Littwin: Each day life in TrumpWorld gets weirder — some days, too crazy for words

We in the vicious, failing, enemy-of-the-people media are in crisis. But it may not be what you think.

In describing the Trump administration, we are, sadly, bigly, running out of adjectives.

Michael Gerson, the former Bush speechwriter, went full thesaurus on Trump and his GOP enablers in a recent column with “empty, easily distracted, vindictive, impatient, incompetent and morally small.”

In the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan settles for a workmanlike “stupid” for Trump’s tweets, but tries on “freakish” to describe Trump the character.

Rich Lowry had to go for nouns, writing, “Trump, for his part, has lacked the knowledge, focus or interest to translate his populism into legislative form.” You know, ignorant, unfocused and couldn’t be bothered.

Fortunately, Devin Nunes entered the picture to offer up relief, comic and otherwise. I mean, how many ways must there be to describe a House “Intelligence” chair who was apparently duped by Trump operatives to come to the White House to collect new “intelligence” to show to the president, who often lives in the White House, and for whom the intelligence-sharing Trump operatives work?

And for that same “Intelligence” chair to tell the media that he met with “whistleblowers” at the White House and, in explaining his decision to brief the president whose campaign he is investigating, saying that “the administration isn’t aware of this, so I need to make sure I go over there and tell them what I know, because it involves them.”

In other words, Nunes, unknowing or otherwise, was part of a plot to give cover to Trump by providing information that 1) didn’t actually, it turns out, give Trump cover; 2) allowed Trump to say that his bizarre Obama wiretap accusation was “somewhat” vindicated when it wasn’t vindicated at all; 3) stripped Nunes of whatever credibility he or his committee may have had.

It’s even stranger than that. The White House official who gave Nunes the intelligence once worked for Nunes. And the official named by the New York Times who dug up the information was a Bannon/Kushner protege who was hired by Mike Flynn and was in the process of being moved out of his job by Flynn’s successor when Trump himself intervened. The Times reports that the 30-year-old protege, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, began his search for foreign intercepts immediately after Trump made his baseless, outrageous tweet claiming that Obama — in Trump’s words, a sick and bad man — had wiretapped Trump Tower.

If you can’t see where the plot strands might lead, you probably should apply to be the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. We don’t know who at the White House thought to involve Nunes, but, presumably, that will all come out, too. It always does. And when it does, Trump can blame the leakers, who are, of course, the source of all his problems, if you don’t count the media, Democrats, Paul Ryan, the Freedom Caucus and whoever is in charge of Trump’s stupid tweets.

What to make of this?

Frank Rich decided that Nunes was “either exceptionally stupid, incompetent, duplicitous, or perhaps all three.” The Fresno Bee, Nunes’s hometown paper, described his actions as “inept and bewildering.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, not in the media, compared Nunes to Inspector Clouseau, and I don’t think anyone is going to top that.

This is where we are. Each day, the news gets stranger. Each day, we struggle for the right words to describe how strange it is.

For instance, there is Mike Flynn, who was fired as national security adviser for lying to the vice-president about contacts with the Russian ambassador, who is now asking for immunity from the Senate Intelligence Committee to tell what he knows about Russian interference in the 2016 election and any role the Trump campaign played. This is the same Flynn who led the Clinton “lock-her-up” chanting at the GOP convention. It’s the Flynn, too, who said last year after a Hillary Clinton aide requested immunity to testify before Congress: “When you are given immunity, that means you’ve probably committed a crime.”

Trump, who fired Flynn, tweets that Flynn should, in fact, get immunity to protect himself from the media and Democrats, even though Republicans actually run the committee. Of course, Trump calls the multiple investigations into the Russian connection a “witch hunt.” That actually represents progress on Trump’s part.  At least he’s no longer referencing some 400-pound basement-bound kid as the likely DNC hacker.

The Senate committee turned Flynn’s immunity request down for now, and who knows where we go from here. But I can’t help thinking that if Flynn had been a woman, he might still have his old job, because he would never have had the chance to have a private chat with Mike Pence.

If Flynn does have insider knowledge on this, he should get immunity. The question here is not what Flynn did or didn’t do, but what the Russians actually did and whether the Trump campaign was in any way involved.

We don’t know where the story will end. We know only that the Trump administration is working very hard to ensure that no one finds out. Because, let’s face it, the story could move, at minimum, from bizarre and dangerous to outlandish and perilous, and with no end in sight.

Image by Steve Johnson via Flickr:Creative Commons.

 

 

4 COMMENTS

  1. And it’s NOT going to get any saner until Rumpland is no more. It’s past time to see that this IDIOT has NO clue what he’s doing, he’s insulting our allies and kissing Putin’s butt with every opportunity. It’s INCREDIBLE that the republicans are now in bed with the Russians, they were absolutely RABIDLY anti Russian when I was growing up. Suddenly now, they think Putin, the ex head of the KGB, is just a WONDERFUL guy that they’d love to have a beer with. I NEVER thought I would see anything like this.

    The right wing has been playing opposite games for a generation, now, their words say one thing and their actions betray their REAL feelings. They are masters of projection and unwilling to accept responsibility for much of anything. And they have chosen the perfect leader for themselves. He shows EXACTLY just how seriously they take running this country, which is not very. For the last 8 years, all they have done is say no, now they have NO clue of how to do anything else. They don’t CARE about actually accomplishing much of anything but enriching themselves at OUR expense. Look at what was actually in their “healthcare bill” and tell me that was anything but a gift to themselves and the 1%.

    The right has lost it’s collective mind as a party interested in anything but themselves and their own benefit. Look at EVERYTHING they have done whenever they get power. They abuse it and they use it to hurt the less fortunate. These people may be good republicans, but they are NOT good Americans. It’s time for them to leave power and let those who have concern for HUMANS rather than power and money alone do the job. It’s time for HUMANS to matter again, not just money.

  2. Clown car gets VIP parking at DNC.

    “Hiding news that doesn’t fit an ideological or a partisan agenda is perhaps the worst form of media bias. And it’s one more reason the public holds the press is such low esteem.” – Investor’s Business Daily

    “Look, everyone knows there will never be a President Trump.” – Mike Littwin, July 2016

    “And while I’m generally anti-filibuster, I make one exception for any and all years in which Donald Trump is president.” – Mike Littwin, March 2017

    }{

    Pop Quiz: Which happens first?

    A. President Trump completes six months in office.
    B. Mr. Littwin’s hair catches fire.

    I’m going with B. I haven’t seen Mr. Littwin this upset since, well, last week. It’s going to be very difficult to sustain that level of hysteria for eight years but it will be sooooo much fun to watch. Mr. Littwin’s behavior mimics the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil. Sort of looks like him, too.

    But when Mr. Littwin finishes a column—exhausted, out of breath— and puts down his crayon two things remain unchanged: President Trump is still in the White House and Mr. Littwin still doesn’t know why.

    This week Mr. Littwin is really, really, honestly upset that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has threatened “once again to withhold federal grant money from so-called sanctuary cities” To bolster his opposition to withholding funds Mr. Littwin references an article from Vox:

    “In a revealing Vox explainer, we learn that if you look closely at what Sessions said, it was to back away from a probably unenforceable executive order on sanctuary cities by changing the definition. A sanctuary city — a term Tom Tancredo helped make famous — is generally considered one that won’t help to enforce federal immigration law. But in this latest effort, as Vox explains, Sessions would deny grants only to those cities and states that actually violate the law by refusing to give any information to ICE officials.”

    But—-surprise, surprise—-here, from that very same Vox article is something Mr. Littwin failed to mention:

    “The Trump administration’s decision to define “sanctuary cities” in a limited way makes it possible they might win a court battle — or at least drag it out long enough that cities lose their political appetite for a fight,”

    It’s a familiar cherry-picking pattern used by the Pulitzer-less Mr. Littwin to support his latest off-the-wall, out-of-touch, where-did-that-come-from rant.

    But that’s not all Mr. Littwin failed to mention:

    – President Trump’s nomination for the Supreme Court Judge Neil Gorsuch appears to be moving towards approval and the fact that Mr. Littwin didn’t mention that is almost a sure sign Judge Gorsuch will be the next Supreme Court justice.

    – According to the Wall Street Journal “a survey by the National Association of Manufacturers, whose members visited the White House on Friday, in which 93% of respondents said they now had a positive outlook.”

    Oh, and one more piece of good news: Mrs. Clinton—-who, by the way, could get a private interview with Vice-President Pence—-has come out of seclusion.

    November 08, 2016

    “’Cause I don’t have no use
    For what you loosely call the truth” – Tina Turner

    Green light a Vet
    Folds of Honor
    Special Operations Warriors Foundation

    Veterans Day – November 10, 2017 November 08, 2016

    “’Cause I don’t have no use
    For what you loosely call the truth” – Tina Turner

    Green light a Vet
    Folds of Honor
    Special Operations Warriors Foundation

    Veterans Day – November 10, 2017

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