E. Howard Hunt’s storytelling could return as one can imagine Trump's last State of the Union speech (SOTU) as unhinged, the second SOTU in history to be delivered by an impeached POTUS.
In the age of “threat imminence” new yet improbable conspiracy theories (CTs) will emerge, as their narratives are now getting their trial ballooning, like “Obama killed Gaddafi”. These stories became more real during Watergate as we learned about the late E. Howard Hunt’s literary skills. The latest piece of fantasy may arrive with the SOTU planned for 4 February.
The new target might now be a “Keep America Great” reveal at the SOTU where Trump will spike the ball about being acquitted yet still remain impeached. Expect some new “facts” in the SOTU speech that will deflect and divert attention. Because isn’t that the necessity for IMPOTUS’s last State of the Union, one driven by CTs that could get him reelected.
Trump will need to launch at least one CT narrative, one that could advance a second term war after the 2020 election that will be somewhere and something “imminent”. Because fear got him elected, and he is no coward with respect to repeating falsehoods. Iran is now even closer to nuclear weapons because of his incompetence, and Trump could be the last neo-conservative hope for regime change.
"designed by clowns, supervised by monkeys" — Maximum Pressure
Trump could help float a CT trope that there was a concurrent civilian air tragedy complete with Russian-Ukraine memes, as well as a bonus swipe at Canada. The usual bots will make spurious connections among such randomness. Extra points for the first RWNJ to claim it was all done in CGI.
However, the current media chaos requires us to attribute a lot more intelligence to an Administration that cannot even pass tests of necessity or proportionality for extrajudicial killing. We now know that at least one other assassination was carried out in Yemen, but that one failed. So now there’s a claim that there were supposedly four US embassies targeted to rationalize the assassinations. Which ones, or will the number reach 52 by the SOTU.
When one reviews the Army-McCarthy hearings, one can see why Trump needs his Roy Cohn, as well as his Roger Stone and now, his E. Howard Hunt, or perhaps his Chuck Barris.
The remake/sequel to Syriana can still be made with Trump and Kushner in the lead roles. Something to look forward to in the post-Trump Hollywood, since all the players will be available for a Trump biopic, which will resemble Syriana more than Mister Smith goes to Washington. Trump is the anti-Smith.
“As with Stephen Gaghan's screenplay for Traffic, Syriana uses multiple, parallel storylines, jumping between locations”. Citizen Trump will have his Xanadu and his Rosebud: the switchblade that Fred Trump took from him as he sent The Donald to military school.
But: Once the trial gets started, it will take four Senate Republicans to join all Democrats to allow witnesses such as Bolton to testify. Are there that many? Only one, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), has said he wants to hear from Bolton. Two others, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have said they would be open to it.
Which is to say the game isn’t lost for Pelosi yet. At some point after the trial gets started, the Senate will take a vote on whether to allow witnesses and who those witnesses should be. If a majority of senators do vote to allow them — which is a possibility — then maybe we’ll be looking a bit differently at what Democrats got out of holding up these articles.
Along with G. Gordon Liddy, Frank Sturgis, and others, Hunt was one of the Nixon administration "plumbers," a team of operatives charged with identifying government sources of national security information "leaks" to outside parties. Hunt and Liddy plotted the Watergate burglaries and other clandestine operations for the Nixon administration. In the ensuing Watergate scandal, Hunt was convicted of burglary, conspiracy, and wiretapping, eventually serving 33 months in prison.
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According to Seymour Hersh, writing in The New Yorker, Nixon White House tapes show that after presidential candidate George Wallace was shot on May 15, 1972, Nixon and Colson agreed to send Hunt to the Milwaukee home of the gunman, Arthur Bremer, to place McGovern presidential campaign material there. The intention was to link Bremer with the Democrats. Hersh writes that, in a taped conversation, "Nixon is energized and excited by what seems to be the ultimate political dirty trick: the FBI and the Milwaukee police will be convinced, and will tell the world, that the attempted assassination of Wallace had its roots in left-wing Democratic politics." Hunt did not make the trip, however, because the FBI had moved too quickly to seal Bremer's apartment and place it under police guard.[29]
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Hunt's wife, Dorothy, was killed in the December 8, 1972 plane crash of United Airlines Flight 553 in Chicago. Congress, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigated the crash, and found it to be an accident caused by crew error.[33] Over $10,000 in cash was found in Dorothy Hunt's handbag in the wreckage.[34]
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A fictionalized account of Hunt's role in the Bay of Pigs operation appears in Norman Mailer's 1991 novel Harlot's Ghost. He was portrayed by Ed Harris in the 1995 biopic Nixon. He was portrayed by Daniel Jenkins in The Irishman. Canadian journalist David Giammarco interviewed Hunt for the December 2000 issue of Cigar Aficionado magazine.[86] He later wrote the foreword to Giammarco's book, For Your Eyes Only: Behind the Scenes of the James Bond Films (ECW Press, 2002).
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