For years I’ve heard that Lindsey Graham was John McCain’s “best friend” in the Senate. Does it mean anything that Miz Lindsey wasn’t invited to be a speaker at the funeral? He did give a Gospel reading, so maybe I’m reading too much into that. But don’t miss Dana Milbank’s “Rest in peace, Lindsey Graham.”
Graham remains alive and well, but after serving for two decades as Robin to McCain’s Batman, Graham buried whatever remained of his own reputation for iconoclasm even before his partner’s funeral.
On Tuesday, Graham took a seat on the couch of “Fox & Friends,†President Trump’s favorite show, and sealed his transition from apostate to Trump apparatchik.
“Word of caution to the public,†he said. “A lot of people try to convict President Trump. Don’t be so fast. I have seen no evidence of collusion after two years.†Having echoed Trump’s no-collusion line (as if that were the lone issue), Graham, a former military lawyer, picked up Trump’s attack on the justice system: “Plenty of corruption at the Department of Justice and the FBI. Should be stunning. Not one Democrat seems to care.â€
Graham also has withdrawn support from Jeff Sessions. Graham isn’t as crazy/stupid as a lot of other wingnuts; he’s more calculating than crazy. Apparently he’s adopted Trump as his new “batman,” looking ahead to his senate re-election campaign in 2020. But if Trump goes down, Graham might also.
Well, as Brick said in the Tennessee Williams play about the cat and the roof, “Mendacity is a system that we live in.” That could be Lindsey Graham’s motto. He should have it needlepointed on some throw pillows.
In other news, the Kansas Supreme Court has created a wrinkle in Kris Kobach’s gubernatorial bid.
A grand jury must be convened to investigate whether Republican gubernatorial candidate and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach intentionally failed to register voters in 2016, the Kansas Supreme Court has ruled.
The court’s one-page opinion offered no explanation behind the ruling, which addressed Kobach’s appeal of a lower court’s order to summon the grand jury, the Lawrence Journal-World reported.
The high court’s ruling, released Friday, stemmed from a petition first filed in 2016 by Steven Davis, a Lawrence resident who accused Kobach of intentionally choosing not to process online voter registrations and preventing qualified residents from voting in the 2016 election.
Kobach really does have a bug up his butt about blocking the Wrong Sort of Person (Democrats? Nonwhites? Anyone under the age of 40?) from voting.
Following up on the last post about the NAFTA mis-negogiations, the Toronto Star reporter, Daniel Dale, is saying that he did not get the quotes of Trump talking smack about Canada from the Bloomberg reporters. But that means the leak came from someone else in the room.
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times tweeted:
This literally never happens, that the OTR portions of these interviews leaks. Most people close to White House have raised possibility that Trump ordered it put out. https://t.co/tDHFpsT6KK
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 31, 2018
… which comes under the heading of “Evidence That Trump Is Even Dumber Than He Seems.” What did he possibly think he could accomplish by insulting Canada?
Update: Here’s one more — Paul Manafort’s daughter has filed to officially change her name. That’s cold.
There was an article on FB today headed "We don't vote for what we want, we vote for who we are" or something similar. It is scary to think that that brought us Trump, but I'm afraid it did. Trump truly pleases too many people for my taste.
Graham and Cruz cozying up to him as he clearly is going down? Weird. But if they go with him, fine by me. Though they will climb up his bones to get back to power if they can. My concern here is that there is already a plan afoot to totally stop Mueller so they can keep having things their way, and they want to be on Trump's good side when it happens.
Trump is absolutely masterful in grabbing the news cycle, though he is undiscerning about how his publicity blasts work long-term. If he is violating his own OTR agreements, he is going to find it difficult to get anyone to go OTR with him. He'll just have to tweet out his bombshells, which is so obvious, but evidently does not bother his believers.
I sure hope we send a lot of Progressive Democrats to state houses and DC this fall. I am tired of the daily slings and arrows.
Trump thought Canada would be shivering in its boots and begging to be included in his wonderful deal and would have to cave quickly since there was now a looming deadline.
Trump is moronically stupid.
In reality the deadline aspect of this current negotiation was self-inflicted by Trump and put the USA at a tremendous disadvantage with Canada, because it ceded control of something Trump wanted (a deal before Mexico gets ready to change leaders) to Canada. Canada, of course, has no particular reason to want a really quick end to the negotiations. After all, the talking and lawsuits/complaint resolution are pretty much non-stop even when we're getting along. They're used to it. It's like being an ex-Beatle in the 70s – lawsuits don't bug you much; you have people and you've been through it plenty so you're used to it.
"Does it mean anything that Miz Lindsey wasn’t invited to be a speaker at the funeral?"
Its not a stretch to believe there was something to that, especially since Graham spent the final days of McCain's life in shameless, self-serving pursuit of Trump, and after McCain passed as Trump continued to trash his "best friend" in death. McCain was said to have been involved down to the details of planning his funeral and apparently his family saw no reason to have this backstabber relegated to where he was.
The one quibble I have with Milbank's column is his reference to Graham and McCain as "mavericks." Neither one of them were. McCain talked a good "maverick" game and was good at burnishing the brand, but regarding policy he was damn near 100% conventional when it came to the votes he made on behalf of his party, and Trump for that matter. Graham with his bouffant-ish southern belle persona has never been more than an overly judgmental, corn pone toady, always the bridesmaid, at best, but never the bride, for obvious reasons.
Meant to say "… and apparently his family saw no reason to have this backstabber NOT remain relegated to where he was."
Lindsey gave the wrong gospel reading. In stead of John 15:13 it should have been Matthew 15:14. "If the blind lead the blind, they both fall in a ditch"
Given that Graham offered fealty to McCain then Trump suggests he does a poor job at picking winners; rats don’t run towards the sinking ship. All Sessions has to do to keep his job is retract his dubious opinion that sitting presidents can’t be indicted. Once the cuffs go on and “Orange is the new Orange†becomes the new drama, man-toddler Trump will have to tweet like the birds do it because he won’t have his phone. He’ll just have his Mexican big brother cell mate.
"Having echoed Trump’s no-collusion line (as if that were the lone issue) "
Milbank makes the same error as many pundits and the democratic leadership for that matter. They have let this "no evidence of collusion" tag gain traction, to the point now where it is repeated at nasueum without retort? What should have been said the minute this waffling started was that Mueller is conducting an investigation without leaks, of course there is no evidence, there is really no evidence of anything other than what can be gleaned from Mueller's indictments. Unfortunatley this line "no evidence of collusion" has been repeated so many times, politicians and pundits like Milbank (even in an article critical of the administration) seem to give it credence? As far as Miss Lindsy I just chalk him up to one more of the many mistakes McCain made while in the senate and we have to pay for.
Back to MCain, lots of positive coverage of his funeral which I guess is to be expected for someone who had a least a minimal amount of integrity, a rarity especially in todays GOP. I however think much of it is overdone. For instance much has been made of how he so valiantly corrected that old koot what called Obama an "Arab"! Yes what a graciuos man to stand up to a raving bigot to defend his competitor? I don't hear much about how he picked for a running mate and gave a national platform to another raving lunatic who said: "Obama pals around with terrorsts". Not only did she say this over and over during the campaign she said it while Gramps McGrumpy was on the same stage. So spare me the "McCain was such a statesman" tripe. Compared to Trump, yeah he's a statesman but he wouldn't make a pimple on Barack Obama's ass!
uncledad — the McCain funeral coverage *was* a bit excessive for a senator, but IMO that was the media’s way of trolling Trump.
Wow! So many great comments today! If I said thanks to anybody, I'd have to say thanks to everybody. So I will. Thanks, everybody!
One comment about the "We don't vote for what we want, we vote for who we are" quote. There is a lot to that, OC, and a fair amount of complexity. May I add this observation. We vote for people who sympathize with our wants, even if they do not do anything about them, or even try to do so. What politician, in recent years, has not said something to the effect of being "all about jobs", and never doing anything about jobs. They have been lucky, in a way, that unemployment has continued a slow decline. But politicians have not done anything about jobs since 2009, when unemployment was high and we did not know it was going to come down so much.
Yeah, it was definitely trolling!
Well, after over 4,000 verifiable lies told, and over 500 comments and tweets of there being "no collusion", I think that math alone would give a strong indication of whether the search for evidence is justified. I suspect Mueller already has the proof he needs to convict Trump..any delays he's having is solely to a have a complete and irrefutable explanation of what transpired with Russia's involvement in our electoral process.
"If it's what you say I love it"
Many years ago in a kingdom far away. There was a king who had uncovered a treasonous plot involving one of his Counts to lead an insurrection and depose the king. The King arrested the Count and threatened to behead the Count if he didn't divulge the names of his fellow conspirators. The Count stubbornly refused to name others involved in the plot. Finally, after the Count's refusal to give up the names, the King had the Count taken to the headsman and placed him on the chopping block.
In one last bid to spare the Count the fate that was upon him, the King ordered the headsman to draw his hatchet and behead the Count if he didn't reveal, on his last request, the information the King had wanted.. As the headsman's hatchet started into it's downward stroke at the Count's refusal there was a sudden last minute change of heart, and the Count screamed, "I'll tell you, I'll tell you". But it was too late to stop the action that had been set into motion. The Count was beheaded.
The moral to be learned from this tale is…Don't hatch your Counts before they chicken.
Will Lindsey Graham survive if/when Trump is proven to be a Russian tool? Same for Ted Cruz. They were insulted by Trump very personally – Linsey had his phone number published by Trump. Cruz had his wife and father smeared. They despise Trump personally, IMO, but they aligned themselves with the prevailing wind, 180 degrees from their previous positions. What happens when the winds shift again?
I return to my question. Can they oppose Trump, be victims of Trump's scorched earth methods, become Trump lackeys and then pretend to be shocked by Trump treason?
Or perhaps as Trump expects, will treason become a non-crime for the party in power? At some point you become criminally and politically liable for abetting a crime after the fact. IMP, a lot of what the GOP Congress is doing is trying to prevent facts from emerging which will put them in the position of taking either stance – supporting Trump crimes or opposing Trump treason. Either path leads to the political gallows.
There was a time I was confident that even GOP voters would notice and penalize a lack of character or consistent lack of integrity. Not now. Orwellian prophecy has come to pass – the question is how large that faction will be when facts and proof emerge which citizens simply deny. The situation will force on politicians a choice .