The President Believes his Own Hype

For some reason, releasing the HUUUUGE four-page memo which had been hyped to the rafters as an explosive indictment of the FBI doesn't seem to have released the earth-shattering Ka-Boom! that the President was expecting. This might have something to do with it being badly over-hyped by people who hadn't even read the thing--like Seb Gorka confidently saying that the abuses by the FBI would be revealed to be a 100 times worse than those that started the American Revolution. Really?

You might come to think that a partisan Fox News assshat was running the press on this entire debacle, and you'd probably be on to something. 

This sort of thing left the White House's designated adult, John Kelly, to try and caution that it might not do all the things that were printed on the label.  But the memo got dumped on Friday after Trump gave it what I assume was a light skimming, and determined it didn't matter at all what it actually said, so long as there was good coverage of what is was supposed to say.  The memo focuses on what were supposed to be terrible omissions of fact regarding the FISA warrant that lead to surveillance of Carter Page. The text of it lays out a case, but it is both brief and one-sided.  Consider the basic claim that the Steele dossier was part of the request--part, but not all. Carter Page has been on the radar of US intelligence since 2013. Consider also that the warrant was regularly renewed--we are supposed to be impressed by the names of the folks who signed those renewals without noting that each warrant had to have fresh justifications--in other words, the situation had to remain informative and relevant. 

And we have every reason to think it did, because Carter Page is, as a bygone tv game show might have stated, "the weakest link". There have been great reasons for Carter Page to be under surveillance because of a really weird connection to the Russian government. And we still learn fun thins about him to this day, like how he boasted that he really was a Russian adviser. To the Kremlin. Like, he was working for them. 

This is hardly the hill that I think anyone would want to go to war with a federal agency on. And yet here is Trump in the above screen-cap of a Tweet, quoting a WSJ editorial that alleges a central point of Trump's lie that the FBI tilted the election to Hillary Clinton, who lost the election. Because we are supposed to believe that the FBI always really loved Hillary Clinton. Louis Freeh sending G-men to rifle her underwear drawer for Rose Law Firm receipts going on twenty-odd years ago, in what world is that a goddamn thing? 

Trump might like to think this thing has absolved him, and that, as Hannity's godforsaken show keeps implying, the Mueller investigation should be shuttered because collusions hasn't been positively confirmed. This only works for people who can't or don't read. Among people who do read, DJT Jr's email thread regarding affirmatively accepting a meeting with a person said to be representing Russia pushing dirt on Clinton that was obviously obtained through hacking with a side discussion on (sanctions) adoptions remains a pretty good whiff of collusion, as does Trump Sr's constant signal boosting of WikiLeaks. The four page memo might make a suggestion that a better pretext should have existed for a warrant to have been granted on Carter Page (which doesn't, in hindsight, even look like that great a suggestion), but one of the larger narratives that it was supposed to feed, that the Trumpists rely on, is actually quite exploded. 

One who reads the memo learns that the Steele dossier, is not, actually, per the memo, the reason for the Trump/Russia investigation. And the FBI people who were supposedly not pro-Trump enough got reassigned. As if the FBI actually tried to make a wall between personal relationships and investigations. The memo mentions that George Papadopoulos talking to an Australian diplomat was the tip off, and Strzok was reassigned. These things actually negate some of the conspiracy theory bullshit that has been out there.

Maybe between the not as bad as could be SOTU address and this memo, his poll numbers will go up a smidge. But just between you and me and the universe--Trump is not absolved and the investigation is nowhere near over. And if he keeps this naked kind of open consideration of firing folks investigating his very own malfeasance alive, and goes on to carry it out by firing Wray or Rosenstein, this is a deep problem that should, let you all know that every piece of this Trump Russia connection story was real. And he is guilty of so many things, but believing his hype was always a big part of them.

The TrumpWorld Grab-Bag That Wore It Well

Sometimes, I try too hard to pull off a cohesive TrumpWorld Grab-Bag, and the effect is somewhat like Carter Page in the above pic--suited up for serious business, but with a jaunty little red something or other, like that rolled-rim bucket hat, a signifier of being the Cardinal of Casual.  Sure, he can say he was warding off the sun from his otherwise unprotected pate on a sunny Washington, DC day--but that's boring. He was dropping off subpoenaed documents, and I feel like he was sending a little semaphore by haberdashery. "Red hat at morning, co-conspirators take warning," perhaps? 

We will just have to see. It looks like an investigation that involves the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and a Special Counsel certainly takes a lot of documents. The DOJ has been sent a request by Special Counsel Mueller to send over a broad array of docs, some centering on the firing of FBI Director Jim Comey, which wasn't really supposed to involve AG Jeff Sessions but kind of did, because he recused himself for reasons that are both obvious and really need to be explained.  It's probably a good idea to get a paper trail on Sessions' business, because as has been previously elaborated upon, his memory could be called "fickle".

But I guess when in the heat of getting campaign advisors together or sorting out a chaotic transition, things can often be forgotten--for example, would you believe Jared Kushner forgot to disclose that he had some other Russian contact and maybe a little Wikileaks contact too? That is such a weird thing to forget to mention on your security clearance application, like forgetting maybe a hundred or so other things?  

But stuff gets forgotten all the time. George Papadopoulous was practically forgotten, but apparently not everybody is willing to leave his arrested, plead, co-operating behind out in the cold. 

(Remember, in case this bizarre quality of folks like G-Papa and Page get you wondering "Who the hell even let these guys on this campaign?" the answer is probably Sam Clovis, who had very special feelings about Russia for some time. )

But in case the rogue's gallery of characters we know quite well haven't complicated things enough--there's probably a talk between Rob Goldstone and the Special Counsel's team coming up. Congressional investigators want to look more deeply into the Russian side of the Trump Tower meeting that happened last year. And there are still so many questions out there about what the hell Mike Flynn was doing.  It looks like these several avenues of investigation will wear well into the future.