Tag Archives: Mike Flynn

Where Wannsee Meets the MAGA White House

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Because I’m concerned about my mental state, I hope I was the only one watching yesterday’s January 6 hearing, listening to the blow-by-blow breakdown of that “unhinged” December 18 White House meeting and havng a kind of acid flashback vision of the Wannsee Conference.

And yes, I realize this is an invocation if you will of Godwin’s Law.

But really people, how do you not jump to Reinhard Heydrich and the deranged zealots of the Third Reich while trying to comprehend another collection of … deranged zealots … trying to sell a former reality TV performer a military-assisted coup to overthrow an election and seize control of the United States? Lakeside Berlin 1942, or the Oval Office 2020, both in their way were seeking a … final solution.

Some day … soon … I hope Armando Ianucci, director of such classics as “In the Loop” and “The Death Of Stalin” (and behind the scenes of “Veep” and “Succession”) stages a verbatim film of this episode of the MAGA Reich, circa 12/18/20. (There have seen several films about the 90-minute Wansee Conference. I like this ’80s German version, although the Kenneth Branaugh version is also quite good.)

Long past the point where you thought the clown show train wreck of the Donald Trump presidency … (and the mere sound of those three words together still sounds like something out of “Idiocracy”) … couldn’t get any more berserk and farcical we have … The Overstock.com guy sitting in the Oval Office trying to sell the failed casino operator on a plan for the army to march in and grab voting machines. Fraudulent machines manipulated by Italian satellites controlling thermostats clogged with Chinese bamboo … or something like that.

Jeeeeeezus keeee-rist.

One of my criticisms of the pundits gasping and hyper-ventilating anew at yesterday’s December 18 tick-tock was the pervasive suggestion that the likes of Mr. Overstock (with Minnesota’s own MyPillow Guy only a phone call away) Sidney “Kraken” Powell and Mike “Fifth!” Flynn were only the dregs of the Trump White House “advisory council”. The adults had left the building.

Please! That crew was there only because others far more culpable in sustaining Trump had — at long, long last — shrunk back in shame and out of fear of extreme legal peril. And those would be people like Pat Cipollone, the uber-Catholic father of 10 and friend of Laura Ingraham who had no problem with Trumplandia, and made no effort to provide testimony in the second impeachment, until it was obvious he too was going to have to wear an LfT badge — Lunatic for Trump — on his chest for eternity if he didn’t show up and finally spill.

And along with him throughout the Trump Circus Dementia we had the likes of Peter bleepin Navarro who is easily as “unhinged”, as the kids say, as the Kraken or Lt. Gen. Flynn … and possibly the Overstock.com Guy as well. And — but wait there’s more! — let’s never forget transparent grifters like Ryan Zinke, Wilbur Ross, Scott Pruitt, Steve Mnuchin, Mnuchin’s glam-sucking wife, Sean Spicer, Kayleigh McEnaney, Donny Jr’s shrieking girl-friend, Jared, Steve mother-bleepin’ Bannon, Dan Scavino, Jason Miller, Stephen Miller, Kellyanne “alternative acts” and on … and on … and on … and not ending with … Bill Barr.

No satirist could invent a more farcical, corrupt and incompetent collection of impausibilities, (with Barr exempted from the “incompetent” charge.)

But all humor and Godwin-like references aside, the chilling part of this whole clown show is that, A: The Trump fools almost succeeded throwing it back to the state legislatures (many — like Wisconsin and South Dakota — populated by more of their ilk), and B: They’re not done yet.

The key takeaway — as millions have said before — is that Trump and these people were idiots. Truly and factually, based on the receipts we now have. They were incompetent at being nefarious, and they were buffoonish on top of it.

But … post-Trump Trumpists like … pick one … Ron DeSantis, Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley have taken notes, have no need for nakedly batshit zealots like Mike Flynn or The Kraken … or The Overstock Guy. The so-called “competent Trump” characters squeezing into the starting gate are far, far more serious and disciplined about force-feeding white Christian MAGA ‘Murica all the authoritarian oppression (of others) they can swallow.

And that’ll make a much less hilarious movie.

Gen. Flynn and the Dam About to Burst

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NEW BLOG PHOTO_edited- 3If you’ve been worrying about the big Oroville dam in California bursting open, this Gen. Flynn thing could bring a much bigger flood. After 24 days, three and half weeks, the regime of Our Orange Leader is already up to its spray tanned jowls in a scandal bigger than Watergate.

That’s hyperbole!, you say? Well, no one ever accused Richard Nixon of regularly communicating with the Russians while they were doing their nefarious best to screw with an American presidential election. And G. Gordon Liddy was not the President’s key and, according to reports, sole advisor on foreign affairs. Baby, oh baby.  Even I thought it’d be mid-summer before Trump got himself into something so outrageously, cartoonishly foul that the usual “Let’s move on, nothing to see here, folks” Republican “leaders” would be on TV demanding to know what exactly there is … to see here.

But that’s where we are … three and a half weeks into this fiasco. Clearly, some Republicans have already decided Trump is too ludicrous an embarrassment to protect with sealed-off, behind closed doors committee investigations. Moreover, if reports are true that U.S. intelligence agencies are withholding intelligence from Trump and his team of Russian-compromised know-nothings, the sooner the swap-out of Mike Pence for Trump happens, the better.

The schadenfreude-rich beauty of the Flynn debacle is how it whips the spotlight back around, away from the sideshow of fools and scoundrels joining Trump’s cabinet, and zeros it back in on what kind of business Trump has been doing with the Russians for the past 30 years. We have a pretty good idea, but to date none of the circumstantial (and better) assertions have grabbed the full attention, simultaneously, of our brave Congressional leaders and the national media herd.

The cynical assumption is that this Flynn business, which as we now know has been going on for months, not just between Flynn and various Russian officials, but other members of Trump’s campaign/administration, will be stifled and prevaricated over by Republican-led committees. They’ll muddle it and obscure it until the “failing” The New York Times and Jake Tapper lose interest or are distracted by the next farcical scandal or, god forbid, bona fide international crisis.

But I don’t see that happening, and I lived through Watergate. Why? Because this Flynn episode is hair’s breadth from the rich, juicy essence of Donald Trump — namely, the high likelihood he was bailed out of chronic bankruptcy by Russian money and has engaged in colossal tax fraud for decades. Being first to expose what so many, in and out government and media believe to be a monumental con game comes with guarantee of heroic historical standing of the eternal, name-in-schoolbooks variety.

My pal, Joe Loveland, correctly assessed the Republicans’ predicament over disposing Trump for Mike Pence. Basically, they’re prepared to do it, preferably before the 2018 mid-term elections, as long as they don’t have to take any responsibility for it. Most Republicans, batshit craven and otherwise, live in fear of Trump’s low-to-no information base. But if Trump brings the… house of cards … down on himself with a ceaseless bombardment of revelations about scheming with … the f****ing Russians for chrissakes (every old school Republican’s ultimate boogeyman) … they can stand back like mere horrified observers, while doing everything they can to polish up the medieval dunce Mike Pence as the only acceptable replacement.

The wild and terrifying card in this drama is of course the “Reichstag fire” scenario, where Team Trump plots to distract public/Congressional/media attention by either inventing, grossly exaggerating or ineptly bungling some serious international crisis. In normal times you, dear reader, would be excused for rolling your eyes at the wild-eyed lunacy of such a scenario. I mean, stuff like that doesn’t happen in The United States.

Unfortunately, like the dossier with stories of the Rooskies storing video of Donald and hookers, um, “micturating” on Obama’s hotel bed in Moscow, there’s a level of plausibility to almost every obscene, outrageous thing you can imagine about Trump that we’ve never dealt with before. Not even with Dick Nixon.

Man, am I tired of winning so much.