Finally…someone who can wipe that smug look off Prince’s face. Hasan should definitely have a Sunday morning show on network television.
Hasan did what you do when you don’t care about “access journalism” and you’re not interested in being part of the “scene” or the “club” in DC or NYC.
Oh, that Prince, not the Clown Prince…
I wonder if, at this point in time in America, only really stupid people rise up to the level of the evil of Trump and his minions. As in, there’s a correlation between stupidity and this love of corruption, and the thought that it’s easy to achieve in America.
I watched the entire interview. It’s quite fascinating. Prince strikes me as a polished CEO type who comes well prepared to talk about corporate activities like he’s giving a Ted Talk interview or appearing at an industry event where the conversation is promotional and things can be explained away in talking points without rebuttal. In this interview, on several issues, his standard talking points were challenged because many were transparently false or inaccurate and he collapsed into a series of lies. He’s not prepared for big stage scrutiny. His statements sound perfectly acceptable without context. When you know the subject matter his statements come across as hollow, transparent lies.
On the two issues that are relevant to the Mueller probe: the Aug 2016 meeting with Zamel/Junior and the Jan 2017 meeting in the Seychelles with Kirill Dmitriev, Prince either unwittingly admitted he lied to Congress (and fell back on a completely unbelievable statement like the transcript wasn’t complete!) or he reinforced an answer that was patently disingenuous. He has admitted that he withheld a material fact from Congress by not mentioning the Zamel/Junior meeting at Trump Tower. He then moved the goalposts to say that the topic was Iran policy, which is a way to obscure and lie about the fact that the discussion was reportedly about election interference. On the Dmitriev meeting, he maintains that he flew half way around the world to have a beer, but then gives a similar cover story that he was there, but for a different, non Russia purpose (this time to talk to the Emiratis about Somalia).
This is Prince’s standard play. He will issue a categorical denial followed by a fall back that admits that a meeting or incident happened, but then give an ‘alternative fact’ explanation that has plausible deniability but does not withstand scrutiny.
I think he’s quite smart and knowledgeable. But he’s motivated by greed and an ideological obsession with far right neocon/kleptocrat politics. He even got into the subject of the wall and claims that there is another chapter left and that Mexico will pay for it.
The other thing that struck me is that Mehdi Hassan brings a higher level of preparation and command of the underlying facts of the areas he touches upon in an interview than the average American interviewer. That gap remains a significant problem in US coverage of Trump and the GOP.
Well, obviously you were reading the wrong transcript. Or there was no discussion of that. Or he was in the rest room or performing some kind of mercenary task when that came up.
In summation, no collusion.
"…when you don’t care about “access journalism”
Yep. If you know it is your last shot at a source, make it count.
This raises the question -is there a single Trump campaign, Trump Administration, Trump Foundation, or Trump Organization person that hasn’t lied to Congress?
I watched the entire interview last night. Mehdi Hassan was very well prepared and relentless. He caught him in many lies not just about the Aug. 16 meeting at Trump Tower, but the Seychelles, and his business interests in China. Why is he headquartered outside the U.S.? Prince was arrogant, condescending, and slimy.
Another member of the “lock her up” choir moves a step closer to the slammer. Sometimes the best justice is ironic justice.
And the Schiff is about to hit the fan.
Did the Dark Prince not realize Al Jazeera is seen in the US, too?