1/17/19: Day 27: The federal government remains in shutdown mode and the president’s approval ratings crater.
Those numbers aren’t likely to improve once Americans wake to the latest news. During an appearance on Chris Cuomo’s evening show on CNN last night, Rudy Giuliani got riled up about recent news coverage of his boss. “The amount of false reporting about this case,” he shouted, referencing fresh revelations in the Russia investigation, “is despicable.”
Cuomo disagreed with Rudy’s definition of false reporting. He suggested that perhaps Rudy wasn’t the most accurate fount of information. “False reporting,” he informed Rudy, “is saying nobody in the campaign had any contact with Russia. False reporting is saying that there has been no suggestion of any type of collusion between the campaign and Russians. Now you have Paul Manafort giving data to…”
“You just misstated my position,” Rudy bristled. “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign. I have not. I said the president of the United States.”
Cuomo raised an eyebrow like Rudy had just claimed he had X-ray vision and could tell what color underwear the First Lady had on every day.
____________________
He was
only saying the president didn’t.
____________________
Rudy was too busy wagging a finger to notice. “There is not a single bit of evidence that the President of the United States committed the only crime he could have committed here, conspired with the Russians to hack the DNC.”
So, there you had it, and almost every news outlet noticed.
 |
Rudy and the Numbskull. |
Horndog Rudy was retreating. Where Trump and his sycophants had once claimed that no one on the campaign ever met with any Russians, and, no, they hadn’t been working on a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the campaign, and, oh, the F.B.I. was biased, and, oh, it was sad that members of the campaign kept sticking their feet in perjury traps, and, well, collusion isn’t a crime anyway – now Rudy was once again reversing direction.
He wasn’t saying people working for Trump during the campaign didn’t collude (which by the way = conspiracy).
He was only saying the president didn’t.
Cuomo and Giuliani began arguing about what Trump had previously said. Cuomo
insisted Trump had said no one in his campaign colluded. Rudy said, Nu
uh. Trump never said that.
Cuomo wondered how it wouldn’t be collusion if Manafort handed over polling data to the Russians, as Mueller’s investigators allege. Horndog said it wouldn’t be collusion because all campaigns give polling data to other people.
Um…Russians?
Or to sum up the latest Trump defense: Manafort might have colluded but Trump didn’t know it. Cohen might have colluded. Trump didn’t tell him to do it. Flynn and Gates and that “coffee boy” might have been colluding. Maybe they all colluded; but the man in charge had no idea.
Rudy is now invoking the famed “My Client is a Numbskull” defense.
*
IN BONUS COVERAGE, we note that two Republican members of Congress, Rep. Andy Harris and Rep. Phil Roe met with well-known Holocaust denier Chuck Johnson. At various points in his neo-Nazi career, Johnson has helped raise money for the publisher of the Daily Stormer, a noxious website. He has also written that he does not believe the Auschwitz concentration camp ever existed.
Harris and Roe issued statements saying they had met with Johnson to discuss DNA sequencing research, just about the worst possible topic to be discussing with anyone known for having racial-purity-type, neo-Nazi sympathies. Both members of Congress claim they had no idea Johnson was a neo-Nazi.
No comments:
Post a Comment