So, let's review, for those of you that are not necessarily Evangelical Christian and therefore are not immune from the flu and may have had a sick day, it has been quite a week.
First, there was Devastating Devin Nunes' memo, which crashed into our existence on Tuesday, a memo which Sean Hannity hyped as “worse than Watergate” proved to be more like "Waterworld" upon release. Far from confirming a case of political motivated action against "Trump," it instead confirmed the New York Times’s reporting that the FBI’s inquiry began with Trump adviser George Papadopoulos’s loose talk. Oops.
But, Trumpettes kept their faith, because next came new text messages between FBI lawyer Lisa Page and her lover Peter Strzok, and these texts included a provocative line: Then-President Obama wants “to know everything we’re doing,”
On cue (literally), conservatives went howler monkey,. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said the texts revealed “Obama’s personal involvement in the Clinton email scandal and the FBI investigation of it.” House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said that “it means the president [Obama] wants to know what they’re doing to stop Trump.” Trump himself tweeted: “NEW FBI TEXTS ARE BOMBSHELLS!”
Bull shit, obviously. As I and many others noted, the date of the texts — September 2, 2016 — came 2 months after Comey closed out the initial investigation by blasting Clinton, and before the discovery of emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop, which occurred 3 weeks later (Calendars, people!).
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Side note away from scandal for a second. The Wall Street Journal reported that the texts referred “to preparation to brief Mr. Obama about Russian interference in that year’s election," which aligns with the public timeline: We know Obama confronted Vladimir Putin about Russia’s election meddling on September 4, during the September 2016 G20 meeting. Of course Obama would want to "know everything" at that point, Obama was about to be a REAL PRESIDENT and fking confront Putin about making war with our democracy! This shows a president on top of the biggest issue hitting our nation, demanding to be informed, taking action, it is a president at his absolute best, the type of which we are SORELY missing right now!!! (Sorry, I really did need to get that out).
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Last on the scandal front, Fox News reported that on March 2017, Sen. Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who has been helping lead the Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation, texted with a Russian oligarch in order to get information on, and potentially meet with, Christopher Steele. Somehow, that lead to this:
That one was so lame that even Rubio managed to slap that back in a matter of hours:
Fox News knew that Warner had disclosed the texts to the committee but didn’t mention it until the seventh paragraph of the story, (or about 6.5 paragraphs past where most Fox readers clicked to another article in fury) and Fox ended it's story by noting that Richard Burr knew of Warner's actions all along. Splat.
So, all in all, as Vox notes, that's one stunning week of "Scandal Fail" in Conservo-World. "Nothing burgers?" Those are fishless tacos as far as scandals go.
But, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter because all that nothing, all that froth, does nothing more than convince an increasingly large number of Americans, all on on the right, that the "truth" is "unknowable." As Charlie Sykes, the rabidly anti-Trump conservative radio show hosts notes:
“The essence of propaganda is not necessarily to convince you of a certain set of facts. It is to overwhelm your critical sensibilities. It’s to make you doubt the existence of a knowable truth. The conservative media is a giant fog machine designed to confuse and disorient people.”
And there's the rub, right? Because all that "scandal" stuff has "enough" truth to the average conservative that the "real truth" is now irrelevant, to the hard Trump supporter anyway.
Despite all the "fail," the Trump-Right wins the week, devastatingly, sickeningly, with one staggering number - 38%.
That is the approval rating that the Trump Right assigns to the FBI right now. The Trumpettes have an approval rating for the essence of law and order Federal Bureau of F'ing Investigation, headed by a Trump appointee, led by the Trump Department of Justice, at 38%!
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This is where you KNOW the Russians come in, because there is no frigging way that Team Trump could have that level of success at anything. Clearly, we've known for months, that the Alt-Right Trump Wing wanted to destroy the FBI before the FBI could destroy Trump. They have convinced almost two-thirds of Trump's supporters. Only the Russians can do propaganda at that elite level. Trumpettes would fuck it up.
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The tragic end result is that the FBI can march to the White House tomorrow with an arrest warrant signed by Chief Justice Roberts, and arrest President Trump with video tape evidence of Trump promising Putin to not enforce the sanctions against Russia, and written evidence that Trump knows that the Russians hacked into state voting databases and changed votes, and even with that solid evidence, two out of every three Trump's supporters will surely at least start out furious at the FBI, doubting the FBI, not lying Trump!
The Russians did this., through Fox News and Hannity and Rusbo and whoever else is on the take now, the Russians took the easiest marks in the U.S. political casino, the conservative Christian-right with racial animus and nativist tendencies, and created a political force with citizens like Mark Lee, who appeared on on a CNN panel last November and said:
“If Jesus Christ gets down off the cross and told me Trump is with Russia, I would tell him, 'Hold on a second. I need to check with the president if it's true,’”
Mr. Lee, the perfect Putin-mark, undoubtedly holds Jesus at very close to a 100% approval level, only slightly below "the president." What is Mr. Lee going to say when the FBI tells him that "the president" has been colluding with the Russians, and that the Russians hacked into our voter rolls?
In a week of pure Scandal Fail, the Russians clearly have made massive gains. One sure way to cut into those gains, is to spread the word far and wide about what is happening to our country. Make good use of your time this weekend.
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Originally published at The Trump Impeachment
My Novel anthology (Visit a world with a real president): Link