I've been having a bit of trouble deciding what to make this post about - it's been kind of a slow news week. ;)
But seriously, another day, another scandal. Yikes. Having a hard time keeping up? This post will address many of the current topics going on, as well as further analysis of my latest tweets; I had more to say, but 140 characters is a pain sometimes.
I would like to start by reiterating a tweet that many of you have probably seen already: I can now confirm with 100% certainty that GOP officials are privately talking impeachment, and it's not just a 'what if' but a 'when'. They know this situation is untenable, especially after the instability that the Market has showed in the two days following the latest bombshell reporting from CNN / NYT / WaPo. For reference, today started low and ended worse - the DOW was down $372.82, the largest single day fall since September of 2016. You know who instability in the markets makes -really- nervous? GOP donors. If you were looking for an impetus for the GOP to finally get off their ass and start doing something, nervous donors should do the trick. Even before the DOW slide today, you were seeing GOP members start backing away, albeit slowly. CBS invited over 20 republicans and people from the White House to their morning show to help clear up the confusion over the Comey memos - nobody was interested. Nobody wants their name attached to this shit-show. To top it all off, John McCain said that the size and scope of this scandal was reaching Watergate levels. Ya think? He's usually a pretty careful lawmaker. He offers veiled comments like, "this is a centipede, more shoes will drop." etc, but rarely does he come out in full-blown crisis mode. McCain is one of the GOP Senators most likely to have his finger on the pulse of Washington. Watching him and Burr (who is NOT seeking re-election and has nothing to lose) distance themselves from this administration is extremely telling to me.
Secondly, I would like to tell many of you to temper your expectations. There's a great CNN article just out today that would be a good read for a lot of people: How an FBI Raid Fed a Rumor that Orrin Hatch Was About to Become President - Let me start this by saying that I have nothing but respect for the work that Louise Mensch has done, and she -has- scooped the MSM on more than one occasion. As far as the President Hatch thing? I'm not there yet. I'm not convinced that Pence and Ryan (as spineless as he is) are caught up in this thing. To be fair to Louise, she absolutely has sources that I don't have, and it's very possible that she's right, but I'm not there yet. To be clear: I'm not suggesting that anyone unfollows her, I'm not suggesting that you berate on her twitter or anything like that, because she has done great reporting. I don't think she's an "agent of chaos" as some people have said. I'm just saying temper your expectations. I have no doubts that this leads to a Trump impeachment. I'm just not convinced at this point that Pence and Ryan go down with him. If for no other reason, think about what that would do for the stability of our government. A scandal of that proportion isn't likely to be undertaken by a GOP majority. Don't burn me at the stake, but I did promise you guys that I would always shoot straight, and nothing that I've ever seen covering politics leads me to believe that the three most powerful Republicans are all going down at the same time.
Thirdly, morale at the White House is awful. Terrible. No good. Everyone is confused and dejected, wondering what is coming next. Turns out, obstruction of justice is a hard thing to spin. Who knew? As many of you have probably seen, contemporaneous notes of FBI employees meet the evidentiary standard in a court of law. So if it comes to that, Comey's memos will absolutely be accepted as evidence. Donald, Donald, Donald... I warned you not to play with the FBI and the greater IC. Remember what I said about them being a close-knit group? Fiercely protective of one another? Yeah... well, Comey sees your 'tapes' and raises you 'memos', and he's got more. Still wanna play chicken with the FBI director? Too late.
If anyone missed the Trump commencement speech at the Coast Guard Academy, you didn't miss much. Besides Secretary Kelly telling Trump to use the ceremonial saber he received on the media, I like the way I described it on Twitter, so I'll do that again: "Trump delivers another, "Good job or whatever, I guess, but let's talk about me." speech to our armed services. Narcissism overload." He spent a portion of the speech talking about how life is unfair, and saying that no politician in history has ever been treated as unfairly as him, especially by the media. I find this extremely rich from the person that's spent the better half of a year railing against the media, calling them fake news, the enemy of the American people, etc. But aww... the no good ole media is soooo mean to wittle Donnie. It's just not fair.
As I said in previous posts, the IC and the media is pretty pissed at this point. I expect more 'shoes to drop' (read: leaks) this week. The NYT teased with an 'it's almost happy hour' post on Twitter earlier, so I'm wondering if something big is coming today.'
Depending on the news cycle today, I'm going to try to get another post in. I want to devote an entire post to exactly why Trump's sharing of secret Israeli intelligence is such a big deal. There's that much that needs to be said. That story kind of got kicked aside as the Comey memo story dropped yesterday, but it doesn't need to go away.
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