Orange Ignores The New Hack
This Weak in Politics, Vol. LXXIX
June 8, 2017
This is yet another one of those weeks. A 25 year old contractor at the National Security Agency copied and leaked to a media outlet, a classified report stating that Russia hacked into at least one vendor of US voting machines, and dozens, if not hundreds of local elections officials — and it is NOT the top news story.
The top news story, was of course, that President Trump is proposing to streamline the nation’s air travel infrastructure by moving to a Canada/UK-style, privatized air-traffic controller work force.
Just kidding.
It’s Russia. And Comey. And Sessions and Kushner and Trump and holy shit, how is it possible that it has been less than 5 months since Inauguration Day?
To put the week in a very capsulized perspective, this week Donald trump named a new FBI Director to replace the FBI Director he fired because of the ongoing Russia investigation, all the while, the Senate Intelligence Committee was holding hearings on Russian influence into our elections, grilling the Deputy Attorney General (because the actual Atorney General has recused himself because he lied about ties to Russians who may or may not have been involved in meddling with our elections) and the Acting FBI Director (because the actual FBI director got fired at the urging of the recused guy, because he wouldn’t cease investigating Russia’s meddling in our elections. These stories cumulatively buried many of the other stories about, you know…Russia meddling in our elections.
White House officials have been uncharacteristically quiet about the details of the leaked NSA report showing that the Russian military intelligence service, GRU (which, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know stands for Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye) hacked into US election vendors and local elections officials in the days leading up to the November 2016 election.
Trump supporters (defined as 63% of his family, plus West Virginia and Oklahoma) are quick to point out that the report only stated that there was an effort to impact the election, and there is no evidence of any success. Phew, thank goodness the administration is only ignoring the effort to hack the election and not the hacking of the election. This is the very reason that only burglary, and not attempted burglary, is illegal in the US.
The alleged leaker, who has been arrested, has been identified as 25 yr. old NSA contractor Reality Winner. Now, if this shocks you, let us point out, this is not the first time an inexperienced, reality winner with a propensity to share secrets has been elevated to a powerful post in DC.
In related, but separate news, on Thursday, former FBI Director James Comey is set to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee about his meetings with President Trump among other topics.
Trump will NOT invoke executive privilege in an effort to block the recently fired FBI director from testifying on Thursday. This is significant news of historic proportion. Had Trump invoked executive privilege it would have raised huge red flags: blocking James B. Comey’s testimony would have been the most egregious and flagrant case of obstruction of justice since the firing of James B. Comey.
Trump defenders, meanwhile, are taking a cue from Trump, who called Comey a nut job, by attacking him as a selfish, DC political insider. Perhaps they hoped they could shove Comey aside as though he were the Prime Minister of Montenegro.
Fortunately, Comey don’t play that.
He will testify in a very straightforward manner and is expected to pull no punches. In fact, we at TWITPOL have been given exclusive* access to Comey’s opening statement.
In it, the former FBI Director will state that he did, in not so many words, confirm to the President that he was not personally a subject in the FBI’s investigation. He will also state that the president did indeed encourage Comey to not proceed with the investigation into disgraced former National Security Advisor Gen. Mike Flynn. Comey will also confirm the president repeatedly said that the ongoing Russia investigation was making it difficult for Trump to “make deals for America,” which we believe is his way of saying “conduct delicate diplomacy with a keen eye toward geopolitical ramifications of such acts. Bigly.”
Trump, according to Comey, also encouraged the then director to publicly exonerate Trump on the more salacious details of the infamous Russian dossier. We will not repeat the claims here out of respect, and, because it bothers the president to have these allegations repeated over and over. We will simply say the dossier hints that TRUMP PAID HOOKERS TO URINATE ON EACH OTHER AS HE WATCHED.
The president, according to Comey’s own notes and our exclusive copy of his testimony, seemed particularly concerned about the dossier. (The one in which it is alleged he PAID HOOKERS TO URINATE ON EACH OTHER AS HE WATCHED.) He gave Comey a very, very specific denial, saying he (Trump) had not been involved with hookers in Russia. Sources tell us that the full statement was “I was not involved with hookers. In Russia. In that Hotel. On this trip. After dinner.”
So in summary, the Comey statement states the president was not personally under investigation, he did urge Comey to shut down the investigation, he expressed concerns about the toll the investigation was taking on his presidency, and he denied using hookers in Russia.
Or as the RNC put it: “The Comey statement reconfirms what the president has been saying all along — he was never under investigation.”
(Note: If your standard of a successful week in the White House is “the president isn’t under criminal investigation!” you might want to push yourself and reach a bit for loftier goals.)
In other news, while it now feels like it was 27 years ago, it was just a week ago that Donald Trump officially withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement. This puts the score at: 194 nations entering the accord — the US, Syria and Nicaragua, out. Trump suggested that the nations entering the accord (also known as “the world”) wanted the US to do so in order to weaken our economy, allowing them to take advantage of us. He then bragged about how he was restoring our reputation in “the world,” which apparently he defines as “Syria and Nicaragua.”
He withdrew from the voluntary Paris Accord with a great deal of fanfare, holding a full-fledged Rose Garden ceremony.
The Rose Garden ceremony marked the first time a President has used such a formal and celebratory setting to announce not doing something. Well at least since the Rose Garden ceremony for the House passage of Congress’s American Health-Care Act (CAH-CA). Remember that? Not the ceremony, the bill? No? Neither does the Senate.
This is actually becoming a pattern — a Potemkin presidency, with Trump and his surrogates creating an illusion of administration accomplishments, which to date seem to be allowing conservative groups to pick a judge Mitch McConnell had been holding a seat for for a year, signing some executive orders and confirming that the president is not under investigation.
Even on June 6th, a day of solemn, patriotic remembrance in the United States, both Trump and Sean Spicer took time out of their public appearances to brag about the number of executive orders signed, the net value of the increase in the stock market and the quick confirmation (aided by a rule change requiring the simplest of majorities) of a Supreme Court Justice, effectively turning D-Day into DJT Day in the White House.
The Potemkin presidency approach hit a fever pitch this week when Trump held a signing ceremony for a memo. We’d like to claim this as a joke, but sadly, it is reality…or fake, fake news, if you will.
These efforts are all geared at influencing the expectations game. Conservatives are expecting that, with Republican control of the House, Senate and White House, Trump can pass a conservative agenda worthy of Reagan.
As for the expectations of non-right-wingers — their expectations are slightly lower. They expect that at some point, while antagonizing an ally, Donnie will tweet out a dick pic. Ok that was crass and beneath the presidency. We should NOT have said dick pic. We should have said “richard picture.” Not to be confused with Richard Painter.
For those of you who don’t know, Painter is the government ethics expert from the George W. Bush administration who has been very critical of Trump’s conflicts of interest. We tell you that so you do not Google “Dick Painter” like we did. The result was this. And no one needs to see that. So we shall close here and muster our strength for the coming week of Comey testimony and presidential tweetstorms.
That’s how the weak spent the week in a nation where a mass shooting in Orlando received barely any coverage because the murderer was driven by rage stemming from his RV company, not from a jihadist Imam. As such, he didn’t even get called a loser by the leader of the free world.
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*Exclusive, meaning: we have access to the testimony, and to the best of our knowledge, the testimony was only released in English. By carefully calculating the number of people in the world with internet access, and proficiency in English, measured against the number of people who have ever lived (107 billion — yes, we looked it up), this means that on the high end, only about .69% of humanity would have possible access to the advance copy of the testimony. This exclusive group includes us, @KatyTurNBC and quite possibly @oliviamunn).
