Just another drop in the Great Sea of Absurdities
Meanwhile, The Atlantic's Natasha Bertrand got a hold of private Twitter messages revealing that Trump pal and Nixon dirty trickster Roger Stone was actually in touch with Wikileaks during the campaign, even though he said he wasn't. Joshua Partlow and David A. Fahrenthold at The Washington Post reported that police arrested a security guard at a Trump hotel in Panama when the hotel’s majority owner tried to fire the Trump Organization and Trump employees wouldn't leave. Now the Panamanian government is involved in the dispute, which causes exactly the kind of conflict of interest that might be expected when a president refuses to divest himself of properties and interests in foreign countries.
But perhaps the most important story of the day was a rather stunning appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Admiral Mike Rogers, director of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command. On the verge of retirement and clearly not pulling any punches, he let it all hang out, testifying that the president hasn't issued any special directives to counter Russian election interference and saying “Clearly, what we’ve done hasn’t been enough.” He specifically criticized the administration’s decision not to bother implementing sanctions mandated by Congress as punishment for their intrusion in 2016:
Not just the sanctions but more broadly, my concern is, I believe that President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion there’s little price to pay here, and that therefore I can continue this activity . . . everything, both as the director of NSA and what I see on the Cyber Command side, leads me to believe that if we don’t change the dynamic here, this is going to continue and 2016 won’t be viewed as something isolated. This is something that will be sustained over time.
One can only surmise that President Trump is fine with that, assured for some reason that he will be the beneficiary. In fact, he is so fine with it that he announced he had hired his controversial digital guru from 2016, Brad Parscale, as his campaign manager for 2020.
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