New Yorker - Fear and Loathing in the Trump White House

[TomCADem]

The last paragraph hits the nail on the head. Republicans will defend anything. There only issue is that the White House keeps on changing its lies. Just pick one that does not get debunked or contradicted within the hour.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/fear-and-loathing-in-the-trump-white-house

On Wednesday afternoon, Chuck Grassley, the Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced that he and Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s ranking Democrat, had agreed to subpoena Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, to appear at a public hearing next week. “He”—Manafort—“was present at the meeting that we’ve all read about,” Grassley said by way of explanation, referring to the meeting with Veselnitskaya on June 9, 2016, which Manafort had attended, along with Trump, Jr., and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. There was no immediate word about whether Manafort, who had previously offered to testify in a closed session, would agree to answer questions about the sit-down, or whether he would take the Fifth.

Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican from South Carolina, pressed Christopher Wray, Trump’s nominee to replace James Comey as the director of the F.B.I., to say that Trump, Jr., should have informed the F.B.I. that he’d been offered information from Russia. Although Wray wouldn’t use the exact words that Graham demanded, he did say, “Any threat or effort to interfere with our elections from any nation-state or any non-state actor is the kind of thing the F.B.I. would want to know.”

To be sure, there is still no sign that Republicans in Washington are breaking from Trump in a meaningful way. The typical Republican member of Congress might privately wish that Vice-President Mike Pence could replace Trump, but is still far too wary of alienating Trump’s core supporters (and Fox News) to get out in front of the pack. But the e-mails that Trump, Jr., released this week prompted a reaction unlike any prior development in the Trump-Russia story. Even Representative Trey Gowdy, the Party attack dog who orchestrated some of the Benghazi hearings during the Obama Administration, cried foul. ”Here we are beginning another week, this one in July, with a new revelation about Russia,” Gowdy groused on Fox News on Tuesday night. He went on to lament that people close to Trump have had “amnesia” about their dealings with people connected to Russia, and, to the evident surprise of the show’s host, Martha MacCallum, he added, “This drip, drip, drip is undermining the credibility of this Administration.”

Gowdy’s words shouldn’t be interpreted as a moral condemnation, or even a tacit admission that there has been wrongdoing. They are all about politics. Republicans such as Gowdy aren’t upset about the confirmation that Trump’s son, son-in-law, and campaign manager all leaped at the chance to acquire kompromat about Clinton. Instead, they’re dismayed that the White House has failed to come up with a Russia story it can stick to—one that G.O.P. politicians can defend publicly without having to fear, every day, that it is about to be debunked by the Times or the Washington Post.

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. The R means rotten to the core. Beyond salvage. useless and worthless.

[BigmanPigman]

2. As long as 35-40% of the Repub base doesn't give a shit about Russia the GOP will continue

with business as usual and try to get their agenda through while they still can. If the idiot base holds, they have no reason politically to pursue anything related to Russia. In private they know there is rampant illegal activity from the White House but they will not act on it until their brainwashed constituents wake up and turn off Fux Ruse , Alex, and Rush.

[smirkymonkey]

3. K&R and Bookmarked!

[Pluvious]

4. The Groper's GOPers should do what they're told !! n/t