That scampering sound you can hear is just the rats disembarking from the sinking ship.
Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, is not just any old rodent. For so long, he was the only faintly known quantity in national security to be desperate or insane enough to get close to Donald Trump.
His guilty plea to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador is no minor development. As all the other stampeding rats know, it is the tip of this perilous iceberg.
How can you tell? Because suddenly the White House is dismissing Flynn as a bit player in the history of Team Trump.
Ty Cobb, the White House special counsel with the unsavory task of defending Trump on a dozen fronts, issued this statement to the press: “Today, Michael Flynn, a former National Security Advisor at the White House for 25 days during the Trump Administration, and a former Obama administration official, entered a guilty plea to a single count of making a false statement to the FBI.”
Worse than being a nobody, Flynn was actually an Obama official. Yes, seriously. Never mind that he was fired by Obama as head of the defense intelligence agency for being such a screwball. Cue all the talk of the deep state on the fringes of conservative media.
But that’s not all. Cobb is in agreement with the real special counsel, Robert Mueller, on Flynn’s multiple crimes. After all, Flynn was fired precisely because he was such a rat.
“The false statements involved mirror the false statements to White House officials which resulted in his resignation in February of this year,” Cobb said. “Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr Flynn. The conclusion of this phase of the Special Counsel’s work demonstrates again that the Special Counsel is moving with all deliberate speed and clears the way for a prompt and reasonable conclusion.”
Well, at least the last line rings true. Mueller is indeed moving with all deliberate speed, and his direction is totally reasonable.
Let us review how far Mueller has traveled in recent weeks. It’s only one month since the guilty plea by one George Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign’s point man on Russia, on charges of lying about his extensive efforts to collude with Russian officials during last year’s election.
That means it’s also only one month since Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, was charged with multiple counts of laundering Ukraine government money, along with his associate Rick Gates. Manafort, who is pleading not guilty, was freed on bail of $10m this week. In lobbying, they used to call that nice work if you can get it.
And it’s only two weeks since we learned of Donald Trump Jr’s coordination with WikiLeaks about Hillary Clinton’s emails, which you recall were hacked by the Trump campaign’s friends in Moscow.
Flynn’s guilty plea suggests he’s avoiding far worse charges in exchange for cooperation with Mueller’s investigations. That isn’t surprising, given his failure to disclose his foreign lobbying and all the reporting about his various deals with Turkey and Russia during his time in the campaign, in the transition, and even in the White House.
But there’s more. According to ABC News, Flynn is sharing with Mueller how Trump himself told him to contact the Russians, at first in an effort to coordinate against Isis.
Flynn’s cooperation takes the trail of Russian collusion to the desk of the man we all know is at the center of this plot: Donald J Trump.
We know it because Trump really can’t help but broadcast his guilt. When the Russians hacked Clinton’s emails, Trump publicly asked them to hack some more.
When Flynn back-channeled with the Russians to undermine the Obama administration, Trump tweeted about how “very smart” Putin was. It remains unclear whether Putin feels the same way about Trump.
When his son was caught, ironically by email, colluding with the Russian-backed WikiLeaks, Trump tweeted there was “NO COLLUSION!” Maybe the ALL CAPS are the giveaway here.
Trump says he believes Putin when he claims he didn’t meddle with Trump’s election. At the same time, he really wants all this Russia stuff to go away.
Senator Richard Burr, the North Carolina Republican who chairs the intelligence committee, took the unusual step of going on the record about Trump’s pressure to end his Russia investigation.
“It was something along the lines of, ‘I hope you can conclude this as quickly as possible,’” Burr said.
Of course, that’s nothing compared to firing the former FBI director James Comey, presumably because he refused to end his Russia investigation before it had really started.
All this week there have been warning signs about the cracks appearing in the hull of Steamship Trump. The behavior of the 45th president has grown so bizarre that there is now open talk that he just might be unhinged.
Trump managed to astonish the far-right wingnuts with his Islamophobic tweets, cleaving apart his alliance with the British government. He hurled unfounded allegations against news executives, and continued to bleat on about Hillary Clinton’s emails.
There’s something so deliciously guilty about a man who claims his election rival was a threat to national security, at the same time as he was compromising national security.
Then again, Flynn himself whipped up all the Trumpistas at the party convention crowd by insisting that he would go to jail if he had done one tenth of Clinton’s supposed wrongdoing. Now that’s truly delicious.
With all the hindsight that a week gives us, it’s clear that Trump isn’t mad with his reckless tweeting. He’s just desperate: the last caged rat who knows he has nowhere left to go as his one-time friends leave him behind.
If he weren’t so crassly offensive, he might just be pitiful.
Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, is not just any old rodent. For so long, he was the only faintly known quantity in national security to be desperate or insane enough to get close to Donald Trump.
His guilty plea to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador is no minor development. As all the other stampeding rats know, it is the tip of this perilous iceberg.
How can you tell? Because suddenly the White House is dismissing Flynn as a bit player in the history of Team Trump.
Ty Cobb, the White House special counsel with the unsavory task of defending Trump on a dozen fronts, issued this statement to the press: “Today, Michael Flynn, a former National Security Advisor at the White House for 25 days during the Trump Administration, and a former Obama administration official, entered a guilty plea to a single count of making a false statement to the FBI.”
Worse than being a nobody, Flynn was actually an Obama official. Yes, seriously. Never mind that he was fired by Obama as head of the defense intelligence agency for being such a screwball. Cue all the talk of the deep state on the fringes of conservative media.
But that’s not all. Cobb is in agreement with the real special counsel, Robert Mueller, on Flynn’s multiple crimes. After all, Flynn was fired precisely because he was such a rat.
“The false statements involved mirror the false statements to White House officials which resulted in his resignation in February of this year,” Cobb said. “Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr Flynn. The conclusion of this phase of the Special Counsel’s work demonstrates again that the Special Counsel is moving with all deliberate speed and clears the way for a prompt and reasonable conclusion.”
Well, at least the last line rings true. Mueller is indeed moving with all deliberate speed, and his direction is totally reasonable.
Let us review how far Mueller has traveled in recent weeks. It’s only one month since the guilty plea by one George Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign’s point man on Russia, on charges of lying about his extensive efforts to collude with Russian officials during last year’s election.
That means it’s also only one month since Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, was charged with multiple counts of laundering Ukraine government money, along with his associate Rick Gates. Manafort, who is pleading not guilty, was freed on bail of $10m this week. In lobbying, they used to call that nice work if you can get it.
And it’s only two weeks since we learned of Donald Trump Jr’s coordination with WikiLeaks about Hillary Clinton’s emails, which you recall were hacked by the Trump campaign’s friends in Moscow.
Flynn’s guilty plea suggests he’s avoiding far worse charges in exchange for cooperation with Mueller’s investigations. That isn’t surprising, given his failure to disclose his foreign lobbying and all the reporting about his various deals with Turkey and Russia during his time in the campaign, in the transition, and even in the White House.
But there’s more. According to ABC News, Flynn is sharing with Mueller how Trump himself told him to contact the Russians, at first in an effort to coordinate against Isis.
Flynn’s cooperation takes the trail of Russian collusion to the desk of the man we all know is at the center of this plot: Donald J Trump.
We know it because Trump really can’t help but broadcast his guilt. When the Russians hacked Clinton’s emails, Trump publicly asked them to hack some more.
When Flynn back-channeled with the Russians to undermine the Obama administration, Trump tweeted about how “very smart” Putin was. It remains unclear whether Putin feels the same way about Trump.
When his son was caught, ironically by email, colluding with the Russian-backed WikiLeaks, Trump tweeted there was “NO COLLUSION!” Maybe the ALL CAPS are the giveaway here.
Trump says he believes Putin when he claims he didn’t meddle with Trump’s election. At the same time, he really wants all this Russia stuff to go away.
Senator Richard Burr, the North Carolina Republican who chairs the intelligence committee, took the unusual step of going on the record about Trump’s pressure to end his Russia investigation.
“It was something along the lines of, ‘I hope you can conclude this as quickly as possible,’” Burr said.
Of course, that’s nothing compared to firing the former FBI director James Comey, presumably because he refused to end his Russia investigation before it had really started.
All this week there have been warning signs about the cracks appearing in the hull of Steamship Trump. The behavior of the 45th president has grown so bizarre that there is now open talk that he just might be unhinged.
Trump managed to astonish the far-right wingnuts with his Islamophobic tweets, cleaving apart his alliance with the British government. He hurled unfounded allegations against news executives, and continued to bleat on about Hillary Clinton’s emails.
There’s something so deliciously guilty about a man who claims his election rival was a threat to national security, at the same time as he was compromising national security.
Then again, Flynn himself whipped up all the Trumpistas at the party convention crowd by insisting that he would go to jail if he had done one tenth of Clinton’s supposed wrongdoing. Now that’s truly delicious.
With all the hindsight that a week gives us, it’s clear that Trump isn’t mad with his reckless tweeting. He’s just desperate: the last caged rat who knows he has nowhere left to go as his one-time friends leave him behind.
If he weren’t so crassly offensive, he might just be pitiful.
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