WASHINGTON (AP) — Former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, who played a key role in the Russia investigation but whose pejorative text messages about Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign made him a target of the president’s wrath, is releasing a book on his concerns the president could be compromised.
Guess we should all join the tRump Book of the Month Club.
Well! That, uh, should be interesting. At least as far as live testimony goes, I’ve seen few presentations more cogent and effective than Stzok’s. He absolutely took Trey Gowdy apart. They thought they were going to discredit him and he just went at them like a grizzly bear where the only thing left of you is a belt buckle and half a shoe. If he can organize his book the same way it’ll be a must-read.
I remember when I thought that first book about Trump and his presidency, the one by the guy who was hanging around the White House early on, was going to make a difference. Then the next tell-all and the next and the next. Even his niece’s book didn’t have any staying power. It’s good that they’re out there, but I’ve given up on thinking they’re going to open anyone’s eyes if they aren’t open already.
And still the WSJ publishes op eds about the “malfeasance” of the Obama Admin in regards to the Russia scandal.
Makes you wonder who owns that paper. Oh, wait. Of course.
As I mentioned earlier, Pubbies and Barr are treating this as a propaganda opportunity. This hearing is a mistake.
https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1288117018550403077
A surefire sign your AG is a whiny snowflake if the Republicans on the committee have to write a prebuttal before he’ll show up.
The prebuttal appears to be page after page of “I’m rubber and you’re glue,” which means one of the adults on the GOP side wrote the doc.
GOP prebuttal: DiFi said Barr would have an easy time getting confirmed but didn’t vote for him bc he made it clear he’d politicize things.
ETA. I won’t watch this shit show. Nadler is not the man to run this. Schiff maybe. Maybe Swalwell. Not Nadler. He’s a good man, but…
Old school here
I think it’s pretty clear we’re not going to see a total collapse of support for Trump absent some absolutely hideous revelation, which is far from impossible. Someone made the “Access Hollywood” tape available because he or she didn’t want Trump to be president, and imagine now. But I think all these books cause doubt, and coming one after the other help to slowly leach away support among the more sensible GOP voters. It’s just more and more undeniable objective evidence he’s unfit for the office.
But if they have counsel doing the heavy lifting, someone like Goldman?
Thank you for that note of hope.
Yes. But all these people want their 5 minutes of fuming. What scares me about this is the pattern. This prebuttal has Barr written all over it. Ten to one that he and the OLC helped the Pubbies put it together. Just like the Mueller report, he gets a “narrative” out to the press before anyone has a chance to respond.
Nadler has been put on defense before the hearing even starts and the propaganda, mostly lies, but that doesn’t matter, is out there first.
And more stories like this in the MSM will whittle away support of those who can still be convinced. My sister just sent me the info. 9 pm tonight.
Members of the group, whose lengthy string of emails now read like a chilling foreshadowing of the unfolding deadly pandemic, came to be known by the chain’s dark-humored subject line, “Red Dawn Rising,” a reference to the campy 1984 cold war movie about a gritty band of Americans who fend off foreign invaders. Now several have broken their silence about the early warnings in interviews with ABC News to describe their lingering distress about the missed chances to spare lives.
You can’t say it often enough, but unlike most situations there’s a main culprit who brought about a GOP that won’t listen to factual arguments, and that’s Newt Gingrich. He systematically demonized and delegitimized the Democrats in the eyes of Republican voters, the bastard, and we’re going to have to see if the country is still governable. I don’t see how you can do democracy without being able to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of various policies. A solid Democratic majority can help us move forward but as long as they think crazy thoughts about us it’ll be tough.
Well, you’d figure people who really knew what to do and how urgent it was to do it must have been going nuts.
Indeed. I’ve had conversations about this with various friends and family members who still remember that time, as I do. But it seems to have largely dropped off the radar, especially for younger folks. I was going to say that we need a good book laying all that out, but I think a well-made documentary would probably reach more people who might be willing to be educated.
That should put traitor tot’s tighty whiteys in a twist!
I think it would help so-called conservatives understand why their friends, neighbors, and relatives who are liberal aren’t actually monstrous people. Right now they think we’re all deluded, naive, lacking in common sense, or, as it’s often charmingly put, mentally ill. And it might be comforting to any who’re experiencing a lot of cognitive dissonance to know that conservatism has a fairly defensible intellectual history and that what’s called conservatism now is very different from that.
Hey, Cockholster, how’s your month going?
Yes and to help us remember that Republicans aren’t all deluded, naive, and lacking in common sense too. A lot of them mean well, were sold a bill of goods, and don’t have the time or mental space in their lives to work out what’s real and what isn’t of the things they think they knew.
What interested me about the following story was how little the things we debate here all day long figure in the lives of a lot of the people who were interviewed, and I believe more Americans are like that than we’re able or willing to realize. They don’t see much difference between politicians of any stripe and they don’t connect what goes on in government with their own lives.
The Democrats did a piss-poor job trying to reach those folks in 2016, and I’m afraid they could be making that mistake again. Uncle Joe is probably an easier sell for these folks than Hated Hillary was, but are they even going to vote?
(Not so) Fun Fact: The number of COVID-19 deaths in the US is the equivalent of 50 airliners crashing every week for four months, killing all aboard.