It is kinda weird that America's truly outstanding liberals have a way of dying spectacularly.
First, I agree with your assessment of what the Congressional agenda will be. They've made that pretty clear.The second paragraph is the important one. The GOP is going to use Trump to pass their agenda:
+ Nutbar judges
+ Repeal Obamacare
+ 1% tax cuts
+ Gut Medicare
+ Gut Social Security
That's what every Republican has lain in bed jerking off to for the last generation, and they can grease Trump's ego / palms to do it. This is Paul Ryan's Christmas. It doesn't matter that everybody despises Trump -- the Republicans are the ones who can use him.
Honestly, if I were the Democrats I'd already be going around the GOP gatekeepers to try to "flip" Trump with a better offer. Here's a direct payment of $10T to your kids. Now work with us to pass our agenda, and you'll be hailed as a Philosopher King who went against his own party to do what was right for America. A regular Cincinnatus. A Washington, except compared to you Mr. Trump Washington was a loser. We'll blast his image right off Rushmore if you just pass a 15% national minimum wage, sire, um, I mean sir.
But what’s important to me is, it’s less important that they had picked the winner and loser, which I thought all along they had done. What’s most important is that they did indeed meddle. I think the implications of that are just absolutely huge, and I think there are three of them:
The first is, we need to see this for what it is. It is an attack on our very democracy. It’s an attack on who we are as a people. A foreign government messing around in our elections is, I think, an existential threat to our way of life. To me, and this is to me not an overstatement, this is the political equivalent of 9/11. It is huge and the fact that it hasn’t gotten more attention from the Obama Administration, Congress, and the mainstream media, is just shocking to me.
The second is that I agree with a whole bunch of people on the Hill, Democrats and Republicans, Sen. John McCain, that we need a bi-partisan commission to look into exactly what the Russians did and what we can do here at home to make sure that no foreign government can ever do this again to us. That’s why that commission is so important. The commission shouldn’t look into what is an unknowable thing - which is: did they affect the outcome or not - we’ll never know that. We’ll never know what the Russians did, whether it affected a single vote or not. But what we can do is figure out exactly what they did and make changes here at home as to how information is handled, how we protect information, and make sure they never do this again.
The third implication is we need to respond to the Russian attack. We need to deter the Russians and anyone else who is watching this—and you can bet your bottom dollar that the Chinese, the North Koreans, the Iranians are all watching. We need to deter all of those folks from even thinking about doing something like this in the future.
I think that our response needs to have two key pieces to it. One is it’s got to be overt. It needs to be seen. A covert response would significantly limit the deterrence effect. If you can’t see it, its not going to deter the Chinese and North Koreans and Iranians and others, so it’s got to be seen.
The second, is that it’s got to be significant from Putin’s perspective. He has to feel some pain, he has to pay a price here or again, there will be no deterrence, and it has to be seen by the rest of the world as being significant to Mr. Putin so that it can be a deterrant.
Does the President-elect’s response indicate that there is an open feud between the CIA and Donald Trump?
This is not a good sign, obviously. In a world with so many threats and challenges facing the United States and in a city where politics and policy disputes color so many views, a President, if they’re going to be able to protect the country, they need someone to provide them with an objective, unbiased view of what’s going on in the world, and why it matters to them, and why it matters to the country. That job falls to the Intelligence Community led by the CIA, and that’s why the relationship between a President and the Intelligence Community and the CIA is so special, and the President and the DNI (Director of National Intelligence) and the Director of the Agency need to nurture that special relationship. And right now that special relationship is being undermined.
When you say special relationship, I think you’re talking about trust. There has to be trust there, right?
Yes, absolutely, and I’m not talking about a President coddling the CIA. A President needs to be demanding of the Agency. He needs to demand its best performance; he should ask tough questions about Agency judgments. A President does not need to agree with everything the Agency says, but a President does need to listen and to do so with an open mind. He or she should not be publicly critical of the institution because it undermines that relationship, it undermines that trust you were talking about, it undermines the Agency’s ability to do its job. But on the flip side, and this is part of the trust too, is a President also needs to expect and demand the Agency’s discretion. So, no leaks about controversial judgments, no leaks about what a President says in a meeting with the Agency—that behavior is as unacceptable as a President not listening.
So this information was leaked to The Washington Post…
I’m not just suggesting that the IC or the Agency leaked that information, but if you go back to some of those original intelligence community briefings of Trump right after the convention, boy, there were a lot of stories out there about what happened in that meeting. I don’t think they came from the Trump side, because they were negative stories. Maybe that got this off on the wrong foot.
I do think, going back to what you said earlier, I do think it is really important for the Trump team to understand that the Intelligence Community and the Agency are not political. There is simply not a political bone in their body. In fact, if anything, they are politically naïve, and politicians have a tendency to look at the Intelligence Community and the Agency the way they look at everybody else, and everybody else is political, so they tend to think that of the Intelligence Community until they really understand it, and its not, its just not.
I really hope that the position that Mike Hayden has taken with regard to the President-elect, the position that I’ve taken with regard to the President-elect, hasn’t in any way colored his or his team’s views of the Agency and what its trying to do here. When it says that it believes Russia was meddling in the election, that is not a political judgment, that is an objective, unbiased judgment, its not based on politics or policy or anything else. It’s really important for them to understand that.
How can they understand then, when someone who has led the Agency as you have, does make a political statement and a political decision, as you did, when you came out in The New York Times and decided to support Hillary Clinton? How should people be thinking about that as the separation between Michael Morell, private citizen speaking, which he’s now allowed to do because he’s out of government, versus the opinion of a person who spent their entire career in the Intelligence Community. How do you make that separation? How should people think about that?
I think that’s exactly what they have to do. This is Michael Morell, private citizen and this is Michael Hayden, private citizen who are talking about what we think is best for the country. It’s completely divorced from what the job of the CIA is, and it’s a pretty simple line: we don’t work there anymore, we don’t work for the government anymore. We’re not bound by that same responsibility that anybody who works for the Agency has, which is you gotta call it like you see it, irregardless of the politics or irregardless of the policy. Both what Mike did and what I did was calling it like we see it but from a much broader perspective than just saying what’s happening in the world. We’re talking about our own country for once in our lives. That’s the distinction, and people shouldn’t be confused by that.
Article already linked but here's some reasoning on why it matters: https://www.thecipherbrief.com/article/exclusive/fmr-cia-acting-dir-michael-morell-political-equivalent-911-1091#.WE6RWJk6AUU.twitter
As for it being partisan whining:
Yeah, clearly he's having unhinged political tantrum.
The second paragraph is the important one. The GOP is going to use Trump to pass their agenda:
+ Nutbar judges
+ Repeal Obamacare
+ 1% tax cuts
+ Gut Medicare
+ Gut Social Security
That's what every Republican has lain in bed jerking off to for the last generation, and they can grease Trump's ego / palms to do it. This is Paul Ryan's Christmas. It doesn't matter that everybody despises Trump -- the Republicans are the ones who can use him.
Honestly, if I were the Democrats I'd already be going around the GOP gatekeepers to try to "flip" Trump with a better offer. Here's a direct payment of $10T to your kids. Now work with us to pass our agenda, and you'll be hailed as a Philosopher King who went against his own party to do what was right for America. A regular Cincinnatus. A Washington, except compared to you Mr. Trump Washington was a loser. We'll blast his image right off Rushmore if you just pass a 15% national minimum wage, sire, um, I mean sir.
RotflmaoDon't be surprised if taxes go up for the rich. Trump is a NYC liberal at heart and I think his policy positions as president will be much different than what he ran on. Lower taxes for upper income brackets make zero sense and the country can't afford them. He wants to be liked by the general public and have a positive legacy much more so than being loved by Paul Ryan & Co.
Don't be surprised if taxes go up for the rich. Trump is a NYC liberal at heart and I think his policy positions as president will be much different than what he ran on. Lower taxes for upper income brackets make zero sense and the country can't afford them. He wants to be liked by the general public and have a positive legacy much more so than being loved by Paul Ryan & Co.
Rotflmao
Lower taxes for upper income brackets make zero sense and the country can't afford them.
The second paragraph is the important one. The GOP is going to use Trump to pass their agenda:
+ Nutbar judges
+ Repeal Obamacare
+ 1% tax cuts
+ Gut Medicare
+ Gut Social Security
...
I didn't say unhinged political tantrum. I said whining. And it is whining. Trump says it's laughable that the Russians influenced the election. Now, some former CIA official who admits he has no information beyond what he read in the paper, and who publicly opposed Trump, feels the CIA isn't "respected" by Trump. Great. Four years of bureaucrats whining about lack of respect.
Ok whatever you want to believe man. I swear the draggers in DC started a fire but then called 911 you'd give them credit.
Don't be surprised if taxes go up for the rich. Trump is a NYC liberal at heart and I think his policy positions as president will be much different than what he ran on. Lower taxes for upper income brackets make zero sense and the country can't afford them. He wants to be liked by the general public and have a positive legacy much more so than being loved by Paul Ryan & Co.
To whom did I give credit?
I didn't say unhinged political tantrum. I said whining. And it is whining. Trump says it's laughable that the Russians influenced the election. Now, some former CIA official who admits he has no information beyond what he read in the paper, and who publicly opposed Trump, feels the CIA isn't "respected" by Trump. Great. Four years of bureaucrats whining about lack of respect.