Over at Politico, Rich Lowry has joined the throng of Republicans saying that President Biden should pardon Donald Trump. It has a chance of "sapping some of the poison out of the system," he says.
That poison, Lowry says, is largely due to conservative anger over unpunished Democratic wrongdoing in the cases of Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden—not to mention the "big guy" himself, Joe Biden. Also this:
There is some significant plurality of the country that simply isn’t going to accept the legitimacy of the charges....Those doubts are based on more than the typical partisan suspicions of the other side. The Trump prosecution comes against the backdrop of the years-long Russia investigation by the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller that cast a pall over Trump’s campaign and early presidency and that was based on gossamer thin, politically motivated information.
I'm not sure why, but this one bugs me more than the others, so allow me to remind Republicans of how the Mueller investigation came about:
- It was authorized by Rod Rosenstein, a Republican Trump appointee at the Department of Justice.
- Rosenstein did this a week after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey for being too tough on the Russia investigation.
- Comey's firing prompted bipartisan support for an independent investigation.
- When the investigation was announced with Mueller as its head, Mueller was "effusively praised" by Democrats and Republicans alike. Even Republican attack dog Jason Chaffetz was on board: "Mueller is a great selection. Impeccable credentials. Should be widely accepted."
This was in no sense a boondoggle foisted on the American people by Democrats. It was authorized by a Republican and widely supported by Republicans who viewed Mueller as a serious, by-the-book guy. This did nothing to keep Republicans from turning on him with all the venom and poison imaginable, but that's no reason to send its history down the memory hole.
I think you left out the most galling parts of all of this: Comey's completely unprecedented and BS announcement on the eve of the election that the FBI was re-opening the Clinton email investigation, which very likely threw the election to Trump! And now these revisionist crybabies bitch and moan about a totally justified investigation into Trump-Russia connections, which he obstructed, and which totally found evidence of many connections but for very arcane legal reasons wasn't enough to bring conspiracy-to-commit-campaign-fianance-violations charges.
Republicans have chosen to create a make-believe world out of lies and delusions. No doubt most of the elected representatives are well aware of it; some might even feel uneasy about it; few are willing to publicly question it, because they know millions of their most passionate supporters believe it's gospel truth. They completely ignore, for example, the Republican majority Senate Intelligence Committee report which comprehensively confirmed the findings of the Mueller investigation; instead they embrace the idiotic "Russia hoax" nonsense.
Another recent example is Grassley's insistence that the FBI must investigate an unverified report that an informant was told by the CEO of Burisma, a man with known close ties to the Russian government, that he had bribed the Bidens. The informant, incidentally, is an Israeli on the run to avoid extradition to the US on serious criminal charges. This after Republicans have spent six years ranting that the FBI had no business opening an investigation into the Trump campaign based on a dossier of unverified allegations compiled by an informant who had been a senior official in MI5. They adopt these kinds of contradictory positions again and again, and then lie about there being any inconsistency. It is impossible to have a good faith conversation with people who not only disregard facts and logic any time they fail to conform to a predetermined narrative, but happily engage in wholesale lying and creative fiction to justify their positions.
This is pretty much it. Arguing facts, truth, and verifiable history is only useful as a way to make Republican/'conservative' gaslighting, lying, spinning, PR, narrative building - whatever you want to call their total immersion in industrial scale, Stalin worthy propaganda - to make it obvious that that's what they're doing. This is warfare - Rethuglicans can and will say and do anything - ANYTHING - to keep and gain power. There is nothing they won't do, not a damn thing. Destroying any shred of verifiable reality and replacing it with malicious, Satanist make believe is a core strategy in this.
Rich Lowry is a wholesale liar. They all are. They know that if Trump's prosecution proceeds without being enervated their entire project of power, grift, and skim is at risk.
Let me say again as to the Why Trump curated and reviewed and segregated and obsessively hid the documents he most wanted....and wanted for a very good reason....
The would be payment for interference in the 2024 election sufficient to see Mr Trump re-elected.
e.g. I have documents and plans that would be very valuable to this foreign government or that...but in return I need all of the effort and power you can bring to bear through propagandized social media and/or any other means at your disposal...this, these documents, are the initial payment, there will be more after I am elected.
Mueller failed himself and the United States when he failed to prosecute Mr Trump. I concede that there was Rod Rosenstein standing there as a gate keeper, but if so blocked, he had a civic duty to go public with his findings.
I know this is easy for me to say, it is not me that would have been being put at risk...but I still say this was his charge, this was his duty.
I sometimes wonder how Mr Mueller feels about himself now? It would be interesting to interview him...Best Wishes, Traveller
The standard has been that the DOJ can not bring indictments against a sitting president, and Mueller honored that standard. Indeed, that may have been part of the setup for this investigation. Congress was supposed to read the report and impeach the President--the only course allowed if there was wrong doing.
Instead, Trump claimed absolution since he was not indicted, and the Republicans went along.
Word salad.
Heh. See my comment further along the thread.
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I suggest people start paying attention to what's going on this year, to our climate. The rate of CO2 emissions jumped, we're having an extraordinary anomaly in sea ice, and the surface temperature in the north Atlantic is record-breaking.
There may be many externalities contributing (eg solar max) but wow, IDK why people are not freaked the hell out right now.
And oh by the way, you can't trust any of China's numbers on emissions, EVs, solar and wind generation, even after they're built and "operational". In the last two years they've permitted well over 100 GW of new coal power plants.
During the Solar Max, "the solar irradiance output grows by about 0.07%" - wikipedia. That effect can be completely ignored.
China's coal permitting needs more context. The new plants are modern efficient power plants. And China installed more wind and solar than the rest of the world, and renewables continue to grow rapidly there. This, along with demands for cleaner air, will put a lot of pressure on older less efficient coal-fired power plants.
No doubt, it's a very tiny effect, but I include it because it will inevitably come up and it's better to address it up front.
A major heat wave is hitting Texas now. Texas has one of the largest renewable energy sector in the US, yet is trying to put new rules in place to stifle it.
The US outsourced a lot of its manufacturing, and in doing so, outsourced the associated pollution, including carbon emissions.
Carbon (dioxide) emissions are a non-local pollution. The gas will diffuse quickly within the atmosphere - there is very little local variation in CO2 levels anywhere on the planet (out in the open air, at least).
Consequently, there's really no such thing as "outsourcing pollution" of this type. If CO2 or methane (CH4) is released into the atmosphere somewhere on the planet, it becomes part of the atmosphere, not regional pollution.
Thus, while there may have been financial motivations for outsourcing manufacturing, and while there may be outsourcing of some sorts of pollution, this has no bearing on greenhouse gases.
We're all screwed, no matter where the CO2/CH4 is emitted.
The US outsourced a lot of its manufacturing, and in doing so, outsourced the associated pollution, including carbon emissions.
This is something of a myth. In the case of the US, only about 7% of total emissions we're responsible for are because of offshored production of consumed goods. It's not nothing, but it's not the huge impact a lot of people think:
https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
I was surprised, too.
Well, once you ignore all the arrests that came out of the Mueller investigation, it's clear that there was no wrongdoing anywhere, and the was no point in having the investigation at all!
Convictions, not only arrests.
And then there's the extra absurdity that they protested about the costs of it, and then instigated a whole new investigation into the Clinton affair, which lasted longer, cost more and produced a whole one minor guilty plea and two very high profile acquittals.
But you'd still think from the coverage that John Durham found a huge conspiracy against Trump, and Robert Mueller found absolutely nothing at all.
Make up horse shit about Hillary and then use it as justification for pardoning attempts to overturn elections?
Fuck you, Rich.
Who cares what Rich Lowry says. I like Kevin because he does some analysis, our politics are close, being Californian's, etc. But there's a lot of stuff here too that I don't bother with.
A better example, Charles Barkley. Every year, he does the laziest analysis I've ever seen, usually, saying the Warriors can't win, yet, they won it all 4 times, and got there twice more. All he does is say controversial things to stir people up.
In other words, who cares what he says.
And who cares what Rich Lowry says.
Go Warriors!!
Republican commentators say Biden should unconditionally pardon Trump. This is an absurd position for obvious reasons.
But I think the response should be “ok with a pardon under these conditions”:
Trump admits guilt and apologizes to the American people.
Trump states that he lost the 2020 election, that it was fair and his statements otherwise were wrong and apologizes to his supporters for misleading them.
Trump withdraws from politics.
Of course Trump will never do any of those things but it works as a response to the absurd demand for a pardon. Republicans know those are facts and I think they want the guy out of politics too.
Let's see, Trump gets pardoned and then runs in 2028. I'd much, much rather see him stay in prison.
Rosenstein did this a week after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey for being too tough on the Russia investigation.
And let's back up: why was there a Russia investigation in the first place? Because credible information came to the government's attention that the Putin regime was executing a plan to infiltrate and influence the presidential campaign of one of our two major parties. That's why.
That information turned out to be valid.
Do Republicans believe US national security agencies should turn a blind eye to the dangers of malevolent foreign influence on our government and politics?
You'd think the GOP would welcome government action to protect it (and, needless to say, the country) from the depradations of the Putin regime and other deeply anti-American, authoritarian states.
(But if you thought that you'd be wrong!)
As you might recall, the Muller Report stated that Russian hackers did get into the Florida election computers. Both DeSantis and Marco Rubio admitted it was true but said that although the Russians were in a position to change voter rolls, they didn’t.
For reasons I’ll never understand people believed them and as far as I know there was never any further investigation of the matter.
Yes. and the Muller report detailed extensive contacts between Russian operatives and the Trump campaign, including in person meetings at Trump tower. Muller did not find proof of active collusion on the part of campaign staff with the Russians as far as I know, but the totality of the findings show—with absolutely no doubt whatsoever—that the FBI had a national security responsibility to at least investigate what was going on. The evidence strongly suggested (and now confirms) robust efforts by Putin to infiltrate the campaign—and by logical extension future administration—of Donald J. Trump.
Again, the intel was substantive.
Thank you for both posts, very accurate.
Not to get too nitpicky, but the Muller report gave plenty of evidence of active collusion, and the (September 2020?) bipartisan Senate report agreed that there was active collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Heck, the campaign gave the Russians their internal polling data! (David Frum had some long Twitter threads talking about how detailed internal campaign polling is -- that's not an insignificant thing for the campaign to turn over!) By any reasonable definition, there was active collusion.
What the Muller report did not definitively state was whether there was anything clearly illegal about what the campaign did. And the Republican half of the Senate report argued that everything the Trump campaign did was totally fine and legal.
But no question, there was "collusion" -- it's just that's not explicitly a crime.
But no question, there was "collusion" -- it's just that's not explicitly a crime.
Not nitpicky at all. Thanks for the clarification. It was even worse than I thought.
The right-wing 3-step playbook...
1. Create an alternative, fact-free "news" ecosystem to keep large numbers of people in a phony bubble of misinformation.
2. Do stuff clearly illegal.
3. When that stuff gets investigated and prosecuted, complain there is "some significant plurality of the country that simply isn’t going to accept the legitimacy of the charges" (see step 1).
BONUS: "Whatabout..."
And for icing on that moldy cake, the news media will leap forth with "both siderism" comparimg the crimes of the Rs with totally noncomparable acts by various Democrats.
Win-win!!
I’ve said this since 2017 or so and I’ll say it again today. Rich Lowry is easily the dumbest living political pundit.
The man is about 3 months late to every piece of Republican orthodoxy yet he delivers every rote, half baked opinion as though it’s his own.
Do you ever read Hugh Hewitt or Henry Olsen? 🙂 Lowry has some pretty tough competition there.
Thank you - & let's not forget Mark Thiessen. I am hoping that the new Washington Post publisher, whoever that turns out to be, will decide that giving OP-ed space to opinions from diverse sources will require making better choices.
I call WaPo's constellation of right-wing hacks HATO: Hewitt, Abernathy, Thiessen, and Olsen.
A significant plurality of Republicans are not serious people.
The party has succumbed to pure mysticism, bouncing from one whole cloth outrage to another, never resting, always stoking the fires that will consume them (metaphor for the number of persons that are mystical). That's why they attack education - if a mind has nowhere to go, it heads into myth.
Re: "pure mysticism" is right. No wonder the party has absorbed the christian fundamentalists and allowed them to dictatte so much of their message! Blessed are those who believe without seeing!
Republicans can't seem to remember any history that makes a white man look bad. Refuting their posturing in the media with accurate, confirmed evidence is a waste of time. Beat them at the ballot box, in the courts and in the legislatures.
And now, the "Southern Strategy" is complete.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.”
-Frank Wilhoit
That 'some significant plurality of the country' can fuck off and die.
My thoughts exactly. I like to think I'm a compassionate person (I was an RN for 40 years), but my ability to feel anything but pure hatred for conservatives these days is testing me.
It's more of propagating the myth that the Steele Dossier was the sole reason for the FBI investigation. Lowry doesn't explicitly state that, but it has become such an Article of Faith that he doesn't have to -- it's well understood by those to whom he's talking. That's the "gossamer thin, politically motivated information".
Going from my memory of the stories, wasn't it an inebriated Trump campaign staffer talking about their contacts with the Russians in front of someone from the Australian consulate in a bar? And it was that Australian who then contacted the FBI. Whatever details I'm misremembering from that, that's a lot closer to the truth of how this all got started than it was Hillary paying for a political hit job.
And then the rest is as Kevin writes -- there was a real reason to investigate this that was approved by both parties. Then quashed by one when they got plenty of evidence that their guy really was colluding with "Russia, Russia, Russia".
Re: the Steele Dossier! So much gaslighting from the Rs about it!
* Its origins. Hillary Clinton! No, it was Ted Cruz (or maybe J.E.Bush).
* Its findings. All disprovied! Well, then what parts were disproved? Which items? ... Crickets. Just like when you ask what trump's "achievements" in office were.
I'll believe everything in the report, unless it's shown to be false. Especially the pee-pee tapes, because that sounds so very trumpy: childish, vindictive, and the opposite of face to face.
Your big picture is correct, but it wasn't "someone from the Australian consulate in a bar" it was Australian High Commissioner (ambassador) to the UK (Alexander Downer) who reported to the FBI that Trump staffer George Papadoupolis told him, while drunk, that Russia "had dirt on Hillary Clinton.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/30/donald-trump-russia-inquiry-george-papadopoulos-australian-diplomat
On top of all that is that the FBI is the most Republican agency in government, open to every wingnut delusion that blows through any open window.
They'll laboriously investigate any Democrat over suspicion of jaywalking in 1983 but have to be actively forced to investigate any Republican over virtually anything.
So I do agree with Princess Tiny Paws, the FBI does really need to be reformed, apparently in the same way a lot of Federal agencies need to be reformed, to eliminate the incompetents, the traitors and the corrupt, --the conservative population.
And Mueller uncovered several crimes and sent people to prison, but I guess that only goes to reinforce the point that it was a witch hunt.
This is EXACTLY the way our politics has been thoroughly broken by trump. He's shown Republicans that rewriting history, even fairly recent history, is a foolproof way to redirect the American voter herd in the direction you want. All you need is to jettison all concern for the truth. And why is it foolproof? Because the vapid U.S. media will play right into their hands by reporting what's being said, free of context. Past history, even from 5 or 6 years ago, is not "news" so there's no reason to "rehash" it.
Therefore, if you want the Mueller investigation to become a Democrat-initiated witch hunt that actually CONCEALED Biden wrongdoing, all you have to do is print out the talking points, distribute them to GOP reps who are good at getting in front of TV cameras (or on Politico and The Hill) and let 'er rip.
Not quite true. These rules were broken piece by piece through a series of GOP scandals (Watergate, Iran/Contra, a stolen election* in 2000, the Iraq War, a stolen Supreme Court nomination plus various smaller ones). Without anybody ever being held accountable! What Trump did was to take full advantage of the broken rules. We fool ourselves if we think beating Trump will fix America by itself. There is a lot more work to be done.
* The Supreme Court stole the election at a time when nobody knew if it was even necessary form them to steal it, as a preventive measure if you will.
I believe mega's are against anyone who isn't with them 100% in their insanity. They also eat their own.
"They also eat their own."
But not fast enough.
Let's not forget that the only reason Mueller couldn't prove conspiracy is that Trump's alleged co-conspirators clammed up and in exchange for their silence, Trump pardoned them. These are not the actions of innocent men.
Of course there is a reason to send history down the memory hole! If you didn't how could you justify being conservative??
They are sweeping so much history under the carpet that there is big bulge in it.
Hah!
omg. oh dear god.
Here's the photo Trump's boxes piled up in the bathroom,
https://images.dailykos.com/images/1198648/story_image/GettyImages-1258566797.jpg
Never mind locking the door,
there's a fucking window right fucking there!
(Just noticed that.)
Contra McCarthy, while bathroom doors do generally lock, they lock from the inside! That is useless for protection. Well, except for the sitter ...
It's also worth remembering that the Mueller investigation actually paid for itself, because of the property forfeitures that Paul Manafort agreed to in his plea deal.
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