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Bulwark Report: When All You Have Is an Anti-Trump Hammer…
I think Jonathan V. Last is a very funny fellow, in a dark and sardonic way. I enjoy him on the Sub-Beacon podcast and wherever else I hear him. He’s an amusing, irreverent, nebbish fellow, and I don’t like saying bad things about him.
But his latest piece at The Bulwark, entitled Donald and Jussie, Birds of a Feather, is trying too hard to fulfill The Bulwark’s mission, which is to spare no expense, grace, or integrity in its effort to besmirch the all-too-readily besmirchable President Trump.
JVL writes:
First, here’s President Donald Trump claiming “complete and total exoneration” of all charges in the Mueller investigation.
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And now here’s actor Jussie Smollett claiming that he’d been “truthful and consistent” in the face of charges that he’d committed a hate-crime hoax.
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The symmetry here is perfect. Absolutely perfect. The only thing we really know from Bob Mueller’s lips is that on the subject of obstruction: “while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” That’s eerily similar to the words said by the prosecutor who dismissed the charges against Smollett, saying that he “does not believe [Smollett] is innocent.”
Now you can believe that both of these men have been judged as innocent because the legal system has declined to prosecute them. Or you can believe that both of them can be viewed with suspicion because the official verdict of the legal system is not the last word in actual culpability.
But you cannot claim that one of them must now be treated as totally and completely innocent but that the other is clearly guilty. Which is what most of America seems to be doing.
Do you see what he did there? It’s true that President Trump overstated the case with his “complete and total exoneration” comment. But is it true, as JVL claims, that the “symmetry here is perfect?”
On the one hand, we have a man who has just been definitively cleared of a charge that has hounded him for two years, who knew he was innocent the day the investigation started, who has professed his innocence all along, who could have stopped the investigation at any point but chose not to, and who almost certainly has not obstructed justice and, if he hasn’t, is fully aware that he hasn’t and that the justice department will now agree with him.
On the other hand, we have a man who has just been mysteriously absolved of responsibility for a crime he certainly committed, who has lied since the first moments of his case, and who continues to lie about his innocence now.
What Trump is saying, in essence, is “I didn’t collude with the Russians, and I didn’t obstruct justice in the investigation of a crime I know I didn’t commit. I allowed the investigation to run to its conclusion. I am exonerated.” His mistake was in his failure to add “… or I will be in a few days when the justice department acknowledges that I didn’t obstruct justice,” as it undoubtedly will.
What Smollett is saying is “I am innocent,” when in fact the little fraud is guilty as sin and everyone knows it.
That’s only “symmetric” if you’re tilted as far to one side as the good folks at The Bulwark appear to be.
Published in Politics
Which is pretty interesting. There is just incredible government graft and welfare in those states. The welfare usage in California is way disproportionate. I forget what the figure is, but it’s mind-boggling.
Authoritarian impulses are not policies. You voted for the authoritarians. Trump has shown no sign of authoritarianism in his governance. He lets the courts do what they’ll do. He encourages Congress to take more responsibility. He didn’t interfere with Mueller’s sham investigation. You’ve got to come up with something else as your rationale.
You can’t answer the question. You’re being stubbornly, intentionally obtuse, and then you retreat behind the CoC. I repeat, I do not find your position respectable.
Not if you have kids: they’ll come for them, and I mean that literally.
Right. I guess I meant that sort of rhetorically or whatever. It’s so frustrating.
It would be so nice to have a stable career and just hunker down inside some conservative well-run place like Utah. LOL
Socialist two-tiered paradise, baby! Get yours!!
I got it exactly. Even though while governing more conservatively then Jeb! would ever have governed, Trump is a big bully and he hurts my feelings. So there!
If you think of Donald Trump as Al Czervik from “Caddyshack” and the most hardcore of the #NeverTrump crowd as Judge Smalls, you can kind of see what’s grinding the gears of the modern day equivalent of the Country Club Republicans. It’s more style over substance 26 months into his presidency, because the worst things they said would happen on the political front haven’t come to pass. Trump now gets to (or has to deal with) being judged on what he’s done in office and how the country is doing two years into his presidency, and the hardcore group is so turned off by the Trump persona they’re willing to abandon most of their past conservative beliefs and the idea that things are better now than when Barack Obama left office, in order not to be on the same side of the issue as Trump, if that’s what they think will get him kicked out of Bushwood in 2020.
Trump sunk their Country Club Republican Party
The numbers from a couple years ago were that while CA has a bit over 12% of the US population, it has 32% of the welfare cases. It might have been expenditures instead of cases, but either way is extreme.