A Ship Adrift In 45's Swamp

Patriot? Or lying Russian lackey? Michael Flynn

Well before the erratic High Chair President assumed office it was clear that America was heading into uncharted waters.

The chaotic two weeks following the inauguration on January 20th brought to mind a quote from the writer James Joyce:

"Zeal without prudence is like a ship adrift."


The troubling revelations that have surfaced over the past 48 hours regarding the decisions and conduct of this fledgling White House show that these amateurs have a lot more zeal than they do sense.

But it's also now quite evident that the Republican leadership of this nation is indeed adrift in waters not found on any map - and the besieged captain has never even sailed a ship before.

Casting former national security adviser Michael Flynn overboard last night like ballast was kind of like stomping on the burning ember next to the fireplace while flames and smoke have already engulfed the house.

And watching Kellyanne Conway's sad attempts to "spin doctor" the potentially crippling crisis this White House is facing earlier today in an interview with Matt Lauer on Today was almost too painful to watch.

Matt Lauer grills Kellyanne Conway on Today

Seriously, take a couple minutes to watch her as she tries to answer Lauer's questions with the kind of meaningless claptrap the media is no longer tolerating from her or Spicer.

Three weeks into her job as White House counselor and this poor woman looks like she wants to flee Washington, D.C. with her kids and go live off the grid in a cabin in the woods of North Dakota. 

Just think about what she's going on national television to defend.

The bombshell revelation that the Department of Justice had personally notified 45 weeks ago that his recently-fired national security adviser Michael Flynn had intentionally misled top White House officials over his illegal communications with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. well before the inauguration made a complete mockery of indignant denials made over the past few weeks by VP Mike Pence, press secretary Sean Spicer and Conway.

And of course the big Cheeto himself.

Who apparently decided to sit on that information for at least four weeks before finally deciding to demand Flynn's resignation last night.

The fact that the leaders of this administration decided to publicly lie to the media and the American people to protect a man who either lied to them, or had violated the Logan Act at the behest of the Groper-in-Chief is so beyond the scope of Hillary Clinton storing emails on a personal server as to be almost mathematically incalculable.

But as most people around the globe have long suspected, there is far more to the allegations that the Trump campaign actively worked with Russian intelligence to undermine American's faith in Democracy and manipulate the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections.

Former Trump campaign adviser Paul Manafort

Slowly but surely, irrefutable evidence of 45's complicity in conspiring with a foreign power to rig an election is beginning to bubble to the surface of the swamp.

Earlier this evening the New York Times reported  that data collected from tapped phone calls and phone records analyzed by the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies show that members of the Trump campaign had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials.

At least a year before the election no less.

Those campaign members named by the Times include Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager who worked behind the scenes of the 2016 Republican National Convention to radically soften the Republican Party's hardline stance on Russia -which had stiffened after Putin ordered troops to invade Ukraine and seize Crimea in violation of international law.

As the Associated Press reported back in August, a report showed that ledgers revealed that Manafort helped steer over $2 million in payments from a pro-Russian Ukrainian political organization to two American lobbying firms in order to try and secretly influence U.S. lawmakers to relax their stance on Russia.

This as the-then Republican candidate for president repeatedly praised Vladimir Putin publicly, including the now-infamous invitation for the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton's emails - which of course they did.

Public demands on the Republican led Congress to begin investigating the Russian ties are growing more intense, and with all 435 seats in the House up for election in two years, GOP Congressman are risking linking themselves to 45's flagrant ethical and legal violations by appearing unwilling to conduct hearings with the same zeal that they went after Hillary Clinton on Benghazi and her emails.

Remember, as Christopher Zullo observed on Twitter, this Republican led Congress spent at least $125 million in taxpayer money to conduct 13 separate hearings and 50 briefings using up 588,000 man hours of lawmakers time to investigate Benghazi.

As of today Congress has spent zilch investigating a foreign power illegally influencing our elections.

That swamp 45 promised to drain is starting to spillover like the Oroville Dam in California.