(Reality Just As Bad)

-by Bill Watkins 5/12/2017

***

I thought May 10th was bad.

Trump fired Comey the day before, then hosted a fun, upbeat meet and greet with Russian officials in the Oval Office—a football spike initiated with a Tillerson/Lavrov dance in front of the press, where veteran reporter Andrea Mitchell was blasted with sarcasm and insult by the Russian.

Tillerson just chuckled, as he did when Mitchell and other pressmates were ridiculed by Lavrov in Russia last month.

Nothing could be worse, you’d think, optically or truthfully, than that May 10th Russian tap dance in our white house.  Then James Clapper appeared on Andrea Mitchell’s MSNBC show today, and gave more information about his friend James Comey’s dinner with Trump…

ON JANUARY 27.

Alarm bells went off.  I was having a Rachel Maddow “aha!” moment, there in my bedroom.  (So I slept in a bit, I’m in L.A. the helicopters kept me up late last night!!)

JANUARY 27.

Let’s go over Donald Trump’s January 27th, as I now see it, with Clapper’s clarification.

1. Sally Yates and intelligence aide visit the White House for the second time in two days, meet with White House Counsel, Don McGahn, and an aid of his.

2. McGahn asks the legal implications of AG Yates’ Michael Flynn warning, goes over some of the details not covered the day before, about Flynn’s being compromised and vulnerable to blackmail by Russian intelligence.

3. Donald Trump issues an unconstitutional Immigration Ban Order.

I did not skip steps.  I know; he did not sideline Flynn, suspend his security clearance while they investigated Yates’ statements.  Flynn still stood by Trump’s side.  Rolling out an order not likely to be enforced by Sally Yates.

4. INVITE FBI DIRECTOR JAMES COMEY TO DINNER.

5. Host that dinner.

6. Now… turn on the news to hear what they talked about, folks.

***

That’s quite a little Friday, the first one after Trump’s inauguration.

Makes me wonder if George W. Bush might read that January 27th Trump agenda, graduate past calling it “some weird shit.”  Maybe we are 100 percent at “Nixonian obstruction of justice, collusion and treasonous shit, man…”