If you were following the MSM news cycle today, you may have heard* about various things, among them
- How Donald Trump single-handedly saved a thousand jobs in Indiana (price still to be revealed)
- Terrible weather and fires in the south (but not Climate Change)
- The new Secretary of the Treasury may have come from Goldman-Sachs but has big connections in Hollywood. (Let’s ignore that he foreclosed on thousand of homes during the housing collapse.)
- Donald Trump has the best ethics lawyers and he’ll have no conflicts of interest because he’s realized presidenting comes first, and the kids are okay with it
- There was some unpleasantness from some guy named Schumer about some swamp being stocked with alligators instead of being drained, whatever that was about...
- Seema Verma did some nifty things with Medicaid expansion in Indiana, and could do more in the Federal government — except there’ll be no Medicaid expansion under her boss to be Tom Price who wants to kill the expansion along with Obamacare, Medicare, etc. Oh, but she’s a “thought leader”** for conservatives so it’s all good.
There’s also some terrible things happening in Syria and Iraq, but not terrible enough to override news about a tragic plane crash which has much more human interest…
* links have a little more information than the TV/Radio soundbites referenced…
** Thought leader as applied to conservatives is, ipso facto, an oxymoron.
meanwhile…
I heard no mention of it on the nightly news I was able to catch, but John Brennan was in England giving the first ever interview by a CIA Director to British media. The BBC has a report in which Brennan, who will be leaving in January has quite a few things to say, including:
..."I do not have confidence that the Russians are going to relent [in Syria] until they are able to achieve as much tactical battlefield successes as possible," he said.
The incoming Trump administration has suggested it may try to work more closely with Russia on a number of issues.
"I think President Trump and the new administration need to be wary of Russian promises," Mr Brennan told the BBC, arguing Moscow had failed to deliver in the past.
...On the role of Russia in trying to influence the US election by hacking and releasing information, the CIA director confirmed Russia had sought to carry out such activity but said he would defer to domestic counterparts as to the impact.
He did confirm that he had had conversations with his Russian opposite numbers to challenge them over these actions and warn them that they would backfire.
….He also warned Donald Trump's incoming team over their position taken during the campaign to abandon the nuclear deal with Iran.
"I think it would be disastrous," Mr Brennan told the BBC. "First of all, for one administration to tear up an agreement that a previous administration made would be unprecedented."
He said such a move would risk strengthening hardliners in Iran and risk other states pursuing nuclear programmes in response to a renewed Iranian effort. "I think it would be the height of folly if the next administration were to tear up that agreement," he said.
...President-elect Trump has said he would consider resuming waterboarding if he thought it would be effective. John Brennan made clear he thought that would be a mistake.
"Without a doubt the CIA really took some body blows as a result of its experiences," he said. "I think the overwhelming majority of CIA officers would not want to get back into that business.”
Read the whole thing. The interview with Gordon Corera, Security correspondent for BBC News, is frightening when you realize how hard Brennan is working to appear restrained, as the video clip shows. It’s a sober assessment of just how bad the incoming Trump administration is going to be on national security issues. It’s not surprising Brennan gave this interview in the U.K. — and not surprising the U.S. media appears to be ignoring it, as far as I can tell. Brennan is all but screaming Trump is going to be a flaming train wreck if he follows the course he laid out in his campaign.
This is a top administration official speaking frankly about the incoming Trump administration. He could have chosen to say nothing. That he did speaks volumes. What else does the Intelligence Community know but can’t say?
Kevin Drum points to a remarkable letter coming from all of the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee (except for Diane Feinstein who sided with Republicans), calling on President Obama to release classified information.
We believe there is additional information concerning the Russian Government and the U.S. Election that should be declassified and released to the public. We are conveying specifics through classified channels.
Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
The mainstream media is still spooked by Donald Trump, the monster they helped elect. They’re slowly working up to addressing the very real concerns about him, the people around him, and the rest of the GOP government, but they aren’t there yet. They still cower reflexively when the right wing snarls at them. It’s getting harder to ignore that America has the most radical government in living memory on the verge of taking power. They’ve been saying for years they intended to establish single party rule. They’ve effectively done just that.
Brennan must be wondering how much good it did for him to deal with external threats while the most immediate threat was coming from within.