What did Devin Nunes apologize for?
Were wiretaps why Hillary was such a terrible candidate?
Conventional wisdom says Hillary Clinton was among the worst candidates to run for the Presidency in a life time. She couldn’t even bring herself to campaign in critical states like Wisconsin and regularly vanished from the campaign scene. When she did campaign, often the spectacle was hard to witness.
Did she fail to put forth her best effort because she was a poor candidate, or because she thought she had an ace in the hole?
Did Hillary Clinton know that private communications from the Trump campaign were being intercepted, collected, surveilled, whatever you want to call it? If so, did she assume that the media would eventually gain access to those communications and run stories that would prove devastating for the Trump campaign?
Keep in mind the media apparently did eventually gain that access – that happened after election day and it adversely impacted Michael Flynn.
Fast-forward to Last Week
A key indicator of how far America has slipped down the rabbit hole came and went last week: Rep Devin Nunes apologized for meeting with the White House before he met with Adam Schiff and other Democrats regarding things Nunes said he’d found out about the Trump wiretapping scandal.
Think about this for a moment.
The allegation is that the US intelligence community acquired – and it is still unclear how – the private communications of then Trump campaign insiders, and then portions of those communications were leaked to the media by politically motivated US intelligence community members in an effort to help Hillary Clinton win the White House.
All Apologies
And somehow Devin Nunes has to apologize for not briefing Adam Schiff and other Democrats before he informed the White House and media?
Shame on Nunes for doing what Republicans always do — capitulating instantly and often anytime anyone in the media raises a whimper of complaint. And make no mistake, in this case it isn’t just left-wing media it’s all media that’s behaving as though Devin Nunes committed some unpardonable sin by not briefing Democrats first.
Why should Nunes have briefed Democrats in the first place?
Remember
Go back to the allegation. The allegation is NOT that someone in the US intelligence community acquired information and leaked it about ALL Presidential candidates. It’s that someone in the US intelligence community acquired information and leaked it about A PARTICULAR Presidential candidate Democrats were opposed to.
Granted, we don’t know what Nunes has seen. But he’s seen something. And whatever he has seen, it was shocking enough that he felt uncomfortable bringing it up before his Congressional committee. Whatever it was Nunes found was surprising enough that he felt he had no choice but brief the White House first so that the information wasn’t lost in the shifting sands of politics.
Devin Nunes, Whistleblower
Conventional political thinking casts this entire episode in a partisan light. That light obscures the possibility that Nunes acted out of a sense of patriotism.
It may be that Devin Nunes has emerged not as some wayward Congressman intent on buttressing his allegiance to party and president, but that Nunes is a whistleblower. Nunes has found something he believes is wrong in the normal course of his duties. His reaction has been to raise a red flag and draw attention to what he has found.
If Roles Were Reversed
Disagree? Flip this around then. Let’s say Adam Schiff found what no one else has yet – incontrovertible proof that the Trump campaign was hand in glove with the Russians to ensure that Hillary Clinton did not win the White House. So Adam Schiff immediately held a press conference after briefing former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Would the media not be treating Schiff like a hero?
One needs not imagine the example of Adam Schiff. Go back over eight years of Obama – a time in which the IRS was found to be spying on ordinary Americans and other such abuses of power were prevalent. Did Democrats brief Republicans about these things before they called their cronies in the media and their President in the White House? Of course not.
But the double standard persists in which Democrats can drive a car into water and kill a passenger and walk away from it guilty as hell and free as a bird, while a Republican who drives 56 in a 55 is lambasted as evil incarnate. That’s why Adam Schiff remains on TV around the clock shedding crocodile tears over Devin Nunes, and it’s why Nunes apologized when he didn’t need to.
Remember What’s at Stake
It would do everyone good to remember what’s at stake. This isn’t Whitewater or Travelgate or draft records or off mic comments. There is the possibility that somewhere within the deep state, people that are supposed to act in an apolitical and impartial way, were so devoted to Hillary Clinton that they abused the authority of their positions and their office. They did so hoping they could affect the outcome of the Presidential election so their candidate would win.
How long has this been going on and who all is involved in this corruption? What else don’t we know about?
photo credit: TheRobbStory Friday Morning via photopin (license)
