The New York Times says Trump tried to quash the FBI’s Flynn investigation, the intelligence community is working through the aftermath of passing classified information to Russia, and America is fighting over whether any of it is newsworthy or not.
America is getting into a huge knock-down, drag-out fight at basically the worst time, with company in town and Trump trying to get ready for a big business trip… and of course we’re making a scene in front of the whole world. The disappointing part is that if we start talking about a trial separation, Andrew Jackson isn’t around to put a stop to it. Here’s where the argument stands as of Tuesday evening…
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President Trump tried to get FBI Director James Comey to lay off the investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, The New York Times reported Tuesday afternoon. The bureau has been looking into ties between Russian officials and several Trump associates, including Flynn.
« I hope you can let this go, » Trump told Comey during a February meeting, according to a memo containing Comey’s notes from the meeting.
The White House quickly denied the conversation. « While the president has repeatedly expressed his view that General Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn, » the White House said in a statement. At least one Republican senator is asking The New York Times for proof the memo even exists. (He may have forgotten that the Constitution gives senators the power to subpoena the FBI for such things.)
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in Washington this week for an official state visit. President Trump was the first Western leader to call with congratulations following Erdogan’s victory in an April referendum expanding his power, and Erdogan said Trump’s November win « has led to the awakening of a new set of aspirations and expectations and hopes in our region. »
Still, the visit isn’t all about backslapping and mutual ego-inflating. Erdogan asked Trump to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a religious leader that Turkey blames for an attempted coup last year, as well as the assassination of a Russian envoy to Turkey. (Gulen now lives in exile in Pennsylvania.) Oh, and one other thing: We just armed the Kurdish YPG organization to help fight ISIS — but Turkey considers YPG to be a terrorist group attempting to carve out a Kurdish homeland from Turkish territory. In other words, Erdogan probably is thrilled that those guys have a bunch of our guns now.
Depending on your news outlet of choice (after USA TODAY, of course) , you might have spent the past 24 hours reading articles about treason or impeachment. Or maybe you saw several mentions of the « deep state » alongside a litany of Hillary Clinton’s missteps.
The news of Trump sharing classified information with Russian diplomats exposed a rift in national media, with left-leaning media bringing up the specter of impeachment, and right-leaning media talking about « liberals melting down » over something that Trump didn’t do — and even if he did, it was something that he had the authority to do.
Polls in 2016 swing state Ohio have voters mostly saying « meh, more fake news. Something tells us we’re going to wind up with two different sets of history books to explain all this to our grandchildren.
Somewhere between 38% and 43% of the voters still want to live with Trump, according to polls released today by Public Policy Polling, Rasmussen and Gallup; 54% to 57% would rather live with someone else.
But if we can go with Dwayne « The Rock » Johnson, 42% of us would choose him over Trump (37%) , according to PPP. In other words, GQ articles got bored with convincing us that one-size-too-small clothing was in style, and now they’re picking presidents for us.
