The President’s Do-Over

National Review ^ | 17 July 2018 | Andrew C. McCarthy

[Meet the New Boss]

I agree with Jonah on all counts: On net, President Trump’s do-over of his Helsinki remarks is a good thing; regrettably, it is not sincere; and while I hope the revised version is the one he sticks to, I don’t have confidence that will be the case — as posited in my column Tuesday on the folly of having the summit in the first place, Trump seems constitutionally incapable of distinguishing what ought to be his undeniable legitimacy as president from the fact (it is a fact) of Russia’s influence operation during the campaign.

snip

One depressing thing I will never understand: Why Trump is unable to see that conceding an obvious fact — viz., that Putin’s effort was meant to ramp up support for Trump and opposition to Clinton — would neither undermine Trump’s legitimacy as president nor concede that Putin wanted Trump to win.

Forget about what ardent Trump antagonists would say on this score; it is not worth trying to talk them out of their grievances. As a practical matter, Russia’s influence operation was a drop in an ocean of electioneering. It made no more difference than the international Left’s unconcealed enthusiasm for Mrs. Clinton. Trump won mainly because he wasn’t Hillary and partly because he struck chords that played well with salient parts of the electorate. The Russian hacking made no difference. To repeat an argument I made during the campaign, nine out of ten people (at least) in America have no idea who John Podesta is; to buy the Democratic theory, you’d have to believe that the emails of virtually unknown Democratic operatives were critical to voters, but Mrs. Clinton’s own thousands of classified and unaccounted-for emails were of no moment. That’s silly.

[Meet the New Boss]

But why should Trump accept something that to an objective person paying close attention obviously stinks to high heaven?

Maybe these twelve Russian GRU officers sent a phishing email to John Podesta.

Or maybe they didn't. How would we know?

All we have is the word of a corrupt CIA and a corrupt FBI and a corrupt Special Counsel.

To come up with this intelligence assessment, CIA Director Brennan broke protocol and hand-picked a team, by-passing the regular Russia intelligence team, including hand-picking Agent Love-Strzok, who far from being full of love appears to hate Trump with every fiber of his being and to have participated in an effort to frame Trump and members of his campaign team.

They repeatedly lied about all 17 intelligence agencies confirming the report, when in fact it was only two with a third having a reduced level of confidence in it.

According to Devin Nunes, all the facts laid out in Mueller's indictment were available a year and a half ago and indeed were described in the redacted House intelligence committee report.

Was this anything more than a political stunt? Why must we automatically credit the truth of what they claim in such a stunt?

Why are the actual servers kept away from law enforcement examination?

The DNC server was not examined. Hillary's server was bleach-bitted. The FBI took little interest in other computers that may have held copies of Hillary's emails, like the laptop that went missing or Huma's computers or the archive backups at Hillary's service provider.

They corruptly spiked a law enforcement investigation into Hillary claiming she didn't really intend anything bad.

Contrast that with how they abuse their power to persecute anyone associated with Trump.

Has his brief campaign chairman been treated much differently than the Russians treated Sergei Magnitsky? Charged with white collar crimes, pressured to change his story to fit the government's desires, and then when he won't tossed in jail even before any trial.

Hillary gets off because they lyingly claim there is no evidence of intent, but then they extract a plea agreement on wire fraud from some little guy working with Russian internet scammers on the basis that he should have known they were using phony IDs, even if he didn't.

And their big case against the Russian clickbait troll farm seems to be based on what millions of illegals rely on every day, identity theft, plus 4TB of social media posts they likely have never read.

They corruptly used the dead letter Logan Act to manipulate Trump's national security advisor into resigning and pleading guilty to a crime.

Ironically, the crime of lying which is what these Intelligence Community chiefs seem themselves to do best.

Um, no, Andy, the "just trust us" claim no longer works.

Let's have a real Special Counsel with a team of lawyers and FBI agents from outside the beltway investigate the investigators.

Let's let them take all the servers. Let's let them use a grand jury.

Let's let them put some people in prison for the inevitable lying and destruction of evidence they will encounter, pour encourager les autres.

And THEN let's see what we have here.

[Behind the Blue Wall]

Rand Paul basically said it best, he’s been the victim of a politically-motivated witch hunt for the last year and half, and now he’s supposed to vouch for the legitimacy of said witch hunt. Nah, he ain’t the one!

[Paladin2]

Where is the list of the Rooskie infractions?

Who is responsible?

The net impact of each?

The way the US Feds would thwart such actions in the future?

[Robert DeLong]

Andrew isn’t wrong on a lot of things, but I think he is wrong here.

[map]

I like your analysis better than McCarthy’s.

[dragnet2]

The article smells like poop.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

McCarthy is trying to have it both ways, to please the NeverTrumpers at Fox (he is now a contributor), and at NR, and readers who thought he turned the corner and support Trump.

[Lurkinanloomin]

Why should anyone believe the people who did not catch 9/11, swore there were WMDs in Iraq and were trying to rig the election against Trump?
And that was after they had tried to rig elections all over the globe.

[lonestar67]

It surprises me that somewhat as smart as McCarthy does not understand this issue.

The idea that the Russians really had a deep desire to see either of the candidates win is foolish.

They did want to hurt the United States. The simple concept is to destroy our internal sense of civics:

1. destroy the capacity for dialogue by spinning up conspiracy theories ad nauseous
2. destroy the belief in free and fair elections—regardless of outcomes

Russia has been doing this since the inception of the revolution. Russia would be happy to unseat Trump and put in Hillary if it would sow discord that might lead to a civil war in the United States that weakens us to the point of allowing Russia to surpass.

McCarthy should know this.

The idea that Hillary represented some sort of unbearable Russian hardline is plainly disproved by the most casual analysis of her work as SOS. And SOS is probably the right acronym and description of her derelict policy. She was super soft on Russia.

Russia wants American chaos and division.

Sadly, McCarthy is helping that along like a fool. Unfortunate misstep.

[Electric Graffiti]

You can count on the TrotskyiteReview to get it ass backwards

[Lurkinanloomin]

He jumped right into the shark.

[Bob434]

[[The net impact of each?]]

A voting booth machine was hacked... well, almost hacked... sorta hacked... came close to being hacked... some ruskie thought about hacking it... but wasn’t hacked

So yeah, there’s that ‘serious’ net impact.

[choctaw man]

All he had to say was, following Hildabeast’s example, “I misspoke.” All is forgiven.

[Trump20162020]

Hillary Clinton spent $1.2 billion from gathered billionaire elites and Saudi princes, had a fawning mainstream media campaign that provided her God-only-knows what kind of in-kind contribution by building her up daily and attacking Trump for every little thing they could come up with, but in the end her moronic, gullible supporters would rather believe that some Russian sh**posters on Facebook is why she lost, because that's easier on their delicate sensibilities than acknowledging that Donald Trump simply received more votes in Ohio than Madam President.

[fortheDeclaration]

National Review-never Trumpers

[lurk]

Everybody is acting like this is the first time a nation fiddled with the internals of another nation. It goes on 24/7 inside every country, including whereverstan.. If you ain’t spying or prying, you’re dying.

[DoughtyOne]

Trump’s got my back.

I’ve got his.

These dime a dozen brain-trusts are worthless.

[LongWayHome]

You can always depend on Andy to scratch that never Trump itch every once & awhile.

[IncPen]

Poll Finds 70 Percent of Republicans Approve of Trump’s Handling of Russia, Even After Helsinki

"Even After Helsinki"

They gin up outrage and can't believe the poll doesn't reflect it

[DoughtyOne]

No, they can’t believe the public doesn’t agree with them.

Do they even know any Conservatives?

I doubt it, because their descriptions of them and Trump bear no semblance to reality.