Passionately Wrong

With only 140 or so shopping days to go before Christmas, there is something Lawrence O'Donnell could be given as a holiday gift. That would be  a dictionary (or would be, if there was no online dictionary). Incensed that the media telecast Donald Trump's entire liefest, then ignored Kamala Harris' rally afterward, O'Donnell remarked (at 3:07 of the video posted by this journalist)

It's 2016 all over again. The same mistakes are being made3 all over again. I've never seen an industry slower at learning from their own stupid mistakes than the American news business and you cannot expect them in the next 89 days to figure out what they haven't been able to figure out in nine years- how to cover a Trump for President campaign...

On October 28, 2016 we learned "Emails in Anthony Weiner Inquiry Jolt Hillary Clinton's Campaign." Three days later, we were treated to the New York Times headline "Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia." That article included the now literally incredible report

Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.

There is no telling whose those "intelligence officials" were because a few days before Trump became President, an Intelligence Community Assessment acknowledged

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election. Russia's goas were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary (Hillary) Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.

The irony is startling, given that on nine occasions in the closing days of the 2016 campaign, Trump stated a variation of, as he said in Michigan, "if Hillary is elected, she will be under protracted criminal investigation followed by the trial of a sitting president."

These statements were rarely questioned by the media, which Lawrence O'Donnell correctly points out failed in 2016.  "All over again" does not, however, adequately characterize a media which paved the way for a Trump victory then and is fawning over his opponent eight years later.

O'Donnell continued

Donald Trump gets credit from the people he lied to today for lying to them. They appreciate it. Reporters understandably and incorrectly believe that the most important thing a candidate can do is to answer their questions. But they don't know what an answer actually is. Words spoken after their question marks are not necessarily answers and are never answers when they come from Donald Trump.

Trump isn't getting credit from individuals in the media for lying to them. He's getting credit- understandably and correctly- for appearing before them and answering questions, which his opponent, Kamala Harris, is noticeably avoiding doing.

It's no small thing to answer questions, even if most of the answers are dishonest, which is typical for Trump (which makes the dishonesty no more acceptable). And notwithstanding O'Donnell's claim that "they don't know what an answer is," Merriam-Webster defines "answer" as "something spoken or written in reply to a question."

The news show host added

There are rumblings in the news media now that Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate not doing what Donald Trump did today- stand up in front of reporters and take their questions and some of their timid minds in the news media can't wait to give credit to Donald Trump for standing up and lying in response to every question they ask. A lie is not an answer. Donald Trump never answers reporters' questions. Never.

Again: A lie, if in response to a question, is an answer. Donald Trump is very generous with his answers, viewing each as an opportunity to twist a tale. If he periodically told the truth, Donald Trump would not be Donald Trump and never would have been elected President. Lying is an art which many successful politicians including Presidents such as Reagan and Clinton, successfully practiced but never perfected. (Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden were not good at it; a pattern, perhaps?)

Still wrong, O'Donnell followed with

Anyone in the news world who tells you Donald Trump has answered reporters' questions and Kamala Harris hasn't is lying to you and they're too stupid to know that they're lying to you because they don't know what an answer is.

Lying and stupid, a twofer. By contrast, as Collins Dictionary notes, "a lie is something that someone says or writes which they know is untrue." Therefore, if someone is "too stupid to know they're lying to you," he or she is not lying. The individual is not fully aware the statement is untrue. 

The only rationalization for claiming that Kamala Harris hasn't "answered reporters' questions" is that Kamala Harris has been asked very few questions by the media. That is not by accident, in part because the vice president has proven to be very bad at that. And in the alternative, broadcast media will show adoring and rapturous crowds at packed rallies. Harris remembers that  Hillary Clinton answered reporters' questions and never became President Hillary Clinton,  That is not coincidental and the current nominee does not want history to repeat.

The problem with covering Donald Trump's campaign is not that it is covered. It is insufficient fact-checking. When the former President- or his opponent, when she does- hold a news conference, it should be broadcast. In general, candidates should answer, honestly, questions which the news media poses, or wishes to pose, to them.

Lawrence O'Donnell does not agree. He also doesn't know the meaning of simple English. What do they teach at Harvard, anyway?

 

"It was 2016 all over again today ... the same mistakes are being made" -- @lawrence 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/CxfddzLjuX

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 9, 2024

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Hear No Evil, See No Evil

On August 16, amidst nearly total silence from our great liberal/center-left cable networks, The Washington Post reported

Former high-ranking FBI official Charles McGonigal pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court to conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions and to laundering money by secretly working on behalf of a Russian oligarch he had been tasked with investigating.

The former chief of counterintelligence in the FBI’s New York City office, who was charged in January, settled his New York case with federal prosecutors by pleading guilty to one count in a superseding document used to override or avoid a criminal indictment and streamline plea agreements. He faces up to five years in prison and is to be sentenced Dec. 14.

McGonigal, 55, still has pending federal charges in Washington for allegedly taking $225,000 in bribes while working for the bureau on sensitive investigations.

McGonigal’s involvement with the Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska that is covered by his guilty plea took place over several months in 2021, three years after his 2018 retirement from the FBI, according to prosecutors.

In a statement Tuesday to U.S. District Judge Jennifer H. Rearden, McGonigal said he knew his investigative work benefited Deripaska and was illegal because he was being paid with money that originated in Cyprus and was filtered through local shell companies. His involvement with Deripaska included participation in a plan to try to get Deripaska removed from the U.S. sanctions list, a status that prevents the Russian from doing business with U.S. banks and entities.....

He admitted to receiving $17,500 from Deripaska, who was added to the U.S. government’s sanctions list in 2018 on suspicion that he committed several illegal acts including extortion and racketeering. Deripaska gained renewed international significance last year because of his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the U.S. government’s strong opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca Dell said McGonigal was in negotiations to find what was expected to be $500 million of hidden assets belonging to a Deripaska rival in exchange for a payment of up to $3 million.

McGonigal was arrested in January on charges stemming from efforts to get Deripaska removed from the U.S. sanctions list. At the FBI, McGonigal was assigned to investigate Deripaska, who is a known ally of Putin’s and is under federal indictment in Manhattan on allegations of evading sanctions.

"Russia, Russia, Russia," the sarcastic refrain goes. The right-wing, including Republicans the center-left media considers "moderates," continues (against all evidence) to refer to the "Russia hoax." With a little effort, the media would notice, as did political author Craig Unger, who after McGonigal's arrest noted that the accused was a close colleague of

the late James Kallstrom, who ran the FBI’s New York office in the mid-’90s and oversaw successful investigations into both the Italian Mafia and later the Russian mob. Kallstrom had developed close friendships with two key players in the Trump-Russia saga. He worked closely with then–U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Rudy Giuliani in the investigation of the Cosa Nostra network that led to the famed Mafia Commission Trial of 1985–1986. Going even further back, Kallstrom had also been friends with Donald Trump since around 1973, when Kallstrom was putting together a Trump-funded parade in New York to honor Vietnam veterans.

In a 2020 interview, Kallstrom had remarked

I went to a few dinners with him, we talked quite often. He was very, very supportive of the bureau. We lose an agent, or somebody gets shot up, he was always there to pay for the food or whatever it took.

Of course, he was, because Trump knew it would pay dividends. And so

Trump being Trump, loyalty and generosity came with strings attached. “He [Trump] cultivated FBI people,” says Jeff Stein, editor of the intelligence newsletter SpyTalk, in An American Affair. “And that’s well-known behavior by people who swim in dangerous waters. They want to have a get-out-of-jail card, and that get-out-of-jail is having friendships or being a good source for the FBI"....

Trump appears to have gotten exactly what he sought. As it happens, Kallstrom worked closely with McGonigal and cultivated friendships not just with Trump but also with Rudy Giuliani. Together, they are suspected of being party to an internal campaign just before the 2016 election that spurred FBI Director James Comey to publicly announce he was reopening his investigation into Clinton’s emails.

Ultimately, of course, America found out that none of Hillary’s emails were classified. The Times story on the subject was misleading at best. The “reopened” investigation was short-lived and appeared to reflect the wishful thinking of the pro-Trump leaker in the bureau, whether it was McGonigal or someone else. Likewise, the Times headline declaring “no link” between Trump and Russia seemed to reflect wishful thinking on the parts of Kallstrom, Giuliani, and McGonigal—not reality.

It therefore should be clear that FBI director James Comey was the most consequential American, perhaps the most consequential individual, of 2016.  Whether it was Kallstrom, Giuliani, or McGonigal, someone pushed Comey into announcing shortly before the election the discovery of emails which already had been reviewed, thus turning the presidential election.

That was seven years ago. However, the ramifications still are being felt as Republicans, discomfited by charges against hero Donald J. Trump, continue attack the FBI even as

“The FBI for many decades – almost a century – has been sort of the chief secret police entity against the left and progressives,” said Vince Warren, executive director of the progressive Center for Constitutional Rights. “During that time, the right wing and Republicans have been the biggest cheerleaders of this illegal activity when aimed at communists, civil rights advocates, anti-war advocates, all the way up to [Black Lives Matter] protesters. That seemed to change in 2016, when they backed a lawless president who didn’t like that his illegal activities were being investigated.”

With the FBI and federal law enforcement generally placed on the defensive by a GOP which will attack anyone and anything which dares to question the ex-President, the FBI is consistently defended, even lauded, by Democrats and anti-Trump hosts and guests on MSNBC and CNN.

McGonigal was a big deal in the FBI's New York office, which worked closely with Giuliani, then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He violated U.S. sanctions against Russia nd participated in a money laundering scheme with a prominent Russian plutocrat associated with Vladimir Putin, who in turn engaged in a scheme aimed at defeating Hillary Clinton.

Rather than thoroughly reporting conclusion of the case against McGonigal, the media outlets ostensibly- allegedly- hostile to Donald Trump are virtually ignoring the story. Instead of questioning the connection between the FBI and the Republican Party, they prominently feature guests who were formerly employed by the agency and/or were U.S. Attorneys, none of whom questions the investigative agency. Most liberals play along, enthusiastically or otherwise defending an organization currently led by a Republican (and never by a Democrat), whose membership always has been GOP-friendly, and probably was the determining factor in defeating their party's 2016 presidential nominee.

Playing out in front of us are two things: an extraordinarily successful instance of gaslighting by the Republican Party of the Democratic Party; and disgraceful conduct by broadcast media all too willing to ignore news stories which would require a little effort to report.

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G.O.P. Weapon

This may be a dangerous instance of  transforming "projection from a psychological phenomenon into a political strategy."

Luna: The FBI has moles within the FBI that are actively leaking information to the Biden family. It was brought to our attention that there was a mole within the FBI by the name of one eye pic.twitter.com/M8JZAnJPoh

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 6, 2023

  

Much of the Republican Party wants voters to believe that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is a wing of the Democratic Party. It's easy to forget a report from November 6, 2016 that

On October 28, 2016, (James) Comey wrote to members of Congress, telling them that although he had previously announced the conclusion of an FBI probe into the Democratic nominee’s emails, “In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.” It later became clear that the “unrelated investigation” was a inquiry into whether Anthony Weiner, estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, had sexted a teenager.

The FBI said on Sunday it stood by its earlier finding that no criminal charges were warranted against Democrat Hillary Clinton for using a private email server for government work, lifting a cloud over her presidential campaign two days before the U.S. election.

A legal cloud, yes; a political cloud, not by a longshot.  “We’re glad this issue is resolved but for the record, this could easily have been learned before 1st letter was sent,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon wrote on Twitter. It could have been, but wasn't, and thereby turned the election.

Nate Silver, then a data analyst at 538, concluded that the letter of October 28 probably cost Clinton the election because

At a maximum, it might have shifted the race by 3 or 4 percentage points toward Donald Trump, swinging Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida to him, perhaps along with North Carolina and Arizona. At a minimum, its impact might have been only a percentage point or so. Still, because Clinton lost Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by less than 1 point, the letter was probably enough to change the outcome of the Electoral College.

Comey inadvertently swayed voters further by restoring the issue to the public consciousness when on November 6, he said in effect "oops, the emails were unrelated."  Silver noted

the controversy was an unwelcome one for Clinton, since it involved voters seeing words like “Clinton,” “email,” “FBI” and “investigation” together in headlines. Within a day of the Comey letter, Google searches for “Clinton FBI” had increased 50-fold and searches for “Clinton email” almost tenfold.

Moreover

Exit polls showed that undecided and late-deciding voters broke toward Trump, especially in the Midwest. A panel survey conducted by FiveThirtyEight contributor Dan Hopkins and other researchers also found shifts between mid-October and the end of the campaign — an effect that would amount to a swing of about 4 percentage points against Clinton.5 And we know that previous email-related stories had caused trouble for Clinton in the polls. In July, when Comey said he wouldn’t recommend charges against Clinton but rebuked her handling of classified information, she lost about 2 percentage points in the polls. Periods of intense coverage of her email server had also been associated with polling declines during the Democratic primary.

Yet two days before Comey startled the country with his claim that the FBI had uncovered emails "pertinent to the investigation, "the New York Times published an article with the headline "Investigating Donald Trump, FBI Sees No Clear Link to Russia." It reported that the director "would not even confirm the existence of any investigation of Mr. Trump’s aides when asked during an appearance in September before Congress."

This may be the greatest irony in American history, now that we know that Clinton, at most, acted irresponsibly while that same Donald J. Trump has been indicted for taking and harboring dozens of documents involving military, nuclear, and intelligence secrets, as well as obstructing investigation into it.

So now there allegedly is a pro-Biden mole in the FBI? The agency's director in 2016 actively- albeit unintentionally- assisted the Trump campaign in a material, probably determinative, way. He notified voters of an investigation into Hillary Clinton but not of the one into connections- proven too late- between the Trump campaign and the Russians. The Bureau, as one agent described it, was "Trumplandia" and Comey was worried about a leak about Clinton.

Yet, we are presently to believe, and be horrified by, the possibility of a pro-Biden mole in the FBI and that the agency is a veritable arm of the Democratic Party. The demonization of the Bureau, and of federal law enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies generally, is intrinsic to what Steve M recognizes as the GOP's big "idea: We must stop the weaponization of government." He explains

This is a much bigger idea than I, Donald Trump, the world's most innocent man, am the victim of a witch hunt. This idea encompasses the zombie lie that the Biden Justice Department targeted right-wing parents as "domestic terrorists" if they spoke up at school board meetings (DoJ was concerned only about threats of violence), as well as the notion that January 6 prisoners are suffering politcal persecution (while alleged FBI provocateurs who were at the Capitol remain free), and the belief that DOJ has gone easy on Hillary Clinton and "the Biden crime family."

The "weaponization of government" idea hasn't spread beyond the right, but it has the potential to drive base turnout even if Trump is convicted or drops out of the race, which is why so many Trump rivals, including Ron DeSantis, are invoking the weaponization narrative. DeSantis on Twitter:

"We have for years witnessed an uneven application of the law depending upon political affiliation.

Why so zealous in pursuing Trump yet so passive about Hillary or Hunter?"

Republicans want "weaponization" to be what the Dobbs decision has been to Democrats -- an outrage that drives turnout. One difference, of course, is that the Dobbs decision actually was an outrage. The "weaponization" idea is nonsense, but it can be useful to the GOP even if Trump is forced out of the race. The next Republican president can use it to genuinely politicize the Justice Department, as Ron DeSantis has promised to do. There isn't much limit to what a GOP president could do under those circumstances, especially with a rubber-stamp Congress and Supreme Court.

Republicans have invented a crisis of weaponization. Trump is using the idea to win the 2024 primaries, and he and his rivals are using it to try to win the general election. We have to turn out to ensure they don't succeed.

Not only is a Republican president likely "to genuinely politicize the Justice Department," he probably would deeply politicize the FBI.  We saw what happened in 2016, and a GOP president would find fertile ground trying to weaponize government in the same manner Republicans now irresponsibly imply Democrats have done.

 

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Same Player, Same Tune

Yes, we are going again- only not in the way the Speaker of the House wants us to believe.

We've seen this play before because they've run this play before.

Here we go again — an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump.

I’m directing relevant committees to immediately investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by…

— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) March 18, 2023

  In September, 2015 E.J. Dionne Jr. noticed

Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the likely successor to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), told Fox News’s Sean Hannity explicitly on Tuesday night that the Clinton investigation was part of a “strategy to fight and win.”

He explained: “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.”

The Republican-led House hasn’t been particularly good at governing, but perhaps governing has never been the point. Why govern when there’s a future election to influence?

Then, governing wasn't the point because there was a future election to influence. And influence they did. In June, 2017 NBC News reported

Endless investigations. The biggest scandal since Watergate. Coverups. An inability to govern. A possible constitutional crisis. These were all arguments that Donald Trump made against Hillary Clinton in the closing days of the 2016 presidential election.

They brought the receipts, recalling 

October 28 in Cedar Rapids, IA: “As you’ve heard, earlier today the FBI after discovering new emails is reopening their investigation into Hillary Clinton… The investigation is the biggest political scandal since Watergate and it’s everybody’s hope that justice at last can be delivered.”

November 2 in Miami, FL: “If Hillary Clinton were to be elected, it would create an unprecedented and protracted constitutional crisis. Haven’t we just been through a lot with the Clintons, right?”

November 2 in Orlando, FL:: “Hillary is likely to be under investigation for many years, probably concluding in a criminal trial.”

November 4 in Atkinson, NH: “She'll be under investigation for years. She'll be with trials. Our country, we have to get back to work.”

November 4 in Wilmington, OH: “Hillary has engaged in a criminal massive enterprise and cover-ups like probably nobody ever before.”

November 5 in Reno, NV: “There's virtually no doubt that FBI Director Comey and the great, great special agents of the FBI will be able to collect more than enough evidence to garner indictments against Hillary Clinton and her inner circle, despite her efforts to disparage them and to discredit them. If she were to win this election, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis. In that situation, we could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and ultimately a criminal trial.”

November 5 in Denver, CO: “Her current scandals and controversies will continue throughout her presidency and we will make it honestly, look, it's gonna be virtually impossible for her to govern. Now, the Republicans have talked very tough and the Democrats. It's gonna be just another mess for another four years, folks. A mess. We've got to get back to work, right? I mean, we have to get back to work.”

November 6 in Minneapolis, MN: “First thing you should do is get rid of Clinton. Hillary Clinton will be under investigation for a long, long time for her many crimes against our nation, our people, our democracy, likely concluding in a criminal trial.”

November 6 in Moon Township, PA:  “The investigations into her crimes will go on for a long, long time. The rank and file special agents at the FBI won't let her get away with these terrible crimes, including the deletion of 33,000 emails after receiving a congressional subpoena. Right now, she's being protected by a rigged system.”

On October 27, 2016, the day before Trump began his barrage of statements claiming that election of Hillary Clinton would bring unprecedented chaos to American government, Trump trailed his opponent by 5.4 points in the Real Clear Politics average. Approximately 24 hours before the polls opened, the deficit had dropped to 2.5 points, critically assisted by the announcement on 10/28  by FBI director Jim Comey that he had found a new trove of suspicious Clinton emails.

Comey figuratively plunged the knife into the heart of the Democrat's campaign on October 28. After the induced hysteria had subsided, he pulled the knife out by announcing on November 7 that they were emails already examined. These actions only enhanced the argument, central to his campaign, that Trump made on November 2 that "If Hillary Clinton were to be elected, it would create an unprecedented and protracted constitutional crisis."

This was the culmination of the complaint of Majority Leader McCarthy 13-14 months earlier that Hillary Clinton not only was "untrustable." Left unstated but implied was the chaos of Benghazi and the subsequent hearings would become the norm, with the chaos of endless committee hearings, if she were to become the nation's chief executive.

And now we have the same, but with increased institutional power and influence, Kevin McCarthy trampling over the fundamental concept of separation of powers by threatening investigations into a "radical DA" who would dare enforce the law against a private citizen, Donald Trump.

McCarthy boasted in 2015 that hearings into Clinton's role in Benghazi had brought her poll numbers down. Those hearings laid the groundwork for the overwrought, largely trumped-up (pun intended) e-mail scandal, exploited by an irresponsible media. Dionne then recognized that tax money "was going out the door primarily to affect the chances of one particular candidate for president." It's more than six years later, but as Chris Cillizza explained ten months ago, Kevin McCarthy is owned lock, stock, and barrel by Donald J. Trump.

 

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Right-Wing Russia Diversion

Last May, Yahoo News reported

The ballooning billions in money and munitions the United States is sending to Ukraine is motivated by a Democrat revenge fantasy aimed at taking out Vladimir Putin – as payback for stealing the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton, Tucker Carlson said Monday night.

The Fox News host laid out the case in his opening monologue, peppered with clips of Democratic leaders saying that “total victory” is the only outcome they seek in the bloody conflict. Carlson set out to define what they mean by that, even as the U.S. has already sent around $30 billion to uphold Ukraine’s so-far successful defense....

“That is why they are taking us to war with Russia,” he said. “There are a lot of things going on here, but at some level, the core motivation is just that simple. It’s not about ‘saving democracy,’ please. We know it’s not about protecting the sacred borders of a sovereign country; we know the Biden Administration doesn’t are about those principles because they run our country and we see how they act.”

Of course, this is nonsense. Assisting Ukraine with military hardware without sacrificing the lives of our own citizens. is essential to a democratic nation's effort at staving off conquest from a totalitarian state and helping blunt Vladimir Putin's further designs on eastern Europe.

We know also because if Democratic officials wanted to punish anyone for upending Hillary Clinton's presidential bid in favor of Donald Trump, they wouldn't have to go abroad and spend billions of dollars to do so. They could more cheaply target a party more responsible than Russia for putting Mr. Trump into the White House. In an article ripping The New York Times for its devastatingly misleading coverage late in that campaign, in which the Times inaccurately claimed that Hillary Clinton and not Donald Trump was being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Will Bunch reminds us

It was arguably the most consequential “October Surprise” in the history of American presidential elections. In the waning days of the 2016 race, with polls showing Hillary Clinton clinging to a lead over Donald Trump, two last-minute stories broke that rekindled on-the-fence voters’ ethical doubts about Democrat Clinton and quashed a budding scandal around her GOP rival.

Except the “October Surprise” was no surprise to one key player: Rudolph Giuliani, the ex-New York City mayor and Trump insider who later became the 45th president’s attorney. Late that month, Giuliani told Fox News that the trailing Republican nominee had “a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises.”

Just two days later, then-FBI director James Comey revealed the bureau had reopened its probe into Clinton’s emails, based on the possible discovery of new communications on a laptop belonging to disgraced New York politico Anthony Weiner. The news jolted the campaign with a particularly strong boost from the New York Times, which devoted two-thirds of its front page to the story — and the notion it was a major blow to Clinton’s prospects.

It was later reported that Comey was motivated to make the unusual announcement about the laptop because he feared leaks from the FBI’s New York field office, which, according to Reuters, had “a faction of investigators based in the office known to be hostile to Hillary Clinton.” Indeed, Giuliani bragged immediately after that he had sources in the FBI, including current agents.

The supposed bombshell — it turned out there was nothing incriminating or particularly new on the laptop — wasn’t the only FBI-related story that boosted Trump in the homestretch of the 2016 campaign. On Oct. 31, citing unnamed “intelligence sources,” the Times reported, “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia.” That article defused a budding scandal about the GOP White House hopeful — at least until after Trump’s shock election on Nov. 8, 2016. In the coming days and weeks, the basis of that Times article would melt, but by then the most unlikely POTUS in U.S. history was ensconced in the Oval Office.

There are many reasons for Trump’s victory, but experts have argued the FBI disclosures were decisive. In 2017, polling guru Nate Silver argued that the Comey probe disclosure cost Clinton as many as 3-4 percentage points and at least 1 percentage point, which would have flipped Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin and handed her the Electoral College.

If Democrats wanted to seek and destroy anyone for turning the election around, they probably would have focused on the FBI.  They could have turned on it but instead have consistently supported the bureau- while Republicans have been on the attack- for the past several years.  Bunch adds

This week’s stunning corruption charges against a top FBI spymaster who assumed a key role in the bureau’s New York office just weeks before 2016′s “October surprise” — an agent who by 2018 was known to be working for a Vladimir Putin-tied Russian oligarch — should cause America to rethink everything we think we know about the Trump-Russia scandal and how it really happened that Trump won that election.

The government allegations against the former G-man Charles McGonigal (also accused of taking a large foreign payment while still on the FBI payroll) and the outsized American influence of the sanctioned-and-later-indicted Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska — also tied to U.S. pols from Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort to Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell — should make us also look again at what was really up with the FBI in 2016.

Recognizing that The Times should apologize for its role in "this fiasco," Bunch argues that The Times should apologize for its "flawed coverage" in this "fiasco," which can be attributed to "its near certainty that Clinton would win and a desire to show its aggressiveness toward a future president seemed to have skewed its coverage."

There were some individuals, probably Rudy Giuliani and Charles McGonigal among them, who did not harbor that certainty that Hillary Clinton would win the election.  Giuliani, a former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and McGonigal, a high-ranking FBI official in the New York office, had in common one thing- the New York field office of the FBI.

The decision of director James Comey to publicize widely an investigation of Hillary Clinton while hiding one of Donald Trump is the major reason the former Senator and Secretary of State lost the presidential race to a corrupt businessman and accomplished actor.  Besides whitewashing history, the failure of the news media to acknowledge the connection between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the election outcome has given dishonest individuals such as Tucker Carlson license to undermine support given by the USA, and especially the Democratic Party. to the people of Ukraine.

 

 

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In Spirit, Still a Trump Attorney General

This was not Bill Maher's finest two minutes. But it may have been Bill Barr's finest hour.

 

When Bill Barr was Attorney General, he usually didn’t come out and directly lie. He would slant the truth, selectively quote documents, and mislead through statements that were technically accurate but highly misleading.

But in this clip, he goes full George Santos. https://t.co/BtclQTbqqn

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) January 22, 2023

It may have been the finest hour of the former Attorney General because he proved a skillful prevaricator throughout but most notably when talking of the Mueller report. Andrew Weissman, who worked under Special Counsel, Mueller, puts on those bones meat which Mariotti was unable to do with the 64 characters of a tweet. He explains

Here’s the now-familiar backstory: After Barr on March 24, 2019, released a summary of the Mueller report on President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia’s interference in that election, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III sent him a letter complaining that the summary failed to “fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of his report and its conclusions. When the report itself came out the next month, it became clear that Barr’s summary had indeed been misleading in some significant ways. And eventually a federal judge — a Republican-appointed one, no less — issued a scathing review of the matter that called Barr’s “candor” and “credibility” into question.

Barr has given media interviews since the end of the Trump administration. But unlike his appearances on Fox News, Barr’s discussion with Bill Maher on HBO this weekend paired him with a potentially more critical host.

In what was otherwise a relatively chummy interview, Maher did briefly press Barr on the subject of the summary, saying the way he “mischaracterized” the Mueller report was “shady.”

Barr defended his handling of the matter. But in doing so, he rolled out some of the most misleading aspects of his summary all over again.

“I felt that I had to say something to give the bottom line of what [Mueller] had decided,” Barr said. “Number one, I said that he had found there was no collusion.”

This isn’t strictly accurate now, just as it wasn’t strictly accurate back when Barr first said it. In fact, as we came to find out, Mueller said explicitly in his report that he wasn’t examining the nonlegal concept of collusion.

“Collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law,” the Mueller report reads. “For those reasons, the Office’s focus in analyzing questions of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law.”

Barr’s use of the “no collusion” phrasing was suspect not just because the report didn’t directly address it, but because it matched Trump’s own mantra and defined the amorphous term in a way Trump surely approved of. And it’s arguably even more jarring today, given that a later bipartisan Senate report, released in August 2020, detailed perhaps the most significant example to date of a high-ranking Trump campaign aide working with someone it described as a “Russian intelligence officer.”

As the federal judge noted in his opinion, issued a few months before that revelation:

Attorney General Barr’s summary failed to indicate that Special Counsel Mueller “identified multiple contacts — ‘links,’ in the words of the Appointment Order — between Trump [c]ampaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government” … and that Special Counsel Mueller only concluded that the investigation did not establish that “these contacts involved or resulted in coordination or a conspiracy with the Trump [c]ampaign and Russia” … because coordination — the term that appears in the Appointment Order — “does not have a settled definition in federal criminal law.”

In his interview this weekend, Barr proceeded to defend his summary of the second portion of Mueller’s report, having to do with whether Trump obstructed justice during the investigation.

Mueller “states, colon, that he does not find there was obstruction, but he is not exonerating the president. Okay? I used his exact language,” Barr said. “Then I said he punted but I’m making the decision, and I say, based on the report, there was no obstruction. And the discussion about how there was no obstruction was not me characterizing Mueller, but me stating my conclusion. So those are the facts.”

Again, the issue here isn’t so much inaccuracy as spin.

Perhaps the main problem with Barr’s initial summary and his news conference on the day the Mueller report was released is that he elided the reason Mueller didn’t accuse Trump of obstruction. Barr’s implication was clearly that Mueller had examined the evidence and could not come to a conclusion. But Mueller’s report was explicit that he believed it wasn’t his place to accuse Trump of a crime, regardless of the evidence — because of long-standing Justice Department policy against charging a sitting president. Barr did not mention this. And in fact, when asked at the news conference whether Mueller punted because of that policy, Barr talked around the question. (This was the other main part of Barr’s summary the judge deemed to be misleading.)

On Maher’s show, Barr again oversimplified. He pitched the report as Mueller saying he didn’t “find there was obstruction.” In fact, Mueller laid out five instances in which he suggested Trump’s conduct appeared to satisfy the criteria for an obstruction charge. Mueller at one point did say that “this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime” — but in the context of an extended discussion about why he felt he wasn’t even allowed to make such a conclusion.

Instead, Barr focused on the fact that the final no-obstruction call was his own, which is indeed how it was presented at the time. But the problem was always about how he described Mueller’s views and findings and how they fed into Barr’s own.

Four years later — and even after creating some distance between himself and Trump — Barr seems to still fail to “fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the report.

Trump campaign officials in 2016 engaged in extensive contacts with Russia and/or WikiLeaks, did not report them to law enforcement, then lied about to investigators about the contacts.  Despite its failings, the Mueller report never denied there was collusion and laid out an extremely strong case that what non-lawyers call "collusion" was present.   Bill Barr remains a deeply dishonest and clever individual while Bill Maher had a very bad evening.

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It's the FBI, Not the Congressional Progressive Caucus

Deceitful! Duplicitous! Underhanded! (Also, standard operating procedure.)

Chatting with writer Julie Kelly, who identifies as "Ultra MAGA," Laura Ingraham refers to a New York Times article headlined  "FBI Had Informants in Proud Boys, Court Papers Suggest."

Ingraham shows a clip from a hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee in which Louisiana Republican Clay Higgins asks FBI Director Christopher Wray "Did you have confidential human sources dressed as Trump supporters inside the Capitol on January 6 prior to the doors being open?"

Once Wray replied "again, I have to....," Higgins interjected "should be a 'no'."

Grateful to Laura Ingraham for covering these mind blowing developments related to Jan 6: https://t.co/Y9sF6d8Sax

— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) November 16, 2022

Well, of course he did. In the article cited by Ingraham, we learn

The F.B.I. had as many as eight informants inside the far-right Proud Boys in the months surrounding the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, recent court papers indicate, raising questions about how much federal investigators were able to learn from them about the violent mob attack both before and after it took place.

The existence of the informants came to light over the past few days in a flurry of veiled court filings by defense lawyers for five members of the Proud Boys who are set to go on trial next month on seditious conspiracy charges connected to the Capitol attack....

In a sealed filing quoted by the defense, prosecutors argued that hundreds of pages of documents related to the F.B.I. informants were neither “suppressed” by the government nor directly relevant to the case of the Proud Boys facing sedition charges: Enrique Tarrio, the group’s former leader; Joseph Biggs; Ethan Nordean; Zachary Rehl; and Dominic Pezzola.

If the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not use these methods, it might as well shut down. As one of hundreds? (thousands?) of examples, consider that sometime before his death, FBI Special Agent James Ingram recounted the success of the agency in undermining the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s. He stated

[W]e infiltrated the Klan in many ways. We had female informants. … And we had police officers that were informants for us...

When you look back, the FBI can be proud that they stopped the violence [of the KKK]. We had the convictions. We did what we had to do from Selma, Alabama to Jackson, Mississippi to Atlanta, Georgia....

In the words of Special Agent Rollins, “…the FBI broke the back of the Klan in Mississippi. And eradicated it…

Although that was before Ingraham's time, she should know that the FBI is not in the habit of conspiring against the right-wing and its causes. To the contrary, in the runup to the 2016 election

On October 24,  a smiling Rudy Giuliani told Fox News “We got a couple of surprises left... I call them early surprises in the way we're going to campaign to get our message out, maybe in a little bit of a different way. You'll see. And I think it'll be enormously effective."

There was no discernible change in campaign message or tactics but The New York Times on November 3, 2016 recounted that

Since August of 2016, Rudy Giuliani has publicly claimed that F.B.I. agents were telling him that Mrs. Clinton should have been criminally charged for the email server.

“It perplexes numerous F.B.I. agents who talk to me all the time,” Mr. Giuliani said during an August interview with Chris Cuomo on CNN. “And it embarrasses some F.B.I. agents.”

Two days later, CNN revealed

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani now denies that he was told by FBI agents that the bureau was reviewing newly discovered emails potentially related to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server before the review was publicly revealed.

Earlier, he had suggested that he was told by FBI agents about the review before it became public.

Giuliani, a top Donald Trump surrogate and adviser, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room” Friday that the FBI’s announcement “came as a complete surprise, except to the extent that maybe it wasn’t as much of a surprise.”

“I got it all from former FBI agents. Tremendous anger within the FBI about the way, number one, Jim Comey’s conclusion (to not recommend criminal charges in July) and, number two, the way they believed they were being obstructed by what they regard as a pretty corrupt Obama Justice Department,” Giuliani said. “Cutting off a grand jury investigation, cutting off subpoenas.”

But earlier Friday, Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, said he had “heard about” a forthcoming FBI announcement before it became public.

“This has been boiling up in the FBI. I did nothing to get it out. I had no role in it. Did I hear about it? Darn right I heard about it,” Giuliani said on “Fox and Friends.” He continued, “I can’t even repeat the language I heard from the former FBI agents.”

A week earlier – before Comey’s disclosure to Congress – he told Fox News there was a “pretty big surprise” coming, though he did not provide further details. He told Blitzer the surprise was an upcoming advertising campaign: “I knew that was going to come as a big surprise.”

I don't, and didn't, buy it. (A DOJ investigation was inconclusive.) No dramatic "upcoming advertising campaign" materialized. However, as a former US Attorney for the Southern District, Giuliani had a lot of friends in the FBI's New York field office and three days after he tipped off Fox News, Comey said that emails relevant to the investigation of Clinton's private email server were discovered on the computer of the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin. 

A few days later, the FBI director explained that he met with agency investigators (who) "said we found a lot of new stuff," but that most of the emails were ones previously seen. Clinton was cleared. Nonetheless, by then the inaccurate announcement that new, relevant emails had been found already had been "enormously effective."

With Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives beginning in January, there will be investigations, including of the FBI and probably of its role in the insurrection, to feed the GOP rage machine, undermine President Biden, and pave the way for a new Trump presidency.  There is much to question of the agency's operations, including in the 2016 election and its willing failure, and subsequent coverup, to investigate credible allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.  

If Republicans want to investigate the FBI, Democrats should insist that there be a real, comprehensive inquiry. Hoist the GOP by their own petard.

 

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No Hoodwinking Allowed

On Friday evening's Overtime segment on Real Time with Bill Maher, guest Vivek Ramaswamy tried to equate the refusal of Stacey Abrams to concede the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race to GOP election deniers. Bill Maher would have none of that, responding

Yeah, you know, I've heard this on the show before. I just got to call bullshit on this. It's just such silly whataboutism. You pick out the one example on the left- one example among Democrats that it's not nearly as consequential as what is going on in the entire Republican Party, including the leader of the Party, Donald Trump.

That's the answer- Stacey Abrams? It's a bullshit answer, man. with all due respect, it's a bullshit answer to a giant problem that exists almost exclusively on one side.

In May, 2019 Vox explained of the effort by Abrams' organization

The 66-page lawsuit highlights voting issues that affected the state including voter purges, registration applications put on hold, Election Day troubles at predominantly nonwhite voting precincts, and problems with voters’ absentee and provisional ballots.

Each of these issues fueled their own series of lawsuits (several of them successful) in the weeks before and after the election, but this latest lawsuit cites them collectively to make a larger point: Georgia’s current election system created an unconstitutional series of obstacles that are disproportionately likely to disadvantage, and in some cases completely disenfranchise, voters of color.

At the time of the election, the Secretary of State of Georgia, charged with overseeing elections, was none other than Brian Kemp- Abrams' opponent and presumptive winner of the election. However, the most telling factor may be that the plaintiffs proposed a series of reforms.

Donald Trump & Co. challenged the results of the 2020 election for one reason and one reason only: Donald Trump lost.  It was not about the voters; it was about him, only.

But Maher was correct. Whatever Abrams' justification, she did not incite an insurrection and she is not a leading presidential candidate. Ramaswamy argued "we're not going to have faith in either side of the electoral system" unless "everyone who at least points to someone in their tribe." To that Maher noted "Yes, but more so when the two things are of equal merit . And this a mouse and an elephant, you know. I mean, it's a cheap trick."

However, the (willfully) blind cannot be deterred and Ramaswamy stated

What role did this play where a lot of Democrats were not willing to accept the legitimacy of the 2016 election outcome on the back of the Russia collusion narrative. What role does that play in giving legitimacy to the other side to now say they're not going to accept the election. I think this has been a game of escalation going on for a long time.

Maher noted "who didn't accept the election? Hillary came down in her purple suit within- before she went to bed."  

The narrative of what the right dismisses as "the Russia collusion" included the 140+ contacts between Donald Trump and 18 of his associates with Russian nationals and Wikileaks, or their intermediaries, during the 2016 campaign and presidential transition. This was not to conduct their fantasy football draft.

After Ramaswamy again invoked "a Russia collusion narrative," Maher responded "the impeachment was not about Russia collusion. It was about Ukraine. the impeachment was about the Ukraine scandal."

The blueprint was laid with the Brooks Brothers Riot of November 2000 and included the announcement by George W. Bush of victory and nomination of a cabinet before all the votes were counted.  A week before the last presidential election, Roger Stone laid out the Republican playbook: "When that happens, the key thing to do is claim victory. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. No, we won." As noted here, Roger "Stone coordinated the program to shut down the vote count and throw the election to Bush, who had lost the election by 500,000 votes nationwide, a role Stone reprised in both 2016 and 2020." 

The game is election manipulation, there is only one side playing it. Bill Maher knew it and called it for it is.

🚨”I really do suspect it’ll still be up in the air. When that happens, the key thing to do is to claim victory. Possession is nine tenths of the law. 'No, we won.'"

- Roger Stone, Nov. 1 2020 (footage obtained by J6 Committee)

VERY closely matches what Bannon said Oct 31 2020 pic.twitter.com/0PQPcWCkZ1

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) September 26, 2022

 

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Options With Consequences

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jenice  Armstrong admits to being a longtime fan of Oprah Winfrey, who brought to prominence Dr. Mehmet Oz, now the Trump-loving, conspiracy-mongering, outwardly right-wing GOP nominee for the US Senate from Pennsylvania.

In her piece written on May 20, when results of the Republican primary hung in the balance, Armstrong noted she watched Winfrey's "show religiously and subscribed to her magazine. She's my friend in my head,"  She believes "Winfrey couldn't have predicted that Oz would become a dangerous threat to Pennsylvania by peddling pseudoscience amid a pandemic and election conspiracy theories. However, Armstrong concluded by writing "But she can use her enormous influence to make sure that voters know where she stands now. It’s time for Oprah to denounce Oz."

Though right about Mehmet Oz and the responsibility of his mentor to speak out in this critical Senate contest, Armstrong makes a common, albeit subtle, mistake (also made by the narrator in the video below) when she remarks

Her early endorsement of then-candidate Barack Obama helped turn the tide in his favor during the 2008 presidential election and helped America make history by electing its first Black president. Four years later, she turned out for Obama again in a big way during his reelection campaign. Winfrey also campaigned for Hilary Clinton and even considered a run against Trump in 2020.

Armstrong linked to an article, written by Annie Karni and published by Politico in January of 2018, which undermines Armstrong's suggestion that Winfrey actively worked for the election of Clinton. Evidence suggests that Winfrey offered only tepid, indirect support for Clinton in 2016 after having fervently opposing her in 2008. Karni wrote 

Where the heck was Winfrey in 2016?

Busy with her own business interests that made a full-throated Clinton endorsement too much of a conflict, is part of the answer, according to former campaign aides. And she was simply not as personally invested in Clinton’s candidacy as she had been in the historic run made by her personal friend and fellow Chicagoan eight years earlier — when some economists credited her with helping Barack Obama secure 1 million votes in the Democratic primary alone.

But it wasn’t for lack of trying from Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters.

In June of 2016, the task of wooing Winfrey was handed over to Minyon Moore, one of Clinton’s longtime advisers, who had recently taken a leave from her consulting job at the Dewey Square Group to work as a senior adviser on political strategy for the campaign.

Winfrey had initially raised hopes in Clinton’s camp by telling “Entertainment Tonight,” during a red-carpet interview, that “I’m with her” — a quick-hit endorsement that buoyed spirits at campaign headquarters, especially because the campaign operatives had not helped Winfrey craft it, or planted it.

Moore was dispatched for some quick follow-up to see what else the country’s biggest motivational speaker and celebrity might be willing to do for Clinton, as the candidate began turning her sights from the never-ending primary against Bernie Sanders to the general election against Donald Trump.

But there was disappointment in Brooklyn when it was reported back that an occasional “I’m With Her,” sprinkled here and there in television interviews, would likely be it, according to multiple former campaign aides.

Moore was well-known as one of a fiercely loyal inner Clinton circle of African-American women whom the former first lady had surrounded herself with and promoted since her days in the East Wing. She also came with a few of her own Oprah-world connections, which originally made the campaign hopeful of more Winfrey kudos to come.

“I knew one of [Winfrey’s] top producers,” Moore said in an interview on Thursday. “We tried to figure out if there was a timing or scheduling match. We tried to figure out what type of interview could work, what kind of event she might do.”

But nothing worked. “It was a timing issue,” Moore said, noting that Winfrey was launching two shows that summer on the Oprah Winfrey Network — “Queen Sugar” and “Greenleaf.”

“She was doubled down on that,” Moore said. “I appreciate the fact that she had a big piece of business she had to deal with. I never took offense to it, and I don’t think Hillary ever took offense to it. She was grateful any time she saw Oprah’s positive comments.”

"It was a timing issue," claims Moore, who, contrary to legitimate suspicion, did not proceed to argue for the existence of the Easter Bunny.  Clinton was grateful for Oprah's sort-of positive comments because she had no reason to believe Winfrey would even imply any preference for the Democrat in the general election.

Only Oprah Winfrey knows Oprah Winfrey's private thoughts.  However, we do know that she endorsed, and avidly supported, Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008, then did little or nothing to help Barack Obama once he obviously would be the one facing the GOP ticket in the general election. Four years later she resisted efforts to do anything more than the bare minimum for Barack Obama's preferred successor, Mrs. Clinton

Ms. Winfrey has several options. She could criticize Oz and endorse Democrat John Fetterman, combining it with an endorsement; offer kind words for, but not endorse, John Fetterman; criticize Oz but avoid an endorsement; endorse Oz; campaign (however briefly) for the candidate she selects; explain that she is remaining neutral; remain neutral and silent. There may be other options.

Few people if any know how Winfrey will go in this pivotal election. However, control of the Senate, even the future of democracy, is in play and failure to use her immense influence to  help erode the destructive power of Trumpism would be an odious decision.

 

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Two Actors

As Politico has reported

Matthew McConaughey, in an emotional speech at the White House on Tuesday, called for lawmakers to act on bipartisan gun reforms — two weeks after a mass shooting at a school in the actor’s Texas hometown left 19 students and two teachers dead.

“We need to invest in mental health care, we need safer schools, we need to restrain sensationalized media coverage, we need to restore our family values, we need to restore our American values and we need responsible gun ownership,” McConaughey said at the daily White House press briefing.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said McConaughey met with President Joe Biden just before the briefing “on taking action and keeping our communities safe.” The actor stressed the need for gun restrictions, such as background checks, red flag laws, raising the minimum age of purchase and a waiting period for guns such as AR-15 rifles.

McConaughey is right about investment in mental health care, responsible gun ownership, background checks, red flag laws (mostly), waiting periods, and the need for waiting periods. Raised in Uvalde, he is a believing Christian now in his first (and only) marriage to a woman with whom he has three children, thus not easily branded a hypocrite for promoting "family values" and not easily dismissed as just another "Hollywood liberal."

The "stay in your lane" angle is therefore about the only thing the right can muster against such a fellow advocating gun safety measures. Thus, this tweeter has it exactly right:

Why are people who voted for the game show host telling celebrities to stay in their lane?

— George Hahn (@georgehahn) June 8, 2022

 

Because they both appreciate Matthew McConaughey's message, Hahn and Lawrence O'Donnell may appear to be on the same page (as they literally are on this post). However, Hahn is the only one of the two who noticed that the last President was a celebrity.

Mathew McConaughey has just delivered the most important speech ever given by an actor.

— Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) June 7, 2022

 

It is not the most important speech ever given by an actor. That was delivered seven years ago this month when a great actor descended an escalator in New York, New York and declared 

Ladies and gentlemen, I am officially running for President of the United States.

While I love my company and what I have built, I love my country even more.  When was the last time the US won at anything? When was the last time we beat China or Japan in trade? or Mexico at the border? or anybody in negotiation? When was the last time we had a military victory that was so complete and total that the other side just said “We Quit!” It just doesn’t happen for the US anymore.

Our country needs and deserves a comeback…but, we are not going to get that comeback with politicians. Politicians are not the solution to our problems-- they are the problem. They are almost completely controlled by lobbyists, donors and the special interests—they do not have the best interests of our people at heart.....

It is way past time to build a massive wall to secure our southern border – and nobody can build a bigger and better wall than Donald Trump. A country without borders is, quite simply, not a country.  Mexico is not our friend. They are beating us at the border and hurting us badly at economic development.  They are sending people that they don’t want—the United States is becoming a dumping ground for the world.

We, the American people, bought the "love my company and what I have built" shtick. Not everyone, but enough for the star of the popular NBC shows "The Apprentice" and "Celebrity Apprentice" to be propelled to his party's nomination and to the White House.

Utilizing skills he applied also in the entertainment industry, Trump in 2015-2016 portrayed himself as a successful businessman rather than as an accomplished actor. Nonetheless, as displayed in Lawrence O'Donnell's tweet, a substantial portion of both the left and of the center believed then, and still believes, that Donald Trump is crazy, out-of-control, or stupid.

For the most part, he is none of that. He is clever, scheming, and evil, the latter a concept many left-of-center individuals, typically themselves well-meaning, have trouble identifying in others.  But Donald Trump in June of 2015 was an actor who gave speech extraordinarily misleading, divisive, and important.

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