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The Trump Land Mine
National Review ^ | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 05/08/2018 9:42:57 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom

After the 2016 election, the so-called deep state was confident that it had the power easily to either stop, remove, or delegitimize the outlier Donald Trump and his presidency.

...the Washington apparat quite imaginatively pulled out all the stops: implanting Obama holdover appointees all over the Trump executive branch; filing lawsuits and judge shopping; organizing the Resistance; pursuing impeachment writs; warping the FISA courts; weaponizing the DOJ and FBI; attempting to disrupt the Electoral College; angling for enactment of the 25th Amendment or the emoluments clause; and unleashing Hollywood celebrities, Silicon Valley, and many in Wall Street to suffocate the Trump presidency in its infancy.

But now the administrative state’s multifaceted efforts are starting to unwind, and perhaps even boomerang, on the perpetrators. If a federal judge should end up throwing out most of the indictments of Paul Manafort on the rationale that they have nothing much to do with the original mandate of the special counsel’s office, or if Michael Flynn’s confession to giving false statements is withdrawn successfully because the FBI politicized its investigation and FISA courts were misled in approving the surveillance of Flynn, then the Mueller investigation will implode.

Indeed, the Mueller investigation would likely lose so much public support that the Department of Justice could probably dismiss it with impunity. So, in an ironic sense, Mueller’s overreach might well end once and for all the absurdities of the special counsel/prosecutor law that for nearly half a century has plagued the nation.

Until recently, deep-state apparatchiks such as John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe seemed immune from accountability after lying either to Congress or to federal authorities.

Donald Trump proved to be a catalyst for much of the implosion of the deep state.

(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: corruption; coup; deepstate; obamacorrupt; obamaspygate; pieobama; spygate; vdh; vdhtrump
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Continued excerpt...the political apparat, the media, tech, and entertainment conglomerates sought to reduce Trump to some monstrous entity deserving of hanging, stabbing, decapitation, incineration, and shooting. It sought to indict, impeach, and remove a sitting president, as the ancien régime rushed to break federal law with assumed ethical exemption — tapping, surveilling, lying, and leaking with impunity, assured that supposedly morally superior ends justified any means necessary to achieve them.

In other words, the custodians of the status quo arrogantly grabbed up the Trump land mine and thought they could easily toss it away — as it has blown them sky-high.


"...supposedly morally superior ends justified any means necessary to achieve them." -- the old Communist tyrant justification.

VDH is rather convinced the deep-state snakes are finished and the land mine they picked up is going to explode on them. I am not so confidant because we are dealing with the Lernaean Hydra here. Recall that Hydra possessed many heads and, for every head chopped off the monster, Hydra would regrow a couple of heads. The Hydra had poisonous breath and blood so virulent that even its scent was deadly.

But, the Second Labor of Heracles does give hope:

Eurystheus sent Heracles to slay the Hydra, which Hera had raised just to slay Heracles. Upon reaching the swamp near Lake Lerna, where the Hydra dwelt, Heracles covered his mouth and nose with a cloth to protect himself from the poisonous fumes. He confronted the Hydra, wielding his sword. The chthonic creature's reaction to this decapitation was botanical: two grew back, an expression of the hopelessness of such a struggle for any but the hero. The weakness of the Hydra was that it was invulnerable only if it retained at least one head.

Realizing that he could not defeat the Hydra in this way, Heracles called on his nephew Iolaus for help. His nephew then came upon the idea of using a firebrand to scorch the neck stumps after each decapitation. Heracles cut off each head and Iolaus cauterized the open stumps. The Hydra's one immortal head was cut off with a golden sword given to Heracles by Athena. Heracles placed the head—still alive and writhing—under a great rock on the sacred way between Lerna and Elaius, and dipped his arrows in the Hydra's poisonous blood. Thus his second task was complete.


1 posted on 05/08/2018 9:42:57 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

VDH - the lone voice of reason left at NR (and probably the smartest of the whole crew).


2 posted on 05/08/2018 9:45:04 AM PDT by Psalm 73 ("I will now proceed to entangle the entire area".)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

You hear the talking heads bring up the concept of immunity a fair bit when discussing Trump and Mueller, and I recognize that they are speculating and speaking in hypotheticals, which is something that talking-heads are asked to do, but it exposes their projection that Trump is somehow guilty, which it’s starting to become apparent to many of them that perhaps he really isn’t.

But it makes me curious to ask freepers about immunity in reverse. If the deep state remains defiant and continue to have each others back for years to come (probably more now out of self-preservtion than anything to do with Trump) and we will be stuck in a stale-mate and a series of tit-for-tat escalations, how open would you be to offering a kind of immunity (or good faith promise not to prosecute) if the political actors inside the bureaucracies agreed to drop their cabal and find private sector jobs?


3 posted on 05/08/2018 9:52:18 AM PDT by z3n
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To: ProtectOurFreedom
(hat tip Victor Davis Hanson)

After Trump won, the confident Deep State had the power easily to either stop, remove, or delegitimize Trump and his presidency....
Obama's apparat quite imaginatively pulled out all the stops:

<><>implanting Obama holdover appointees all over the executive branch;

<><>filing lawsuits and judge shopping;

<><>organizing the Resistance;

<><>pursuing impeachment writs;

<><>warping the FISA courts;

<><>weaponizing the DOJ and FBI;

<><>attempting to disrupt the Electoral College;

<><>angling for enactment of the 25th Amendment or the emoluments clause; and,

<><> unleashing Hollywood celebrities, Silicon Valley, and many in Wall Street to suffocate the Trump presidency in its infancy.

======================================

All of it indicative of the Third World mentality Obama brought to the presidency.......
The scurrilous T/W tactic of using the power of government to attack and suppress people who get in their way.

4 posted on 05/08/2018 9:54:38 AM PDT by Liz
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

The Deep State - hoisted by Trumps petard.


5 posted on 05/08/2018 9:54:39 AM PDT by Noumenon (It isn't racist if it's true, is it?)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Thanks for posting what may be one of VDH’s best opeds since candidate Trump became president elect and then President!


6 posted on 05/08/2018 10:00:27 AM PDT by Grampa Dave (Democrats are having trouble with their MAMA campaign, (Make America Mexico Again), versus MAGA!)
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To: Psalm 73

Yup....he came back after he danced with the never trump scum early in the campaign. He’s spot-on with this column.


7 posted on 05/08/2018 10:02:10 AM PDT by LongWayHome
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

His fifth labor, the Augean Stables, is also apropos here.


8 posted on 05/08/2018 10:02:36 AM PDT by rightwingcrazy
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To: Liz

All of it indicative of the $h$thole Third World mentality Obama brought to the presidency.......

The scurrilous T/W tactic of using the power of government to attack and suppress people who get in their way, including their year+ coup to remove our legally elected president!


9 posted on 05/08/2018 10:03:09 AM PDT by Grampa Dave (Democrats are having trouble with their MAMA campaign, (Make America Mexico Again), versus MAGA!)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Bttt.

5.56mm


10 posted on 05/08/2018 10:06:46 AM PDT by M Kehoe (THIS SPACE FOR RENT)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom
Silicon Valley likewise has lost its luster. Once upon a time, America loved a hip Steve Jobs, decked out in black, fiddling with a new Apple gadget on stage in front of an entranced televised audience of millions. Jobs appeared as a brilliant and typically American entrepreneur, not a partisan talking down to hoi polloi.

Things have radically changed since then. The reputation of Big Tech is one of hyper-partisan politics, data miners, snoops, Bowdlerizers and censors, monopolists, progressive multibillionaires, and adolescents in arrested development who exempt themselves from the consequences of what their ideologies inflict on others.

Interesting observation by VDH.

2007 - First iPhone presentation by Jobs
2017 - Google fires James Damore for thoughtcrime.

Silicon valley is now seen as everything VDH mentions in his essay. From hero to zero in 10 years.

11 posted on 05/08/2018 10:09:29 AM PDT by Flick Lives (The FBI is the Mob)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom; rlmorel

We have reason to be optimistic and that this attempt to overthrow the duly elected government is being thwarted before our eyes. VDH has a keen mind and the ability to write compelling reason and clear lucidity. This piece will have a positive effect.


12 posted on 05/08/2018 10:10:09 AM PDT by centurion316 (Back from exile from 4/2016 until 4/2018.)
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To: Psalm 73

Andrew McCarthy is still writing great pieces.


13 posted on 05/08/2018 10:21:27 AM PDT by FredZarguna (And what Rough Beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward 5th Avenue to be born?)
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To: z3n

“...offering a kind of immunity (or good faith promise not to prosecute) if the political actors inside the bureaucracies agreed to drop their cabal and find private sector jobs?”

Actually, isn’t that similar to what’s going on today? There have been so many “retirements” from DOJ and FBI. I suspect there’s a sort of wink and nod agreement that prosecutions will not follow if they quietly leave government “service.” (McCabe being maybe the main exception with his “firing” right before his retirement date).

Of course, many of them are going to be recycled to lobbying firms or to government contracting firms because all they know is government. But they will be much more constrained in their ability to continue their nefarious ways.


14 posted on 05/08/2018 10:43:14 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: Liz

That is an excellent, concise list of the techniques the cabal has used, isn’t it? It truly is Banana Republic stuff, so completely antithetical to our constitutional republican form of government.


15 posted on 05/08/2018 10:45:17 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: Liz

Further...I recognize all of the dirty tricks on the list except “attempting to disrupt the Electoral College.” What was that?


16 posted on 05/08/2018 10:46:12 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: FredZarguna
You mean VDH, don’t you?

McCarthy is good but his writings fairly drip with sarcasm for Trump.

17 posted on 05/08/2018 10:47:30 AM PDT by zerosix (Native Sunflower)
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To: rightwingcrazy

Yes, absolutely! I love the pic of Hercules (Heracles) battling Hydra all by himself. Such a perfect metaphor for Donald Trump, isn’t it?

“The Hydra had poisonous breath and blood so virulent that even its scent was deadly.” — it seems that almost every person elected to Congress breathes the deadly scent and becomes another head on the Hydra.


18 posted on 05/08/2018 10:48:39 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: Grampa Dave

Sure, happy to help the cause. This, indeed, is one of his best. The list that VDH provided (and Liz recited) of all the foul, illegal, fetid, unconstitutional tricks those bastards have employed to destroy the President and the man is a perfect summation.


19 posted on 05/08/2018 10:50:22 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: Flick Lives

Interesting observation by VDH, indeed. Just goes to show how deeply infected the entire country is.


20 posted on 05/08/2018 10:52:38 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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