Vincent J. Curtis
14 May 2017
Perhaps I am picking on Fox News Anchor Chris Wallace more
than I should. But Fox News Sunday is
the only Sunday news talk show that I can tolerate watching, and even then only
in limited doses. Today’s show was one
of those small dose shows that had to be turned off quickly lest I throw
something at the television.
On Sunday’s show, Wallace took up the theme of Trump’s
firing of James Comey, and he tried to tie it to potentially nefarious motives
that Trump harbored to stifle the finding of the truth. What that truth might amount to is not known,
nor the political consequences of finding out.
Wallace questioned Utah Senator Mike Lee concerning the
Comey firing and Russian collusion. The following
bit opened the questioning:
WALLACE: Let's start with the president's attitude toward
the Russia investigation about possible interference in the 2016 election and
possible links to the Trump world, as I will put it. Here's what the president
said this week.
(BEGIN
VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD
TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I will tell you this, if Russia or
anybody else is trying to interfere with our elections, I think it's a horrible
thing and I want to get to the bottom of it.
(END
VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE:
But the president has sent several tweets this week: The Russia-Trump collusion
story is a hoax, he said in one, when will this taxpayer-funded charade end?
Senator,
as a former federal prosecutor, does not
raise questions in your mind about this president's interest in getting to the
truth?
Needless to say, Senator Lee whiffed the answer. The correct answer runs like this:
Mr. Wallace, if there
was any collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign Susan Rice would
have found out. But she found
nothing except for the now infamous exchange between incoming National Security
Advisor Michael Flynn and the Russian Ambassador, and that was about sanctions
imposed by the Obama Administration after the election. In addition, at the instigation of the Barack
Obama himself, the heads of the four major intelligence agencies investigated it
and found at the time no evidence. Mr. Wallace, there is nothing to this
Russian collusion story, and its time we moved on to more pressing
matters. Like, who has been leaking
national security secrets since the election – something former Director Comey
failed to move on.
And then repeating as necessary: Where's the evidence, where's the evidence, where's the evidence?
This Russia collusion story is simply a means for Democrats
to avoid coming to grips with the reality of losing the presidential election,
and to try to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump. Everybody agrees that Comey should have been
fired, so what’s the deal about Trump doing it?
Everybody admits that Hillary Clinton would have fired Comey on Day 1,
so what is the point, again?
Let’s consider briefly another bit of collusion. In the 2012 election cycle, President Barack
Obama was overheard in a hot mic moment asking Russian President Dmitry
Medvedev to pass on to then Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that the 2012
election was Obama’s last election, and that after it he can be “more flexible.” This was a downright solicitation of
collusion, by the US president of Russia, in order to enhance his chances in
the election against Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Nobody has said boo about this, particularly
not Democrats. Unless a Democrat condemned
Obama at the time, they have no business accusing Trump of it when there is no
evidence of it at all.
Today’s news media are in the same boat as the Democrats
(not surprisingly): unless they accused Obama of attempting collusion at the
time, they have no business accusing Trump of collusion now. What both media and Democrats are doing is
projecting what they would do or already have done into their political
opponents.
Now let’s turn to the belt-way buzz over the various reasons
Trump has given for firing Comey. They include:
that Comey was not doing a good job; that the Deputy Attorney-General
recommended it; that Comey was going to be fired anyway, despite previous
assurances of confidence, and so forth.
You would think no one in the news media had ever made a decision
before! Decisions are complicated things, but
none of the reasons given by Trump for firing Comey contradict each other. They are all components of the decision that
all point in the same direction. Particularly,
if Comey was withholding information from the president regarding
investigations, you have to wonder what bit of treason Comey was playing – even
if those investigations were concerning the president himself. There can be no secrets from the President.
If Wallace were asked why he bought a BMW instead of an
Audi, he might begin by saying that he liked the Beemer more than the
Audi. If pressed, he could give perhaps half
a dozen reasons why the Beemer is better than the Audi, none of which
contradict each other, and all of which point in the same direction: Beemer
over Audi. Exactly in the manner of
Trump giving half a dozen reasons why Comey should be fired. But the media are too dense (or political) to
look at their own decision making processes.
With Comey out of the way, perhaps now something will be
done to help the House and Senate Committees do their work getting to the bottom
of the Russian collusion story (which Comey helped to keep alive by his
selective admissions and refusals to admit), start to do something about the
White House leaks, and perhaps get justice done about Hillary and her gang, and
about the Obama gang: Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, and Eric Holder.
All the criticism of Trump over the Comey firing has been
about the tastes, preferences, and style favored by the beltway crowd. Nobody is questioning the decision
itself. Nobody is putting to the
Democrats their blatant hypocrisy and hyperbolic talk of a constitutional crisis,
Watergate, and impeachment.
Trump promised to drain the swamp, and Comey was a part of
that swamp. The croaking you hear are
the noises of discontent of the other swamp creatures.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment