Drip, Drip, Drip

The following is a partial transcript of President’s press rant (dtd: 9 April 2018) about the execution of a multiple location search warrant on Attorney Michael Cohen (Trump Organization attorney) in a start of the day “raid”.  You can find a full copy of the statement on multiple internet news sites.  The statements were made by the President at a special meeting of the President’s National Security Team where he was surrounded by the Joint Chiefs of the military and they were supposedly there to discuss the proper response to the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons against their own people.  [All comments (which appear in italics) are my own.  —    kmab]:
President Trump: So I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys — a good man.  And it’s a disgraceful situation.  It’s a total witch hunt.  I’ve been saying it for a long time.  I’ve wanted to keep it down.  We’ve given, I believe, over a million pages’ worth of documents to the Special Counsel.
[The FBI did NOT “break” into the office / residence of the attorney.  They “executed” a legally authorized search warrant.  The situation does not appear to be either disgraceful or a witch hunt.  President Trump has indeed been stating both “for a long time”.  That doesn’t make the statement that “it’s” a witch hunt factually accurate / true.  The volume of documents given over to the Special Counsel is irrelevant and another attempt by President Trump to misdirect / mislead his supporters.  The vast majority of documents have been conveyed voluntarily, rather than under seizure.  This means, there “may” be some unknown volume of documents (it could be one or it could be ten million) which were not conveyed.  Without seizure, there is no way to verify the number which should have been conveyed.]
They continue to just go forward.  And here we are talking about Syria and we’re talking about a lot of serious things.  We’re the greatest fighting force ever.  [“Wag the Dog“, Donald.  “Wag the Dog.“]  And I have this witch hunt constantly going on for over 12 months now — and actually, much more than that.  You could say it was right after I won the nomination, it started.
[Actually, the FBI investigation may have begun before his announcement to run for the nomination and that as the investigation of George Papadopoulos certainly pre-dates Trump’s campaign.]
And it’s a disgrace.  It’s, frankly, a real disgrace.  It’s an attack on our country, in a true sense.  It’s an attack on what we all stand for.
[Like many of President Trump’s comments, this is completely incorrect.  The investigation is “exactly” what is supposed to be happening.  The lawful tools of government are being used to prosecute a response to the Russian interference in our democratic election process for the purpose of ensuring it does not happen again.]
So when I saw this and when I heard it — I heard it like you did — I said, that is really now on a whole new level of unfairness.
So this has been going on — I saw one of the reporters, who is not necessarily a fan of mine, not necessarily very good to me.  He said, in effect, that this is ridiculous; this is now getting ridiculous.  They found no collusion whatsoever with Russia.  The reason they found it is there was no collusion at all.  No collusion.  This is the most biased group of people.  These people have the biggest conflicts of interest I’ve ever seen.
[When you know you are guilty and before the evidence can become public knowledge, attack the potential accusers with a claim of bias.]
Democrats all — or just about all — either Democrats or a couple of Republicans that worked for President Obama, they’re not looking at the other side; they’re not looking at the Hillary Clinton — the horrible things that she did and all of the crimes that were committed.  They’re not looking at all of the things that happened that everybody is very angry about, I can tell you, from the Republican side, and I think even the independent side.  They only keep looking at us.
[There is no need to “look” at Hillary Clinton.  Clinton has been under a Republican microscope for almost a quarter century and they have not been able to offer proof of a single crime.  Questions of judgement, yes, but not evidence of criminality.  And Republicans have spent millions of dollars trying to find proof – and haven’t been able to.]
So they find no collusion, and then they go from there and they say, “Well, let’s keep going.” And they raid an office of a personal attorney early in the morning.  And I think it’s a disgrace.
So we’ll be talking about it more.  But this is the most conflicted group of people I’ve ever seen.  The Attorney General made a terrible mistake when he did this, and when he recused himself.  Or he should have certainly let us know if he was going to recuse himself, and we would have used a — put a different Attorney General in.  So he made what I consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country.  But you’ll figure that out.
All I can say is, after looking for a long period of time — and even before the Special Counsel — because it really started just about from the time I won the nomination.  And you look at what took place and what happened, and it’s a disgrace.  It’s a disgrace.
I’ve been President now for what seems like a lengthy period of time.  We’ve done a fantastic job.  We’ve beaten ISIS.  We have just about 100 percent of the caliphate or the land.  Our economy is incredible.  The stock market dropped a lot today as soon as they heard the noise of this nonsense that’s going on.  It dropped a lot.  It was up — way up, and then it dropped quite a bit at the end.  A lot.
[No.  Trump’s Administration has not done a “fantastic job” – except in his own mind.  They have not “beaten ISIS”.  ISIS – in Iraq – is being eliminated, but they (or whatever they evolve into) remain a worldwide threat.  The caliphate in Iraq has certainly been beaten down.  But, we should not imagine it has been defeated – once and forever.  Also, the American “economy” is not doing well.  The stock market is still doing well – a carry on from the Obama Administration – despite multiple days this year with massive losses, but main street and Joe Citizen (the “99%”) are both still doing poorly.]
But that we have to go through that — we’ve had that hanging over us now from the very, very beginning.  And yet the other side, they don’t even bother looking.  And the other side is where there are crimes, and those crimes are obvious.  Lies, under oath, all over the place.  Emails that are knocked out, that are acid-washed and deleted.  Nobody has ever seen — 33,000 emails are deleted after getting a subpoena for Congress, and nobody bothers looking at that.  And many, many other things.
[Again, #IncompetentDonald with the specious attacks on Clinton.  Hey, Donald.  News flash…  She lost the election in 2016 and you’ve been President for almost 15 months.  In another tiresome display of public relations / attempted manipulation we once again see President Trump acting as if he can “Wag the Dog” and at the same time drip, drip, drip his lies in a torturous attempt to discredit the rule of law and its enforcement via the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.]
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Or The Candidate Who…

Beware of the man who won’t be bothered with details.
—     William Feather
[The Presidential candidate who thinks national health insurance is easy.  …And then “discovers” it isn’t.  “Who knew?”  The candidate who claims to be smarter than the generals and has his own plan to defeat ISIS quickly.  …And then six months into his term does exactly what “the generals” recommend – escalate involvement and continue the war.  The candidate who says he can act Presidential any time he wants to and who thinks “acting” Presidential is boring.   …And then demeans the Office by being a buffoon.  Welcome to reality politics USA style.    —    kmab]
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We Need To Continue Experimenting

This is a more fruitful approach than trying to erase dialog from the Internet altogether.  We can all agree that material that incites violence doesn’t belong online.  But when ISIS raises questions about the world, you can’t just wipe that from the Internet.  Ideas need to be raised and confronted and disputed.  Right now, it can feel dangerous to challenge extremism online.  ­ People get shouted down, harassed, or worse.  That gives power to the bad guys, because it shuts reasonable people out of the conversation, leaving just the violent voices.
We haven’t seen a terrorist organization as digitally savvy as ISIS before, but when you think about it, much of what it’s doing isn’t all that different from what any teenager can do;  you wouldn’t be surprised if your 14-year-old daughter made a video and put it online.  It’s only surprising because we have this idea of terrorists as old, bearded men hiding out in the mountains.  Terrorist groups are evolving like the rest of us.  We need to continue experimenting with solutions that meet these groups where they connect with the rest of the world.
—    Yasmin Green
Quoted by:   Jason Tanz
In his article:  “A To-Do List For The Tech Industry“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine;  dtd:  November 2016
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Remember ISIS / ISIL?

After turning the question around by asking whether supporters of the Second Gulf War had it right about weapons of mass destruction or the ease with which democracy would take root in Iraq, Paul said something pretty remarkable:
“And what’s going on now, I don’t blame on President Obama.  Has he really got the solution?  Maybe there is no solution.  But I do blame the Iraq War on the chaos that is in the Middle East.  I also blame those who are for the Iraq War for emboldening Iran.  These are the same people now who are petrified of what Iran may become, and I understand some of their worry.”
—    Rand Paul Throws Obama a Lifeline on Iraq, Spars With Dick Cheney (22 June 2014)
[Available from multiple sources / sites on the web.  I believe I got this from The Huffington Post, but I don’t really remember and I failed to make a note of the location.  Apologies.  I promise to be more diligent in the future.    —    kmab]
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