From Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine:
Note that last part: if you're wondering what part our "free, independent and adversarial press" has played in bringing about Trump, there it is: comparing the FBI to Nazis doesn't even rate a batted eyelash. As if that didn't make it obvious enough:
The role of the press is only one part of this story. Of course House Republicans are trying to undermine Mueller's investigation: If Trump does down, they go down with him: to their way of thinking, the law should not apply to them, and if it applies to one of them, they're all in danger.
Read the whole thing, of course -- it's not really all that long, and it pulls together a lot of what I (and others) have been saying all along.
Via Digby, whose comments are worth reading as well.
In 1995, National Rifle Association president Wayne LaPierre signed his name to a fundraising letter referring to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents as “jack-booted government thugs.” The implicit association of American federal law enforcement with fascists provoked a furor. Former president George H. W. Bush publicly resigned his NRA membership in protest; LaPierre had to apologize.
Last night, in the midst of a long, deeply incriminating interview, Rudy Giuliani called FBI agents “stormtroopers.” Here was the president’s lawyer, not an outside lobbyist, comparing federal law enforcement to Nazis directly, rather than indirectly. The Washington Post’s account of Giuliani’s interview noted the remark in a single sentence, in the 30th paragraph of its story. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Politico accounts of Giuliani’s interview did not even mention the stormtrooper remark at all.
Note that last part: if you're wondering what part our "free, independent and adversarial press" has played in bringing about Trump, there it is: comparing the FBI to Nazis doesn't even rate a batted eyelash. As if that didn't make it obvious enough:
Rosenstein appears to have reached a limit. The New York Times reported yesterday that Rosenstein and some FBI officials “have come to suspect that some lawmakers were using their oversight authority to gain intelligence about that investigation so that it could be shared with the White House.” The Republican document-demanding game is that they either force Rosenstein to compromise the investigation, letting them inside the prosecution so they can help Trump undermine it, or else he refuses their demands, giving them a pretext to fire him and install a more pliable figure. Rosenstein publicly declared the other day the game was up and he wasn’t going to be extorted any more.
The Wall Street Journal, which has served as a reliable mouthpiece for Trump’s legal defense, defends Congress’s right to take control of the investigation. “Congress is acting through its committees as a separate and co-equal branch of government—the branch that funds Justice and has the right and obligation to exercise oversight,” it editorializes. Rather than denying Rosenstein’s charge that his department is being extorted, the editorial confirms it, treating him like a cowering store owner who hasn’t quite got the message. “We don’t want to see Mr. Rosenstein fired or impeached,” the Journal concludes, “but he and the FBI need to recognize Congress’s constitutional authority.” Nice Department you got there, Rosenstein. We’d hate to see something happen to it.
The role of the press is only one part of this story. Of course House Republicans are trying to undermine Mueller's investigation: If Trump does down, they go down with him: to their way of thinking, the law should not apply to them, and if it applies to one of them, they're all in danger.
Read the whole thing, of course -- it's not really all that long, and it pulls together a lot of what I (and others) have been saying all along.
Via Digby, whose comments are worth reading as well.
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