June 16, 2019: The Reasoning Skills of a Watermelon

 

6/16/19: The full interview with President Trump and George Stephanopoulos airs this evening. 

In a quick bit of work, Trump blows to bits the conspiracy theory (pushed ad nauseum by screamers on the right) that President Obama and F.B.I. leaders tried to keep him from winning the 2016 election.

Smarter than Rep. Jim Jordan.

 

As writers at Vox explain, Trump labels top F.B.I. officials “lowlives” during the interview. The entire investigation into Russian interference was a “set up.” Obama “must have known about” it. 

Stephanopoulos puts the question directly: “If they were determined to prevent you from becoming president, why wouldn’t they leak it [news his campaign was being investigated for suspicious contacts with Russians] beforehand?” 

 

You must have the reasoning skills of a watermelon. 

As Vox explains, “instead of pushing back, Trump acknowledged that Stephanopoulos’s premise was correct.” 

“You know what, you’d have to ask them,” Trump said. “And you know what – had that gone out before the election, I don’t think I would have had enough time to defend myself.”

 

In other words, even Trump agrees that had top FBI officials leaked word about the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia being under investigation in the months leading up to the election, it likely would have been fatal emphasis added] to his presidential hopes.

 

The gaping hole in Trump’s FBI conspiracy theory that Stephanopoulos identified in his line of questioning has long been one Trump allies have struggled to explain – at least in contexts where interlocutors are willing to challenge them. For instance, during an interview in late 2017, CNN host John Berman quickly debunked Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Oh.) when he echoed Trump and claimed the FBI had it out for Trump.

 

“You think James Comey – it went all the way to the top of the FBI – [wanted] to keep Donald Trump from being president,” Berman said. “If that’s true, why then did he come out, again, and open up the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, and never even tell us before the election about the investigation into alleged Trump collusion? If he was trying to keep Donald Trump from getting elected, don’t you think he might tell voters that?”

 

All Jordan could say to Berman was “we’ll find out” – a response nearly as vacuous as the “you’d have to ask them” Trump offered to Stephanopoulos. 

Let’s just put it plainly. You have to have the reasoning skills of a watermelon to miss the point. Jordan did. 

Trump does. 

So do Trump’s biggest fans.