"It is well documented that he has had some very troubling behavior and by most accounts a bad actor,” said White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders of the former deputy director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, the day before he was viciously fired and deprived of significant retirement benefits.
Yes, McCabe is a real bad hombre, as Sanders' boss would say. Or, as McCabe himself put it, in his 21 years as a special agent, "I spent half of that time investigating Russian Organized Crime as a street agent and Supervisor in New York City. I have spent the second half of my career focusing on national security issues and protecting this country from terrorism." The NY Times reports that "senior F.B.I. officials and [McCabe's] counterparts in other agencies praised his intellect and ability to manage complicated worldwide national security issues."
His one transgression was in failing to act as a Donald Trump toady. Somewhat surprising is that the president refrained from having McCabe obliterated by anti-aircraft artillery or subjected to a military-grade nerve agent, as other Dear Leaders are inclined to do. Doubtless, Trump has penal envy. But destroying a man's reputation and financial security on the verge of retirement — and then publicly, childishly, cruelly boasting about it — was the next best thing.
It seems the authoritarian sinless are forever the victims of lies and corruption by others, and of course they bemoan the intolerable damage this does to Democracy and hard-working little people. Someone must champion virtue in every one-party state, and here in America that thankless job has fallen to Donald J. Trump, man of selflessness.
McCabe has a rather different take on all this — all this being "what can happen," as he said in a statement last night, "when law enforcement is politicized, public servants are attacked, and people who are supposed to cherish and protect our institutions become instruments for damaging those institutions and people." McCabe first itemized what had happened to him, and subsequently implied what's about to happen to Trump.
He called for my firing. He called for me to be stripped of my pension after more than 20 years of service. And all along [my wife and I] have said nothing, never wanting to distract from the mission of the FBI by addressing the lies told and repeated about us.
No more.
Before his discounted defenestration — the loss of full retirement pay and, probably, medical benefits — McCabe had much to lose. Now, he has much less. Because of Trump's unfailing inability to ever think two moves ahead, McCabe's abusive sacking provides him with more incentive than ever to be "a significant witness in whatever the special counsel comes up with," as he presaged to Politico in a pre-firing interview. There are witnesses and there are hostile witnesses — and Trump just did what he could to see that McCabe is as hostile as hostility comes.
If Trump believed McCabe was a bad FBI hombre yesterday, he need only wait until tomorrow to see just how much he underestimated the agency's former deputy director, who's about to testify arm in arm with the former director, also abused by Trump. The latter's vindictiveness is one of those "own worst enemy" things, but Trump is just too damn stupid to see it.
He is kind of a malevolent Jar Jar Binks isn’t he?
Posted by: Peter G | March 17, 2018 at 09:03 AM
So there’s this thing I do that is completely reflexive and that is failure analysis. I may not have many talents but this I am good at. You really have to be on site to do such things properly and you need instrumentation but the Mark 1 eyeball is the best instrument of all. I have been examining every single image of that collapsed half bridge in Florida. I call it a half bridge because the other half, the central piers and suspension cables, which are not decorative, had not been installed yet.
And there she is, visible at the end of the upper slab which initiated the collapse, four empty post tensioning ducts and two outer ducts with tensioning cables protruding. These are absolutely essential for balancing compressive loads. And four out of six are evidently just not there. Mind you, after tensioning and wedging, the excess cables are trimmed, which is why I think those ducts are empty. You wouldn’t trim four sets of cables and leave two. Then you are supposed to grout them into place permanently with very high strength grout. They not only swung this span into position without central support, they did it before the span was finished. And then they let traffic flow beneath it.
I’d say the upper weather deck collapsed first, throwing its load onto the pedestrian deck, which then buckled and pulled itself off the pier ledge holding it up.
Posted by: Peter G | March 17, 2018 at 09:43 AM
Which is more hostile, taking away a man's livelihood just to be a dick or the man whose livelihood being taken away vowing to assist in his downfall? A bitch move like this doesn't require thinking two moves ahead. Just one will suffice. Maybe Queen Donald of Drama's inability to think ahead comes from the fact that he has never once been held accountable for himself in all 71years of his privileged, ungrateful life.
Posted by: Anne J | March 17, 2018 at 09:54 AM
It seems increasingly clear that DonnieJohn's only motivation in life is to harm people he doesn't like. I can't think of anything he's done in office that didn't have pure, puerile punishment as a goal. SAD! PATHETIC!
Posted by: Papa Wheelie | March 17, 2018 at 10:21 AM
(Phone Rings.)
Mrs. McCabe: Hello....yes. He's here...Who shall I say is calling? Oh! Oh!
Andrew McCabe: Who is it? Who's on the phone?
Mrs. McCabe: It's a rep for Henry Holt publishing. Said they recently did Michael Wolff's book.
Andrew McCabe: What do they want with me?
Mrs. McCabe: He said, "make you wealthy..."?
Posted by: A.J. | March 17, 2018 at 12:37 PM
I had this dream. It was set in the future and basically it consisted of reading announcements that various Trump family members had their parole hearings cancelled the day before they were to take place. For year after year after year.
Posted by: Peter G | March 17, 2018 at 12:43 PM
I will depart from conventional wisdom on how foolish it is to fire someone who may be able to shoot back. Frankly anything McCabe says can be dismissed as sour grapes by a fired employee. The Republicans will follow this party line as if it led to the Holy Grail. Trump was having a good deal of trouble earning what he perceived as loyalty from the FBI and the Justice Dept. Most of those senior people already have fully vested pensions. McCabe seems to be unusual in this regard. Trump and scum just told everyone down the food chain in the FBI exactly what consideration they may expect if less than subservient in the performance of their duties. And they telegraphed a map for career advancement for toadies whose careers might have stalled.
I have mentioned before that the diversity of the people who staff such institutions are their own chief defense against ideological subservience. But if you take the time to purge say, Democrats, as Trump clearly intends to do, then you can reshape them as you please. Anybody think any Republican politician would oppose this?
Posted by: Peter G | March 17, 2018 at 01:17 PM
The sour grapes argument collapses, though, in the face of McCabe’s contemporaneous memos documenting each of interactions with Trump and other members of the administration. I’m sure that Trump, for the first time in his life, will enjoy getting to know Ms. Karma. Or possibly not so much.
Posted by: Betty H. | March 17, 2018 at 01:59 PM
I am sure he has lots of good rich stuff at his disposal. Which he could make public. But I fear the Republicans, torn between pretending to care about America's governing institutions and how much they despise them when it blocks their goals are probably going to be just fine with reshaping the FBI and the Justice Department and the CIA in their own image.
It's a gamble to be sure. Should the Democrats take the House in 2018 then this issue will surely be revisited. The way things are shaping up I can't see they have a lot to lose by trying. They can't stop Trump from doing anything at all so they might as well ride that tiger as far as they can.
Posted by: Peter G | March 17, 2018 at 02:13 PM
All you say is true, but it overlooks the salient aspect of the new reality you describe vis-a-vis Republicans, which is that we all understand that they are tools and puppets, who won’t ever acknowledge reality; that is not who McCabe’s information is meant to persuade. In fact, I don’t think any rational person is even thinking about how Republicans will react, because it doesn’t matter. Their response is so predictable and so dumb and meaningless that it’s plain boring at this point. The reception to McCabe’s intel by all the normal, real people out there is what counts.
Posted by: Josh | March 17, 2018 at 03:59 PM
You know what? I agree with both you and Betty H. I do not think what Trump plans will work but they are going to wreck the lives of a lot of good people and damage institutions like the JD that will take a long time to fix. I do think they are going to try nevertheless.
Posted by: Peter G | March 17, 2018 at 04:42 PM