The Backwards Logic of the Secret Memo

[babylonsister]

https://politicalwire.com/2018/02/02/backwards-logic-secret-memo/

The Backwards Logic of the Secret Memo
February 2, 2018 at 2:44 pm EST
By Taegan Goddard


Jonathan Chait: “Amid all the lies Donald Trump has told about the Russia scandal, there is one underlying truth: The intelligence community truly fears him and considers him unfit for the presidency. This is not because the intelligence community is traitorous, or left wing, or (as Donald Trump Jr. sneeringly put it) wine-spritzer-drinking elites. It is because the IC had early access to a wide array of terrifying intelligence linking Trump and his orbit to Russia. People who spend their lives protecting their country from foreign threats saw in Trump a candidate who had at some level been compromised by one of them.”

“Trump and his allies have viewed the causality the other way around. Because the IC distrusts Trump, its investigation of Trump’s connections to Russia is therefore illegitimate. Since his election, Trump has seized upon news of the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia as evidence that the investigators cannot be trusted. If they were unbiased, he reasons, they wouldn’t have been investigating Trump in the first place.”

“The newly released memo by Republican staff follows the tracks of this reasoning.”

[Alwaysna]

1. It's a sad thing

That out of 300 million people this is the best we can do for leaders of our country!

[roscoeroscoe]

2. Exactly

I hope people will understand

[Eyeball_Kid]

3. Trumpy has convinced himself (and that's all he needs to do)...

that he CAN control and eventually shut down the investigation. Further, he's convinced himself that the memo gives him the political cover to fire Rosenstein. No reason, no logic, can deter him from this final action. Restraint is a forgotten word. It no longer matters to him whether the entire world knows that he's obstructing justice. He's obstructing and he's proud of it.

I've been anticipating that Mueller will issue subpeonae that will stop him in his tracks, that will stun both Trumpy and his Hannityites into silence. But that's more a pipe dream than a result. Mueller isn't reacting to the political firestorm, even though perhaps he should. What has to concern him is the possibility of being cut off from funding by a new overseer once Rosenstein is fired. But that path hasn't been blazed yet.