Tough week searching for a mulligan somewhere. The SOTU didn’t make him ‘presidential’, nor did the Nunes memo make him ‘exonerated’, but golf…. maybe.
In their desperation, Nunes and his staffers neglected to omit a sentence which negates the GOP/WH argument that the Steele dossier was the core of some FBI/DoJ conspiracy of Democrats. Claiming bias and reliance on the Steele Dossier cannot stand when the Nunes people also agreed that the Papadopoulos information ‘triggered’ an investigation already begun because of Carter Page, among other IC information yet to be revealed.
And then there are the bias claims… the information that Peter Strozk was an author of the letter reopening the HRC email investigation had yet to be reported, so yet another element of an already flawed argument rendered the Nunes memo to be even less credible.
“The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok,”
The FBI moved on Papadopoulos in January 2017 and arrested him six months later. All of this proceeded completely independent of the existence of the Steele Dossier.
In response to this report, the sentiment has emerged on social media and elsewhere that Hicks -- a presidential confidante and senior figure in the Trump administration -- is somehow naive or too young or supposedly in over her head, and that she should be given the opportunity to make amends and to move on from the Russian scandal later in life.
This is extremely problematic. Hope Hicks is an adult who chose to work for Donald Trump. She was not coerced, and she is very well compensated. Her boss is a petit-fascist authoritarian who may have conspired with agents of a foreign government during the 2016 presidential campaign. There is a mounting body of evidence that he has obstructed justice in an effort to derail Mueller's investigation into Russian interference and other crimes.
[...]
As the pity party for Hope Hicks swings into full gear we are reminded of two fundamental truths:
- Racism exists across the ideological spectrum in White America.
- There are white liberals and progressives who are invested, albeit in different ways than conservatives, in maintaining and protecting white privilege -- even if that means offering ideological cover to one of Donald Trump's sycophants and political handmaidens.
www.salon.com/...
"He cheats like hell," the 15-time LPGA Tour winner said. "So I don't quite know how he is in business. They say that if you cheat at golf, you cheat at business." (LPGA legend Suzann) Pettersen also said the president must pay his caddies well, as drives that are headed for the woods always ends up back in the fairway. She also mentioned his fondness for gimmes.
[...]
"He always says he is the world's best putter. But in all the times I've played him, he's never come close to breaking 80," she said.
"But what's strange is that every time I talk to him he says he just golfed a 69, or that he set a new course record or won a club championship some place. I just laugh."
www.golf.com/...