It doesn’t appear Barr is a white hat to many. W/ his son in WH as an advisor, would Mueller have taken this into consideration?
I think Mueller is actually in a pretty perfect position right now, honestly. I know that might sound crazy, but I look at it like this: all of a sudden, he went from being attacked relentlessly by the right, called a rogue prosecutor, etc. to being a fair man again… all based on a 4 page summary that Barr now admits wasn’t really a summary.
If this report comes back as politically damaging for POTUS as I expect it to, the right is going to have a hard time pivoting back to attack mode after spending two weeks crowing about how awesome Mueller is.
How do you think the Murdoch’s strategy to completely destroy the credibility and business model of Facebook and Twitter will go?
It appears to be broader than just the Murdochs, at this point. The GOP at large is pouncing on the farcical issues of “shadow banning” and conservative censorship. To be clear, nobody is censoring conservatives; they’re censoring racists. If that happens to be disproportionate part of your base, perhaps you should look in a mirror.
To answer the question though, I don’t believe it’s going to work. Twitter and Facebook both have some work to do for sure, but they’re not going to be destroyed by some hurt feelings on Fox. Twitter is still the GOP’s primary communication platform. Realistically, there’s no way they could boycott it while Trump is in office; they’d never know what new policy decisions he was announcing, as sad as that is to even type.
What do you think is the most undervalued/considered thing going on right now?
My biggest concerns with this administration always go back to NatSec, and I feel like one of the most underreported side effects of the craziness is the legitimate trepidation among our NATO allies.
Trump’s constant questioning of – and almost flat-out refusal to recognize – Article 5, NATO’s collective defense agreement, has created a real headache for the world’s most successful alliance.
Trump says he attacks NATO because all members don’t pay their fair share, but paradoxically, spending is only important if there is an ironclad collective defense agreement. I’ve said it many times, but NATO isn’t a piggy bank. No money “pours in” to NATO, rather, all NATO countries are encouraged to spend 2% of their own GDP on defense, so that the alliance is strong if Article 5 is ever invoked. It’s also worth reminding everyone that Article 5 has been invoked exactly once in NATO’s history: by the United States after 9/11.
The uncomfortable fact remains that our allies don’t know for sure what Trump would do in a crisis. They *think* the United States would come to their defense, as we’ve always agreed to do, but its far from the certainty that it’s historically been. That’s bad for a multitude of reasons, primarily that a weakened NATO means an emboldened Russia, which is probably the point.
For the most part, our allies seem to understand that Trump is an aberration, and they’re just (nervously) waiting him out, and hoping we the United States will do better next time. I just hope there’s no real crisis while he’s in office. Not only is he woefully prepared for the 2 am phone call, our allies don’t want him to be the one answering.
What do you make of Nikki Haley’s rebuke about poverty in America? Can we now (after everything else) expect this administration just to make up statistics to meet their own agenda?
We sure can expect them to just make up stats to meet their own agenda, as evidenced by Nielson’s Twitter account:
“We have a dire situation at the border. Late last year, DHS apprehended or encountered 50-60k migrants a month. Last month, it was more than 75k, the highest in over a decade. This month, we are on track to interdict nearly 100,000 migrants. Congress must act to end this crisis!”
Hey, female Stephen Miller: If you’re going to lie, you should at least make it semi-convincing. 100k is a ridiculous number.
As far as Haley’s rebuke, I had to look for a minute to remember what that was. It was actually from a June, 2018 speech where she slammed a UN report on poverty. From the article:
“Haley called a UN report on extreme poverty in the U.S. “misleading and politically motivated.” The report, released in May and presented to the Human Rights Council this week in Geneva, found that 40 million people across the country live in poverty, while 18.5 million live in extreme poverty, and an additional 5 million in conditions of absolute poverty. The special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, called the U.S. the most unequal country in the developed world.”
As far as Haley’s reaction to this, I guess I would respond that the truth hurts. To be clear, I don’t believe that America is necessarily wanting for opportunity, or that the American dream is dead, but it would be asinine to not recognize the disparity between CEO and average workers, the racial divides that still plague America, etc. Hell, it’s 2019 and we’re still arguing over LGBT rights. America has some work to do on the equality front, both socially and economically.
Wouldn’t Mueller’s team already have done the redactions? Also, after the first letter, it wouldn’t surprise me to see a protracted battle with Congress, even if Barr knows he will lose. It would just serve as a stalling tactic to allow Trump and his backers to cook up more spin.
This question came from Patreon, but I’ve gotten a variation of it quite a bit, so I wanted to take the time to answer it all in one place:
No, Mueller’s team wouldn’t have done redactions before submitting the report to Barr – he and Rosenstein are given access to the report in its entirety. The Gang of 8 will be too, if they win the coming fight. Everyone else will see it in (presumably) an appropriate form that keeps sources, methods, and confidential information out of the public.
I think that’s what the first letter was designed to do – give Trump a head start on his victory lap. I think Barr realizes that’s an untenable strategy for the long term, though. Precedent is 100% on Congress’ side here. I think Trump has had his victory lap, and early-mid April the real fun begins.
Thanks, Angry!!
AWHS–
Don’t you mean “unprepared” in your last paragraph in the “undervalued/considered thing” section? I can’t imagine him being able to do anything other than hide under the bed if he got an emergency call at 2 AM.
Oh, let me see. Barr sent a multi-paged job application by questioning legality of special prosecutor and supporting wide ranging Presidential actions. His son is an adviser in the White House, and we’re to expect that Barr won’t find a lot of “stuff” that needs to be redacted to protect his son’s boss as well as protecting the idiot in the White House. I think not.
My husband has a hypothesis that Barr’s letter was bait knowing that trump would bite and hire him. He thinks Barr’s job application might’ve been a Trojan Horse (so to speak) to get Twitaker out of there and to get someone in who will protect all of the investigations that have been born out of Mueller’s. Barr and Mueller go way back and are apparently pretty tight outside of work (like the have family dinners together, wives are friends, kids are friends, and attended they graduations of each other’s kids kind of tight). I don’t know if all that’s true, but I hope so. We someone who will continue to protect the ongoing cases at Main Justice/FBI etc. If trump needs to believe that Barr is “His” guy to do that, fine.
My mom has also worked in gvmt a long time and used to be at DOE headquarters and is a little familiarity with Barr’s work/legal philosophies/work ethic. She doesn’t always agree with his interpretations, but said she thinks he’s a competent lawyer. Her thought is that Barr’s first summary was just “throwing a bone” to the critics of the investigation to get them (and perhaps the WH) to relax and back off a bit. If they think there’s no *there* there they won’t be quite so hot to trot to interfere leaving the other cases to be able to proceed without a lot of public criticism and sort of fly under the radar of the president. She seems to have a lot of confidence in him. I’m more skeptical, but I want to have a little faith in the system and not be too quick to assume he’s corrupt until we have all the facts.
What do you think about all that?