This Presidential* Tantrum Is Straight From Vladimir Putin's Playbook
Trump's attempts to undermine independent law-enforcement institutions is all-too familiar.
Honest to god, he might as well have done this entire interview in Russian. From The Hill:
"What we've done is a great service to the country, really," Trump said in a 45-minute, wide-ranging interview in the Oval Office. "I hope to be able to call this, along with tax cuts and regulation and all the things I've done ... in its own way this might be the most important thing because this was corrupt," he said. "If I did one mistake with Comey, I should have fired him before I got here. I should have fired him the day I won the primaries," Trump said. "I should have fired him right after the convention, say I don't want that guy. Or at least fired him the first day on the job. ... I would have been better off firing him or putting out a statement that I don't want him there when I get there."
"They know this is one of the great scandals in the history of our country because basically what they did is, they used Carter Page, who nobody even knew, who I feel very badly for, I think he's been treated very badly. They used Carter Page as a foil in order to surveil a candidate for the presidency of the United States."
Getty ImagesBRENDAN SMIALOWSKI
As for the judges on the secret intelligence court: "It looks to me, just based on your reporting, that they have been misled," the president said, citing a series of columns in The Hill identifying shortcomings in the FBI investigation. "I mean I don't think we have to go much further than to say that they've been misled." "One of the things I'm disappointed in is that the judges in FISA didn't, don't seem to have done anything about it. I'm very disappointed in that. Now, I may be wrong because, maybe as we sit here and talk, maybe they're well into it. We just don't know that because I purposely have not chosen to get involved," Trump said. Asked what he thought the outcome of his long-running fight with the FBI, the president said: "I hope to be able put this up as one of my crowning achievements that I was able to ... expose something that is truly a cancer in our country."
It is not often that the president* invites a couple of reporters in to help him obstruct justice in an investigation into his own conduct, but we live in interesting times. Of course, John Solomon and Buck Sexton, the two mooks conducting this interview, give no indication that they're aware that they're being used for that purpose, or that they pushed back in any way against this incredible overflow of self-serving crapola. (Solomon has been such an all-purpose White House bobo that even his colleagues have complained about it, and Sexton is a conservative talk-radio goon.) But that's not the important thing. The important thing is how carefully the president*'s tantrum hews to the tactics in Vladimir Putin's playbook.
Recently, I watched Active Measures, the documentary about Putin, the Russian oligarchs he has brought to heel, and how all of them are connected to the president* in one way or another. Filmed on a shoestring and now running on Hulu, among other platforms, AM is best at illustrating Putin's ongoing attempts to delegitimize other governments for his own political and financial purposes. One way is to ratfck your candidate into office and then have your new plowhorse throw his opponents into jail. That's what happened in the Ukraine, and what almost happened in Georgia. The way you do this, of course, is that first you have to undermine the credibility of independent law-enforcement institutions that might get in your way. There is no other way to look at the president* remarkable tantrum about the FBI. "A cancer on the country"? This is an incompetent authoritarian sending signals to his master.
Update (4:10 p.m.): This will teach me not to read all the way down on interviews with the president*. You may have been wondering why he decided to declassify all those documents the other day. It turns out he did so on the advice of the most important people in his brain trust.
But it's been totally discredited. Even Democrats agree, that it's been discredited. They are not going to admit that, but it's been totally discredited. And I think frankly more so by text than by documents. I think the texts, not only theirs, many others. So honestly Buck, I have been asked by so many people that I respect, please — the great Lou Dobbs, the great Sean Hannity, the wonderful great Jeanie Pirro. (laughs)
I don't know how many ways there are from Sunday, but we're screwed on all of them.
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