Thread: New York Times columnist warns of hysteria around Trump, Russia

New York Times columnist warns of hysteria around Trump, Russia

By Jonathan Easley
06/20/17 10:28 AM EDT

A conservative New York Times writer who has fiercely criticized President Trump warned in a Tuesday column that the Washington political class is in hysterics over Russia and looking to circumvent the Democratic process with an investigation that has so far failed to turn up any evidence of collusion.

David Brooks, who has in the past likened Trump to authoritarian “strongmen” such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and North Korea's Kim Jong Un, said Trump is now getting a raw deal from his political enemies and the press.

Brooks said there is no evidence to support the original allegations that Trump and his associates colluded with Moscow to steal the 2016 election and accused D.C.'s political class of “replacing the politics of democracy with the politics of scandal” in an effort to sink the president.

“There is something disturbingly meta about this whole affair,” Brooks wrote. “This is, as Yuval Levin put it, an investigation about itself. Trump skeptics within the administration laid a legal minefield all around the president, and then Trump — being Trump — stomped all over it, blowing himself up six ways from Sunday.”

A special counsel led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller and a growing staff of the nation’s top criminal lawyers are ostensibly investigating Russian meddling in the election and whether some Trump campaign officials had improper contacts with Moscow.

But recent media reports indicate Trump has become a target for tampering with the investigation in an effort to clear his name and to get his friend, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, off the hook for a litany of allegations pertaining to foreign lobbying.

“Even if you took a paragon of modern presidents — a contemporary Abraham Lincoln — and you directed a democratically unsupervised, infinitely financed team of prosecutors at him and gave them power to subpoena his staff and look under any related or unrelated rock in an attempt to bring him down, there’s a pretty good chance you could spur even this modern paragon to want to fight back,” Brooks wrote. “You could spur even him to do something that had the whiff of obstruction.”

Brooks, who served as the editor for The Wall Street Journal’s conservative opinion page during the special counsel investigation into former President Bill Clinton’s real estate deals, described that Whitewater probe as “overblown” in hindsight.

“And yet it has to be confessed that, at least so far, the Whitewater scandal was far more substantive than the Russia-collusion scandal now gripping Washington,” Brooks said.

“There may be a giant revelation still to come,” he continued. “But as the Trump-Russia story has evolved, it is striking how little evidence there is that any underlying crime occurred — that there was any actual collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russians. Everything seems to be leaking out of this administration, but so far the leaks about actual collusion are meager.”

Brooks laid much of the blame for the frenzy in Washington at the feet of the press.

“It’s easy to build ratings if you are a glorified Court TV, if each whiff of scandal smoke generates hours of 'Breaking News' intensity and a deluge of speculation from good-looking former prosecutors,” Brooks said. “The politics is great for those forces responsible for the lawyerization of American life. It takes power out of the hands of voters and elected officials and puts power in the hands of prosecutors and defense attorneys.”

And he said Trump may end up being vindicated.

“Things are so bad that I’m going to have to give Trump the last word,” he wrote. “On June 15 he tweeted, 'They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story.' Unless there is some new revelation, that may turn out to be pretty accurate commentary.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/administ...d-trump-russia

I said it awhile back and I'll say it again here. They are attempting a Legal Coup to take down this Presidency. That is unconstitutional because our Presidents are protected against that sort of undertaking. They have immunity during their term of office. Our Constitution ensures that the President is elected by voters in a majority of states that produce the majority of Electoral College Votes.

Furthermore, the voting public knew more about this President when they voted than probably any President in US History. We knew all about his companies and properties, his brands and products, his family, his personal life, his habits, his likes and dislikes, his good deeds and not so good ones, his attitudes, his policies, his goals, his achievements, his failures, his work ethic, his ties, his hair, his friends, his everything.

Our President Donald J Trump is the most vetted Presidential candidate in US Presidential Election History, which is why he will survive this Witch Hunt as hard as it is to watch it. I feel sorry that he and his staff and other campaign workers, advisors and some supporters have to hire law firms to manage and respond to it. It is a total deprivation of their political rights to support a candidate, work on a campaign and/or serve in an administration without government retribution illegally engineered by political opponents.

To date, there is no evidence of anyone colluding with the Russians to "meddle", "influence", "interfere" or "tamper" with the US 2016 election. In fact, so far, there's not even any hard evidence of the Russians meddling, influencing, interfering or tampering with anything to do with the US 2016 Presidential Election. We have "INTEL conclusions", but no evidence to support the conclusions. This isn't how we do things in the United States. We don't condemn, allege, let alone condemn or punish without hard evidence. Yet, the Senate has voted to punish Russia with sanctions for meddling, influencing and interfering with the US Presidential Election without any proof or evidence of them actually doing so.

What's going on is more than hysteria, it's wicked insanity and a WITCH HUNT!!

And it's impacting national security because it's impacting foreign policy. That's dangerous and those involved will eventually be called to account for it, and hopefully pay a price for their own misdeeds.

This is how you generate hysteria against an innocent individual or group of people. First make up some lie about a conspiracy and then when confronted about the lack of evidence to support the conspiracy, claim the lack of evidence is proof of the conspiracy. Further inflame the hysteria and advance the fictional narrative by fake performances to look for evidence. Naturally, since there will be no evidence, the further lack of evidence only adds to the fictional narrative that the lack of evidence is proof of a conspiracy.

When the target of the hysteria starts to fight back against the constant harassment and persecution, then this is the seed of a narrative that claims the reaction is a struggle to cover up evidence, further advancing the fictional narrative that lack of evidence is proof of a conspiracy.

Exactly. This is exactly how the Salem Witch Trials worked. It's also how Dictators and Authoritarians function against political opponents. It's how prosecutors frame the innocent. It's the ugly side of the human condition. So tragic to see it alive and well in so many High Places in our little land of liberty where you are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law by a jury of your peers based on evidence presented in a court of law under the rule of law, instead of lies, fake news and secret innuendo spewed in newspapers and on Tee Vee.