Former intelligence chief James Clapper says President Trump is dead wrong about Russian interference in America’s elections. And they’re going to get away with it again, he warns.
.. “I mean, the Russians succeeded, I believe, beyond their wildest expectations. Their first objective in the election was to sow discontent, discord and disruption in our political life, and they have succeeded to a fare-thee-well. They have accelerated, amplified the polarization and the divisiveness in this country, and they’ve undermined our democratic system. They wanted to create doubt in the minds of the public about our government and about our system, and they succeeded to a fare-thee-well.”
“They’ve been emboldened,” he added, “and they will continue to do this.”
.. Trump’s rhetoric is “downright scary and disturbing,” Clapper agonized in an extraordinary monologue on live TV in August, amid Trump’s “fire and fury” threats toward North Korea. He questioned Trump’s “fitness for office” and openly worried about his control over the nuclear launch codes. In our conversation, Clapper didn’t back off one word of it, slamming Trump’s lies, “distortions and untruths.”
.. And he is certainly no liberal partisan: just ask Democrats like Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, who excoriated Clapper for what appeared to be misleading a Senate committee about the intelligence community’s surveillance of private U.S. citizens, information later revealed by Edward Snowden’s disclosures. (His testimony was “a big mistake,” Clapper now says, but not “a lie.”
.. a tough-minded former Air Force lieutenant general who once said, “I never met a collection capability I didn’t like.”
.. “It’s a very painful thing for me to be seen as a critic of this president,” he told me, “but I have those concerns.”
.. what he did when then-President-elect Trump first started attacking the intelligence community’s Russia findings. He didn’t publicly blast Trump—he called him on the phone.
.. more significant Russian arms-control violations of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. “If you look at what Russia is trying to do to undermine us, and the modernization of their strategic nuclear forces—and they only have one adversary in mind when they do that
.. appearing to lecture Americans on why only that small percentage of citizens who have served in the military could understand the nature of their sacrifice.
.. He took particular issue with White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ comment that Kelly’s word about the congresswoman should not be second-guessed because he had been a four-star general, a remark Clapper called “absurd.”
.. worried about the Trump era as the new age of militarized government, not only with Kelly as chief of staff but also a sitting lieutenant general, H.R. McMaster, as national security adviser, and a former general, James Mattis, as defense secretary. Clapper said that while he has “a visceral aversion” to generals “filling these political, civilian positions,” he’s nonetheless “glad they’re there.”
.. he fears that “some of this intemperate, bellicose rhetoric” between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un could lead to a “cataclysmic” war.
The risk, he said, came primarily from Kim miscalculating as a result of Trump’s heated words.
.. “Kim Jong Un doesn’t have any advisers that are going to give him objective counsel. He’s surrounded by medal-bedecked sycophants, who dutifully follow him around like puppy dogs with their notebooks open, ascribing his every utterance, and pushing back against the great leader is not a way to get ahead,” Clapper said. “And so I do wonder what Kim Jong Un’s ignition point is, when some insult that’s been hurled at him by the president will just ignite him.”
.. The 25th Amendment that people bring up is a very, very high bar for removal, and appropriately so. And if that were to happen—and let’s just say for the sake of discussion there were an impeachment, even less likely a conviction—all that would serve to do is heighten the polarization and the divisiveness, because the base will never accept that, and that would just feed the conspiracy theories.”
General Mattis, Stand Up to Trump or He’ll Drag You Down
He even seemed to explain how the president’s phone call to the widow of a Green Beret killed in Niger got garbled.
.. Trump needs to know that it is now your way or the highway — not his. That is how you talk to a bully. It’s the only language he understands.Tell him: No more
- ridiculous tweeting attacks on people every morning; no more
- telling senators who forge bipartisan compromises on immigration or health care that he’s with them one day and against them the next; no more
- casual lying; no more
- feeding the base white supremacist “red meat” — no more
- distracting us from the real work of forging compromises for the American people and no more
- eroding the American creed.
.. if you can’t together force Trump onto an agenda of national healing and progress, then you should together tell him that he can govern with his kids and Sanders — because you took an oath to defend the Constitution, not to wipe up Trump’s daily filth with the uniform three of you wore so honorably.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is wrong about John Kelly
Of all the repellent statements issued by President Trump or his aides, the one that came out of the mouth of Sarah Huckabee Sanders last week was maybe the most chilling. There she stood, asking a White House reporter who the hell he thought he was to question the veracity of John F. Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff, who had just smeared a congresswoman. “If you want to go after General Kelly, that’s up to you,” she cautioned. “If you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that that’s something highly inappropriate.”
.. Did Kelly lie or did he misremember? I prefer the second choice, but either way, the stars he once wore on his shoulder do not immunize him. The rank I referred to above — mere citizen — is the one you and I hold. It is the one George Washington chose when he resigned his commission before becoming president of the United States.
.. But there is something else at work here: the slavish veneration now accorded the military. You can see it every time someone in uniform testifies before Congress. “Thank you for your service,” comes the chorus of those who treat four-stars as if they were physicians who risk their lives to work with Ebola sufferers.
.. Military men and women have become exotics — less than 1 percent of Americans are currently serving.
.. only 18 percent of Congress has ever served. Back in 1971, the figure was 72 percent of the House and 78 percent of the Senate. Those members knew from experience that a star can be just a piece of metal. It is certainly not a halo.
.. Sanders was relying on the current veneration of the military to deflect criticism of Kelly. It was tawdry of her to do so, if only because it was Kelly and no one else who managed to call into question his vaunted competence. He brought dishonor to his office
Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s provocative veiled threat to Congress
She repeated: “Again, if they can’t, then they should get out of the way and let somebody else take their job that can actually get something done.”
.. This is a remarkable tone for the White House to be setting on the eve of a number of critical fights and pieces of legislation. We knew President Trump was willing to unleash his Twitter account on GOP congressional leaders, and during one Q&A, he left open the idea that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) might need to be replaced if he can’t deliver. But Sanders’s repeated comments make clear those weren’t just one-offs; this is now the White House’s official strategy and talking point.
.. To recap, the things on Congress’s to-do list are:
- averting a government shutdown,
- passing the first major tax reform since 1986,
- a hurricane relief bill for Harvey (and the possibility of emergency action required for Hurricane Irma in Florida),
- a massive to-be-determined infrastructure bill and now
- comprehensive immigration reform. (Sanders made clear Trump doesn’t want “just a one-piece fix.”) Oh, and don’t forget that Trump wants Congress to
- resurrect health care and get that done, too.
.. Even if this wasn’t a Congress in which failure and gridlock have become the norm, that would be a daunting set of tasks. Trump has now set the bar so high that he’s basically guaranteeing Congress will fail, by his standards.
.. And Sanders so casually adding comprehensive immigration reform to their to-do list Tuesday — and basically giving them six months to complete it before DACA is phased out — was the equivalent of a gut punch to congressional leaders, given years and years of failure on that issue. Having the White House pile that on is almost cruel.
.. The problem, as I noted earlier Tuesday, is that Trump has shown little appetite for providing that leadership. He has demonstrated that he much prefers to leave things to Congress and blame them when they fail. Even more troublingly for GOP leaders, Trump doesn’t just get out of the way; he is forever changing his positions and giving Congress conflicting signals, leaving leaders without the opportunity to apply presidential pressure on members.
.. Trump’s only priority seems to be passing something, but even on that front, his efforts are usually counterproductive. Even in urging large-scale action on immigration, the White House on Tuesday declined to say specifically what it wanted from a bill or whether Trump would sign a straight replacement of just DACA.
.. Tuesday’s example was the latest indication of a looming showdown and irreconcilable, inherent problems between Congress and the White House.
This will get worse before it gets better.