It’s another day at the zoo. President Trump is threatening the mullahs of Iran via tweet. I can’t tell whether the heavily-redacted FISA warrant supports Devin Nunes allegations about the Justice Department and FBI, as Byron York avers or whether it contradicts it as most of the media outlets assert. There seems to be an awful lot of arguing from premises rather than drawing conclusions from facts.
Is President Trump under Vladimir Putin’s thumb, does Trump have Putin have just where he wants him, both, neither? The observable fact appears to be the Donald Trump was under-prepared for the Helsinki summit. Does that tell us anything we haven’t known since November 2016? We have also known that Mr. Trump was not a faithful husband since well before November 2016. How do the tapes from his lawyer change anything? Does it shock anyone that he or his lawyer or his friends would pay to have a Playboy Playmate’s story hushed up?
There’s a food fight going on about birthright citizenship, the latest salvo in which is here. It seems to me that this is wholly a political question.
Meanwhile, the gap between Trump’s approval rating and his disapproval rating is the smallest it’s been since April 2017 and his approval rating is holding steady at about 43%. I presume that’s because Americans don’t care much about foreign policy but do care whether they have jobs.
Please, someone explain it all to me.
“Please, someone explain it all to me.”
The only thing worse than a democratic republic is all the other forms of government………
I would note on the FISA situation – a) the heavy redaction is telling; the notion of redaction for national security hasn’t held water yet, b) footnotes or other technical distractions aside, does Obama (given Clapper’s brief moment of honesty (or was it carefully timed honesty?)) , or anyone for that matter, want to stand on the notion that the initiation of an investigation into the opposing party’s presidential candidate was warranted by legitimate concerns that Carter Page was a Russian spy (snicker), or that the Steele document contained legitimate concerns? That takes a special kind of stupid, or arrogance.
The main fact about Page was that he wasn’t working for Trump when the first warrant was filed. Which means that everything you read about the Deep State abusing its power is a total waste of time.
As far as payoffs go–Trump is willing to use the world’s worst lawyer (or second-worse, depending on how you rank Cohen v Giuliani) and the National Enquirer to silence a bunch of porn stars. What has he offered other parties for their silence? I’ve no idea if there’s compromising material on him in Russian hands, but it’s extremely clear he will offer something for silence.
You say, “unprepared” OTB says, “Treason!”
A sign of the times.
As I understand it, about 85% of the FISA warrant is redacted. It was released by the Trump DOJ as I understand it. I am going to assume only the parts they like best are revealed. IOW, I don’t think this tells us very much. It is also notable that more and more of the warrant is redacted each time, suggesting they they were finding something. At this point I think we are mostly inured to Trump’s rants. Who knows what he really means. As I said before, just view everything he does as playing to his base. I would predict that they will love Trump talking tough.
Steve
“I am going to assume only the parts they like best are revealed.”
Thanks for the comedic relief.
You are making judgments when you can only see 15% of the document. Now that is funny.
Steve
Given that DC leaks like a sieve, I’d guess there isn’t likely much substantial in the redacted portions one way or the other. If there was some blockbuster hidden in there, I think we would have heard something about it by now.
What’s got me on this is that the Democrats say that the Republicans are treasonous and the Republicans say the Democrats are seditious.
If there isn’t much important in it, then release it.
Steve
Dave- Could this be like Iran vs Iraq and you wish both sides could lose?
Steve
“…wish both sides could lose?”
My take on that is that I don’t really wish for both sides to lose (because we all lose and sadly that’s likely to be the case, but I don’t wish for it.) I’ve followed the reports with the underlying assumption that most of the people involved are highly unethical and capable of a great deal of wrongdoing. So although I believe that the FBI (probably also CIA) were engaged in scandalous behavior, it doesn’t follow that Trump and his campaign were innocent.