Guest Post by Scott Adams
Ex-FBI Director Comey released a statement ahead of his appearance before Congress, and it has heads spinning. I’ll tell you how things look through what I call the Persuasion Filter.
There are several related stories swirling around the news that involve Russia, Trump, Trump’s campaign staff, and Comey. All together, the stories are beyond the capacity of the human brain to hold the details and keep them from automatically conflating in our minds and becoming more soup than individual ingredients. When you have this level of complexity, humans reflexively default to using bias over reason. Our capacity for reason isn’t up to the job in this case because all the Russia-Comey-Trump stuff has started to run together in our minds. We would happily use our limited powers of reason in this situation if we could, but the complexity of it all makes that a dream beyond our grasp.
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Could a trained lawyer sort out this complexity and at least tell you whether or not a law has been broken? Apparently not. Otherwise the lawyers on both sides would agree. They don’t.
So what we are seeing is a super-clean example of what I call two movies on one screen. The anti-Trump media and citizens are peering into the Comey fog and seeing some serious Trump-related wrongdoing that is impeachable at the very least, and treasonous at worst. Meanwhile, Trump supporters are looking at the SAME FACTS and seeing nothing illegal except for some leaking by anti-Trumpers.
Now add to the Comey fog the recent news of how President Trump worded his conversations. The nation will be word-thinking like crazy today, trying to figure out whether “honest” and “hope” mean something. That’s just enough ambiguity to create confirmation bias in literally every observer. (Including me, of course.) We’re all seeing what we want to see at this point.
I’m not a lawyer, and I’m as biased as the rest of you on this topic. But for what it’s worth, I’ll tell you what I’m seeing through my filter.
“Honest Loyalty”
Comey reports that Trump asked him during a private meeting for “loyalty.” Comey promised “honesty” instead. When Trump pressed the point a second time, Comey said he would give “honest loyalty.” Trump agreed that “honest loyalty” is what he wanted. The way you interpret this conversation depends on whether you think Trump or his associates are guilty of anything. If you think Trump is guilty of a crime, the conversation sounds like a Mafia-style threat. But if you believe Trump and his associates are innocent of any crimes, you probably see honesty and loyalty as the same thing in this situation. Innocent people want law enforcement to be honest. For the FBI to act otherwise would be disloyal to both the Constitution and any citizens involved in the investigation. In the context of an investigation of an innocent citizen, honesty and loyalty from law enforcement are the same thing.
“Hope you can let it go”
Regarding the FBI investigation of Flynn, if you think there was wrongdoing by Flynn, Trump’s expression of hope that the FBI can “let it go” sounds like a gangster sending a threat. But if you believe Flynn was innocent of everything but lying to Pence (for which he was fired) then you see it as entirely reasonable that Flynn’s friend (Trump) would “hope” Comey could “let it go.” The alternative would be hoping that Flynn was harmed for no reason, and the government continued to be distracted over nonsense. Does anyone hope for that outcome?
I won’t defend what President Trump said or did on this issue. Clearly it was problematic because we’re discussing it instead of something more useful. But I don’t see a broken law.
Persuading Comey
Was President Trump trying to persuade Comey in any of their private conversations? Of course he was. In a political context, all conversations are about persuasion. Comey was trying to persuade Trump that Comey was a competent and capable player with no bias. Trump was expressing his preferences from a power position, which is persuasive by its nature.
Persuasion isn’t inherently good or bad. Persuasion is a tool. It’s goodness or badness depends on the context of its use. If you believe Trump knows he and his associates were innocent of any wrongdoing, and you observe that the investigations are making the government less effective, it feels entirely legitimate for the President to persuade in a direction that is a benefit for all citizens. No one wants to waste time, money, or energy on a useless investigation. But if you think there is some wrongdoing yet uncovered, presidential persuasion would be wildly inappropriate in this case, even if technically legal.
I haven’t seen evidence of any crimes on the Trump side, so my filter sees a president trying to remove some obstacles that are not serving him or the American public. That kind of persuasion doesn’t feel wrong to me.
If new information emerges, I’m happy to update my opinion.
Well, I will tell you what my BS filter says. It says, this is all a distraction, brought about by an entire industry – Government, whose sole purpose is to strip mine any wealth from the “citizens” outside of it. To that end, they must all be distracted and conned by this wholesale BS so that real crimes – Clinton’s emails, sales of Uranium assets, Mark Rich, Medical Monopolies, Bankster fraud, and the many other REAL crimes and issues, that actually affect productive Americans never gets discussed.
This theater is just taking up time, so no real issues have to be dealt with. Period.
Trump will never be impeached, and if he were, he wouldn’t be removed, so who fucking cares? Yeah, it was dumb of him to clear the room, but the result is that people who’d always hated him still do, and those who think he’s the only hope we have of stymieing the globalists won’t turn on him over such an insignificant issue. “I hope this”, “I hope that”. I personally hope that an asteroid falls on Elena Kagan and Sotomayor while they’re Y-jamming, but that doesn’t meaning I’m plotting against them.
Was this written prior to the ‘testimony’ yesterday? If so, could it or should it be edited to reflect Comey statements and following reaction(s)?
Ditto..it would be nice if the ” government” would just represent ” justice on behalf of the American citizenry”, rather than what feeds the government and political elites pockets. Comey leaks and gets a fat retirement and Clinton Foundation payday, dribble head Reality Winner leaks and she’ll get ten years. As always, the law is only meant for the masses not the ruling class.
By the way, if you type in Trump’s name and do not capitalize it…spell check will not make the correction…not in the ruling class yet…so who is controlling the message?……
Trump gave him a chance, and should not have. Trump had no real team worthy of the name when he won, so he didn’t have fifty folks looking into the background, actions and motivations of the entire government, which of course included Comey and everyone else.
In the course of events, Trump came to find out that political animals infested the entire swamp, including the DOJ; this should have been obvious, but even the “independent” “professional” Comey (and several others, like Yates and a whole floor of snakes at State) were just as partisan and political as Lynch, and needed to have been let go on January 21 instead of later. Previous behavior by Bill Clinton (Webb Hubbell at DOJ AG, who shut down several investigations to save Clinton’s hide early on) should also have been an indication; it seems that having political stooges at DOJ to keep the watchmen blindfolded is now standard practice, at least for Democrats. Anyway, all this is a partisan witch hunt and delaying tactic to keep Trump from rolling back Obama’s entire “legacy” of racial division and hate, waste, fraud and abuse.
If Hillary had won all this would have been swept under the rug; the Deep State had the goods on Hillary for decades, and Trump’s lack of previous government service left them without ready blackmail material. If Trump’s AG Sessions truly has all Comey’s files, then perhaps Trump has enough blackmail material on the Deep State to keep them confined to their cages going forward. Remember Bill and Hillary grabbing FBI files on their opponents to keep them quiet and compliant? Trump may have managed something similar, but without actually breaking the law!
I was struck by the number of times his statements were interspersed with the qualifier “I could be wrong”. He said it over a dozen times. My takeaway: Comey is a shit weasel who has built his professional life by playing both ends against the middle.
The South shall rise again……
Comey is just another inside the beltline partisan hack. Good riddance, dirtbag.
You could easily reduce this article to: “He said, he said.” You clearly missed the part where Trump told EVERYONE in the room, including Comey’s immediate boss, to take a hike while he had a private word with Comey. What would any rational, objective person conclude from that? Right, he didn’t want anyone else to hear what was discussed. Why does someone do that, I wonder? By the way, that’s also how you know there are no tapes of the meeting, that and the fact that Trump’s lawyer confidently contradicted everything in Comey’s testimony–he knows there are no tapes either. “He said, he said.” Trump knew that what he was going to ask/”hope for” was likely crossing the line of propreity at the very least, but that in his mind there would be no definitive conclusion anyone could draw from the meeting one way or the other. I think Trump is an incurious blowhard. But he’s also clever in the way that fast talking, short term thinking bullsh*t artists are. So at that moment he certainly knew what he was doing, but without thinking through the ramifications, without looking at any bigger picture. Typical anti-historical, privileged Boomer–born on third base and thought he hit a homer. Also, most Trump shills are wondering why Comey didn’t “stand up” to Trump, resign, be a man, do something that these brave shills-of course!-would have done without fail. But why have none of these bravehearts asked that about Jeff Sessions? Sessions is Comey’s boss, he outranks him. Why didn’t Sessions say to Trump, “Mr. President, I would advise you not to clear the room to chat with Comey. I know you’re new at this and doing that would be ill-advised. If there is anything you want to ask him, you should be able to ask it among all of us or keep your mouth shut for once.” Why? They know that Sessions is a rank toady without an ethical bone in his body. Or that he’s “new” at the job also, like Trump, as Paul Ryan would have it. Cut these guys some slack, willya? They’re rookies! Sessions won’t (or shouldn’t) last the month of June. Trump? God knows.
JM
What are you smoking. So lemme get this straight…The President needs a chaperone to go to the dance.
For Fuck sakes he is the President. Deal with it.
So far this week we have found out that person who committed a crime is
The leaking of classified information by ames Comey.
The only obstruction was carried out by Loretta Lynch.
Yet folks like you want to look the other way.
Sad really.
This is all a ruse. The dems are doing anything they can to prevent Trumps agenda going forward. The same would have happened if Killery was elected. It’s the end of democracy and I say good riddance. Don’t know what follows but it’s bound to be ugly.
Trump was sizing Comey up during dinner. He baited Comey to see if he would balk and give Trump staight advice, but he let Trump supposedly get himself off the reservation and happily went along scheming. Thus, Trump revealed Comey as a snake. If there’s anything you can count on Trump having ability, it’s taking the personal inventory of the help.
The Democrat/MSM/Deep State is trying their hardest to overthrow Trump– which is also called Sedition. They don’t want his agenda to succeed because they don’t give a rat’s ass about this country. The Dem/MSM/Deep State complex has all the wrong ideas and is completely and utterly corrupted. Trump was dead right in his inauguration address that Washington DC is utterly corrupt. You would be right in saying that corruption is killing this country.
Why? It’s because big government = big corruption. The whole govt complex needs to be torn asunder with elimination of many departments and 1/2 the programs. Trump might very well come to this same conclusion given some more time.
In a way, massive downsizing of the Federal Govt and devolving many powers back to the States would be a New American Revolution: (http://gulfcoastcommentary.blogspot.com/2015/12/our-bloated-failing-central-planning.html)
But it won’t happen that way, even with Trump. We need for the Govt to go bankrupt in the next financial crisis that the Fed Govt & the Fed Reserve will have caused. They’ve already created 2 other crises in the past 17 years. The only way to guarantee such a bankruptcy is to eliminate the Federal Reserve NOW and before the next crisis. Here is my take on this:
http://gulfcoastcommentary.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-second-american-revolution-pt-2.html
This is from Roger Stone, but it’s worth a read:
https://stonecoldtruth.com/comey-nut-job/
If you evaluate Pres. Trump as a lifelong business professional, not a politician, then his actions were appropriate, if not somewhat naive when applied in a political context. If you then think that Pres. Trump is playing chess against the checker crowd, then you can extrapolate that giving Comey enuf vanity rope to hang himself was a checkmate play, Comey had to try and recover politically, and history will record it as a big failure!
Pres. Trump is playing to his conservative base with a simple message,
Comy brought a knife to a gun fight with Trump .
Trump ran for President on the promise that he would drain the swamp.
Now he is walking around in the swamp, and the swamp critters are trying to get him.
It’s dangerous to walk out in a swamp alone, I hope he has some loyal friends with him, or he might get eaten alive…
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The word “intent” appears nowhere in the regs dealing with the handling of classified information. Why isn’t Hillary Clinton under indictment and arrest? Does a partisan political hack like Comey get to issue a “get out of jail free” card to a known criminal? If Hillary can go free why are we prosecuting Reality Winner or whatever her name is?
How long before Hillary goes to prison?