Thursday, March 30, 2017

Soap Opera in DC


And now for today's episode of the D.C. soap opera, "Your Government in Action!"

I'm totally addicted...  Can't start the day without it.

That's what I tweeted this morning while watching the hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which was amazing.  

I was shocked to hear Clinton Watts connect Russia's disinformation campaign directly to dt.  Russia's goal was to discredit our election and our democracy; dt made that goal easy to achieve by claiming that the election would be rigged, that Barack Obama was foreign born, that noncitizens were voting, etc.

Watts also said that Russian attempts to influence our election are related to assassinations of high-ranking Russians.
"Follow the trail of dead Russians," he said.
"There have been more dead Russians in the past three months that are tied to this investigation," he added. "They are dropping dead, even in Western countries."http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-follow-the-money-and-the-trail-of-dead-1490889366-htmlstory.html

It was a soap opera before Michael Flynn--former NSA director, former lieutenant general in the US Army, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency--announced that he would be willing to testify before Congress in return for immunity.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/30/us/politics/michael-flynn-congress-immunity-russia.html?_r=0

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/31/politics/eric-swalwell-michael-flynn-immunity-testimony-don-lemon-cnntv/

It was an episode of The Godfather before the New York Times identified two White House officials as the ones who invited Rep. Devin Nunes to the White House to help defend the president's claim of surveillance against him and his team.

Several current American officials identified the White House officials as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office and was previously counsel to Mr. Nunes’s committee. Though neither has been accused of breaking any laws, they do appear to have sought to use intelligence to advance the political goals of the Trump administration.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/30/us/politics/devin-nunes-intelligence-reports.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

All this drama was before VP Mike Pence cast two tie-breaking votes to allow states to withhold funds from Planned Parenthood.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-congress-planned-parenthood-20170330-story.html

All this on just Day 70 of the dt presidency.  

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