Tag Archives: James Comey

The President Is A Liar   (2017Jun08)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Thursday, June 08, 2017                                          6:51 PM

The fact that Trump is a liar is something witnessed by every observer of the 2016 campaign—and ‘liar’ was far from the worst trait he exhibited, though it still should be concerning that he is a liar. The only thing new about today was that a man of stature and probity said so in a public (and televised) hearing. We all saw or heard the three (count’em) reasons Trump and his staff gave for the firing of Comey. Comey wasn’t so much testifying Trump was a liar as pointing out something we all could clearly see long before this day’s hearing.

Then there’s the Republican response—while the Senators themselves acted with restraint and seriousness, the commenters and apologists for the right were digging deep for pertinent pushback—and there were slim pickings dug up. Poking at Comey’s motives; darkly hinting that his leaking of his own memos was a questionable act, at best; suggesting that Comey should have responded instantly to a fresh and complex issue between spoonfuls at a White House dinner—all of these things will be repeated ad nauseum, and much more, to be sure.

But none of it obscures the blatant unprofessionalism of the president’s behavior—so sloppy that Paul Ryan sought to excuse his misbehavior as ignorance borne of inexperience (to which some wit replied: ‘you don’t put a toddler in the cockpit of a 747’). Whatever may be thought up by pundits in later days—in that hearing there wasn’t a single senator, Democrat or Republican, who questioned the honesty of James Comey’s testimony. Legal eagles can tussle over the technicalities of what it all means, in court—but nobody’s saying the described encounters didn’t happen, as described—except maybe the Donald’s lawyer.

Get Ready   (2017May16)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Tuesday, May 16, 2017                                            9:02 PM

Little things go unnoticed in all the hub-bub—like the continued absence of a replacement for James Comey at the FBI. The only other FBI Director to ever get fired was fired for blatant corruption. And Comey hasn’t been criticized by Trump, in his firing—and certainly not accused of doing wrong. Trump presented it as a preference-based thing, like a re-mod he’d been mulling, just a change.

However, if Comey did no wrong and the president simply wanted someone else in there, why did he wait until the day he fired the FBI Director before he started considering a list of potential replacements? If there was no urgency to the change, why wasn’t a replacement standing by, already chosen, for being better suited to the country’s (and the president’s) needs?

That’s not what the president did—he ‘got rid’ of Comey, and worked out the next steps afterwards—Trump didn’t need someone else in that post—he simply needed Comey out of it. And that has the appearance of obstruction—even if it doesn’t meet the technical, legal definition of it.

My feeling is that Trump dropped a stitch and had planned to make a ‘contest’ out of the selection of a new FBI Director, complete with graphics and dramatic announcements—hoping  to crawl back into the reality game-show realm he’s so comfortable in. Now he’s furious, because everyone else is looking at it the wrong way—and it’s ruining his contest plans. Nobody even much cared about what he and Erdogan talked about today—it’s all Comey, Comey, Comey.

Trump should have picked a replacement—he should have been getting ready to act while he waited for a ‘good time’ to act (“and, by the way, there is no good time to do it…”—our fearless leader). ‘Foresight’ is an important part of the presidency—‘Vision’ is nice, but it don’t pay the bills. In Donald Trump we are finding out what a sore lack foresight can be, in a president.

Trump is used to being the team leader—but he doesn’t know how to be a team player. A bully like him would have never made it up through the ranks of the political arena—and no one so ignorant of the backstory of America, and so unpracticed in the art of compromise—could ever become president within the ‘system’. He had to catapult in, a pure neophyte, from a world that sneers at politics. And many Americans enjoyed sneering at politics, and voted for him.

But now the harsh reality is this: our new president has less working knowledge of Washington than the littlest Congressional page, the very first-day SCOTUS law-clerk, the Pentagon private, or the least-senior White House wait-staffer. President of the United States of America is not a learn-as-you-go job—and we are witnessing the proof of that today. He didn’t even ask his wife if she’d be willing to spend four years First-Lady-ing.

Part of the problem is that Trump’s Traveling Circus becomes more and more embarrassing—and that narrows the pool of people willing to work for him, with every passing day. The Republicans are starting to realize that carrying this guy for four years of ‘legislative gravy-train-ing’ isn’t going to be as easy as they hoped. And if Trump makes it to November 2018, who knows where Congress will end up? So get ready.

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A Chat With An Old Friend   (2016Jul06)

Posted by XperDunn on

Wednesday, July 06, 2016                                                10:29 AM

It was convenient for Hillary that no charges would be filed—but it was equally convenient for the FBI director to cast aspersions on her without the need to prove them in a court of law. He says there’s no evidence that she was spied on, but that she MAY have been spied on. He says that out of 30,000 emails, about one hundred held classified info—but only eight held info that was classified at the time of the email—plus, he doesn’t give us anything regarding how HE decided this stuff was classified. Basically, Director Comey said ‘no harm, no foul’ out of one side of his mouth and ‘shame, shame’ out the other. It seemed a little partisan to me.

If you look at the email-server findings and the Benghazi findings, they both condemn the State Department. One wonders if it isn’t a little too easy to have someone be the head, the Secretary of State, and then, once he or she is done, lay a bunch of incompetence and malfeasance at their feet. An under-funded beltway bureaucracy, two centuries old, that gets a new boss appointed every few years—there’s your real bad guy.

Bill, the big dog, was less than circumspect in visiting aboard Loretta Lynch’s jet in AZ—but it sounds a little forced when people howl with laughter at the thought that these two could talk for thirty minutes about personal stuff. Really? You can’t blow a half-hour bullshitting with a friend? Has Bill done anything but, since he left office? Trump-eters who hail this as a sign that our ‘entire government is rotten to the core’ are being just a little bit hysterical. Nothing new there.

As always, the GOP witch-hunters who failed yet again to make a legal case against their nemesis have found ways to tag little PR addendums onto the statements clearing her. Politics is a rough game and no two ways about it.