Link about NYT op-ed. The op-ed. It is anonymous. Pence would have a motive to conceal.
Jarad? Pompeo? Bolton? Ivanka? Mattis? Mattis is a good bet. Remember Al Haig.
The butler did it?
Another recent NYT item.
BOTTOM LINE: I'd like it to be Pence. The guess here is Mattis.
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There is an air of phoniness to the story. Call it an Alex Jones doubt, but with an election coming some might want to make it "about Trump" as opposed to about the ever greater infliction of poverty and burdens upon the citizens, with bombast about a wall, and to divert attention from the need to fix dark money buying politicians and elections, the tax thing McConnell/Ryan did to citizens, all the crap. Divert attention by a who-done-it bit of stuff.
Only the New York Times op-ed folks know what the New York Times op-ed folks are up to, with whoever may be a confederate.
This may have originated with Trump himself, to foment paranoia, and for him to keep his persona as news while other things get done.
Do you trust the process? The ultimate feeling here is to discount it. The bunch around Trump is as egregious as he is, Pence being the most offensive of the henchpersons. Discount that bunch having any motives but to delude.
However, there is a miasma of Nixonian downfall to the pattern. Even a Bob Woodward book.
Games like this are anti-democratic, as is lobbying and money having bought most of Washington, DC.
This judgeship hearing stuff pending, and lo, a diversionary game? Wha's 'appening?
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If a large-scale purge were being planned, how would you set the table? Would you want a big broom questioned, as in, "If you picked them why are they now inadequate?" Or, "Why did you wait so long, it was clearly an inept bunch?" Would you want to do a big-exit under a rubric of, "Bunch of disloyal weasels, backstabbing Caesar?" The play's the thing?
Which way would yield the larger fig leaf? Which fits best into the mood of Celebrity Apprentice? (A scripted show.)
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This is going on, and is arguably more interesting and historical than an anonymous hit piece against Trump. Smoke Screening by our leadership? Oh, my.
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If presuming administration smokescreening is at play, why? One guess is their eyes on their prize, Kavanaugh. Part of that inference is how St. Cloud blogger Gary Gross after a hiatus from posting has put a stream of GOP talking points about Kavanaugh on his blog, Kavanaugh being his current abiding focus with Gary often seeming well tuned to Republican talking points such as thinking among Republican propagandists and spinners. Not that Gary spins, but he reads and reports. Gary links often to things I would never know of otherwise, it being a sphere he is immersed within and one I care less about seeing and exploring, other than by "barometric pressure" measured at Gary's barometer blog. Or call it a funnel function - Gary encounters much and then edits a stream to things he believes more telling than other "news." Call it an information bottleneck, in a good sense since some kind of structure should be imposed upon raw data streams by one with an interest in his/her perception of wheat vs chaff. So if it is the anon. NYT thing as smokescreen, we are back to Pence possibly in play, since Kavanaugh Gestalt is a most integral part of the entire Pence political Gestalt. It is much like Blue Wave following here, a hope to retake Congress for progress, and with tepid interest to impeach from Trump to Pence, frying pan - fire being an adage. The perceived id of Mike Pence is super scary, more than Bannon's, no two ways about that. In a class with Doug Wardlow's.
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Going beyond hypothetical, how can you tell a lodestar from a red herring?
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WaPo, here.
HuffPo.