On Friday night, the New York Times dropped an item about the FBI having launched an investigation into the possibility of Trump being a Russian asset after he fired James Comey. As I noted on Twitter: "The only shock is that it wasn't until then that their investigation began."
"It's unprecedented to investigate the president for being the agent of a foreign adversary!"
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 12, 2019
Well, I would certainly hope so. Christ.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is just as compromised as Trump, called the idea "silly on its face and not worthy of a response." Sure.
Meanwhile, Trump called in to Fox News, of course, to also dismiss out of hand the notion that he's Putin's puppet, except he never actually got around to denying it.
Trump says a lot of things after Pirro asks him if he ever worked for Russia. None of them are "no." https://t.co/qbpzGs0TdT
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 13, 2019
Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that Trump "has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, including on at least one occasion taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials, current and former U.S. officials said."
This has reportedly prompted lawyers for the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees to schedule a meeting today "to evaluate their legal options for subpoenaing the interpreters who were present when Trump spoke to Putin without aides."
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Neither of these items should be the least bit surprising to anyone who has been paying attention to Trump. It has long been abundantly clear that he's acting in service to the Kremlin. For Maude's sake, I wrote "The Real Story of the DNC Email Leak is Trump's Terrifying Ties to Russia" in July of 2016.
I do have a theory on why it is that our overwhelmingly conservative political media is pretending like this is all breaking news.
It's extremely interesting to me that all these dusty, no-kidding stories about Trump being a puppet are coming out now.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 13, 2019
In unrelated news (cough), we've just reached the point at which Pence can serve out the rest of this term & still be eligible to run for two more full terms.
Like I've been saying for some time now, Trump has been an incredibly useful tool for the GOP and the Kremlin — and, once he became a liability, he'd simply be dispatched from office.
My sense is that they're using Trump to demolish Democratic norms, then Pence will be able to exploit the "new normal" without any of the blame. Trump will be the Republicans' scapegoat forever, as they pretend to be restoring democracy while killing it.
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One final note: Every time I write about the fact that Pence could still be elected twice as president if he takes over for Trump starting now, I get pushback along the lines of: "Pence couldn't win a national election."
Folks, neither could Donald Trump without help. And he got it.
No one should imagine that Putin wouldn't also be inclined to help Pence, who was, as a reminder, hand-picked by Paul Manafort.
No one should imagine that the GOP wouldn't pull out all the voter suppression stops to help Pence, who himself co-chaired the president's blue-ribbon commission on nationwide voter suppression efforts.
No one should imagine that the political press wouldn't continue to give a huge assist to Pence, who has not been subjected to even basic scrutiny by the national press despite being perhaps the most powerful veep ever.
All the players that helped Trump become president have the same incentives — and then some — to help Pence. Whether he could fairly win a national election is irrelevant.
Especially if he assumes the presidency by succession and gets two years at the helm before the next election.
The most reliable (and possibly only) solution is removing both Trump and Pence from office swiftly and urgently. And unfortunately I don't see any scenario in which that is likely to happen.
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