You Are There
After the 2020 election, I thought that our “You Are There” columns with overlapping GOP disaster stories might be a thing of the past. But silly me, then came yesterday. What kind of a day was it? A day like any other, except – you are there.
First, there was Trump’s former campaign manager, pardoned felon Paul Manafort telling Business Insider that, well, yes, okay, he did actually pass along information to Putin oligarch Konstantin Kilimnik. Manafort insisted that he didn’t know that Kilimnik had ties to Russian intelligence – because, yeah, which would you think that about an oligarch with close ties to Russia’s autocratic dictator – and that he didn’t pass along anything to help the campaign he was in charge of, but only for money. He added that he only passed along information that was publicly available or old data, because when you’re trading information for money, what you also use is material that anyone can get and is out of date and useless, all of which is of zero value. By the way, making the story funnier – or worse, depending on your point-of-view – Kilimnik himself insists that he had no idea that any money was given to Manafort, that it was done by pure accident by his staff – because, of course, the campaign manager for Trump’s presidential campaign just passed along information to him out of the goodness of his heart, in a spirit of international cooperation. Yeah, so much for the cries of a “Russia hoax” and “no collusion!” and “Mueller didn’t find anything”…because all of this was, in fact, in Mueller’s report.
And then came along the photos that New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman had to support her story from months ago, that Trump lambasted as (of course…) false, of a White House toilet with torn up documents inside, including one with the name of Elise Stefanik on it in Trump’s handwriting – all of which gave new meaning to the phrase “News Dump.” It all made one ponder if this was related to what Trump was talking about at his rallies about how low water pressure made it more difficult these days to flush a toilet and so you had to flush many times. As a bonus, it was like old times to see Trump slam (of course…) Ms. Haberman’s upcoming book as “fictitious” – never mind that the book isn’t being published until October, so even if Trump actually read books, which he doesn’t, he couldn’t have read this yet. Indeed, the only thing fictitious is what Trump tried to say in his response.
And on top of that were excerpts in the New Yorker from the soon-to-be-released book The Divider: Trump in the White House,” by journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. But where to start? One possibility begins after the famous confrontation when Nancy Pelosi challenged Trump that “All roads with you lead to Putin,” which infuriated him. General Mark Milley, who had just been appointed as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was present at Trump’s meltdown, and the authors write that this is what got him to finally realize that night that Trump had lost it. Milley, new to the position, called a congressman to find out “Is that they way these things normally go?”, and he was unfortunately assured that it was.
But the most head-banging excerpt was when Trump got upset at the military and said to his Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly, “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?” To which Kelly asked, “'Which generals?” Kelly asked. “And Trump replied, “The German generals in World War II.” That’s horrific enough – Trump wishing the military was more like what the Nazis had. But worse is that not only did Kelly have to explain to Trump that Hitler’s generals tried to kill him (unsuccessfully) three times, but Trump – ignorant of history – tried to insist it wasn’t true, that the German generals were loyal to Hitler. As if being loyal to Hitler is a Good Thing to aspire to.
And after all that, there was still a topper – though not related directly to Trump, but about Georgia U.S. senatorial candidate Herschel Walker…who, in fairness, was endorsed by Trump, so there is, at least, a Trump connection.
It’s an ad put out by the Republican Accountability Project. And as the expression goes, the gloves are off. To be clear, this is not from the Sen. Warnock campaign, which I’m sure is why it’s as gut-punching blunt as it is.
And even that wasn't the topper.
The topper was that the FBI instituted a raid on Trump's home in Mar-a-Lago. No word yet on who the warrant was against or what it was for, though it's being reported that it concerns classified documents taken there illegally. But whatever the reason for the raid, the warrant importantly requires a federal judge signing off on probable cause that a specific crime has been committed or is being committed and that there is evidence of it on the premises. While this does not appear to concern the Insurrection, you have to figure that it's still something deeply serious requiring a raid of a former president, not just taking some things he shouldn't have, especially since the FBI knows it's also investigating January 6, so you don't want to screw this up over something minor. Further, it's worth noting that though a search warrant is required for a specific crime -- any material that is found in clear sight that concerns any crime than be taken. And "clear sight" doesn't mean sitting on a table -- if the search warrant allows opening a safe (which this did, since Trump released a statement that his safe was opened), anything in the safe would be concerned in "clear sight." And it's also important to keep in mind, as Trump tries to spin this more than an out-of-control whirling dervish ranting about the deep state and political crimes of the FBI or whatever -- Trump appointed the current director of the FBI.
By the way, there's something endearing about seeing the former Most Powerful Man in the World always painting himself as an eternal, sniveling victim. His statement about the raid was Shakespearean in its victimhood, and there's tons more of victim stew where that came from.
Ultimately, somehow this old TV ad seems appropriate.
What kind of a day was it yesterday? A day like any other, especially when that "any other" day is the anniversary of Richard Nixon resigning, except -- You are there.
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