Rim Country Gazette: Trump Thinks This Is TV. Yanked Brennan Clearance To Dominate News Cycle. Blow Back Spectacular

Future historians will look back on the Trump era as the time that democracy went into a bizarre, yet not entirely unforeseeable, cul de sac. Television dominates American culture and Trump is the TV president. All he knows about life, period, is filtered through the lens of popular culture. The people who voted for him voted for an image on a screen whose demeanor and sound bites struck a chord in them. He’s just a character on TV to people who don’t know any better and he treats the presidency as if it was a TV show.

Given that background, it is not surprising that when the news cycle got especially down and dirty with the publication of Omarosa’s tell-all book that Trump, in reality TV form, decided to change the narrative and yank John Brennan’s security clearance — something he had proclaimed that he would do weeks earlier, but was waiting for a bad news cycle that needed deflecting in order to actually implement. This made sense to Trump, kill two birds with one stone, punish an enemy and tamp down the blistering commentary that Omarosa’s book engendered. This is now White House policy that will be repeated.

The White House has drafted documents revoking the security clearances of current and former officials whom President Trump has demanded be punished for criticizing him or playing a role in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to senior administration officials.

Trump wants to sign “most if not all” of them, said one senior White House official, who indicated that communications aides, including press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Bill Shine, the newly named deputy chief of staff, have discussed the optimum times to release them as a distraction during unfavorable news cycles.

So Trump issued his edict to revoke Brennan’s clearance, all the while using Bruce Ohr’s name as a trailer of coming attractions in Trump’s misuse of power, as he proudly touts his intentions of canceling Ohr’s clearance and many others.

Unfortunately, the intelligence community didn’t simply sit still for this abuse and issued a powerful rebuttal. Trump wasn’t expecting it, because to his mind, he disposed of a bit player. He even said as much in his crazy Friday presser, “If anything, I’m giving him a bigger voice. Many people don’t even know who he is.” In Trump-speak that translates as, “I don’t know who he is but his only importance can be from me paying attention to him, because I have more fame.” The action against Brennan was a stupid tactic that generated immediate fall out.

The order has generated a kind of collective rebuttal rarely, if ever, seen in relations between a commander in chief and those who have gathered the nation’s secrets.

The critics of the president’s action are people who have worked across administrations and who prefer to avoid political fights. Their ranks include several retired military officers, for whom clashing with a president goes against all their instincts and sense of duty [...]

With his decision to go after Brennan, something collectively snapped.

In revoking security clearances for political reasons, rather than for cause, the president crossed another line. The reaction from those who have led in the intelligence community, displays a measure of alarm and represents a call for the president to return to norms, if that is now possible.

As you know, within 48 hours of Trump’s action over 70 former intelligence officers and leaders signed a letter denouncing the decision.

The signers disagreed on whether Brennan’s criticisms of the president were appropriate, in terms of his language, his harshness and whether he was crossing partisan lines. What they agreed upon is what constitutes proper presidential behavior and leadership. They concluded that the president was wrong to retaliate by pulling Brennan’s clearance, saying the president was attempting to “stifle free speech.” They called the action “inappropriate and deeply regrettable.”

Trump, however, is oblivious to the nature of the legitimate complaint that the intelligence community is raising. He sees everything in simplistic, black and white terms, with him defending himself from what he sees as a personal, politically motivated attack on himself, namely the Mueller probe.

In an interview Wednesday with the Wall Street Journal, Trump connected his decision to pull Brennan’s clearance and possibly do the same for others to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion between Russians and Trump campaign associates. “I call it the rigged witch hunt; [it] is a sham,” he told the Journal’s Peter Nicholas and Michael C. Bender. “And these people led it.” Trump said that, as a result, “something had to be done.”

Trump is evidently not to be deterred from pursuing this unwise course and apparently Bruce Ohr is next on Trump’s personal hit list of enemies.

Ohr was associate deputy attorney general until late 2017, when the DOJ learned of his contacts with Steele.

“Mr. Ohr is a career employee of the department. He was there when I arrived. To my knowledge, he wasn't working on the Russia matter,” Rosenstein told the House Intelligence Committee on June 28. “When we learned of the relevant information, we arranged to transfer Mr. Ohr to a different office.”

Ohr’s wife, Nellie (Trump spelled her name wrong), is a consultant and Russia specialist who has done some work for Fusion GPS. (Bruce Ohr’s 278e financial disclosure form lists her as an “independent contractor.”)

The majority report of the House Intelligence Committee said she was “employed by Fusion GPS to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump.” A court filing by Simpson said Fusion GPS contracted with her “to help our company with its research and analysis of Mr. Trump.”

Bruce Ohr’s “crime” against Trump is that he knew Christopher Steele from previous intelligence community dealings, and there is nothing noteworthy about Ohr or his dealings with Steele that hasn’t already been disclosed to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Nevertheless, Trump has decided to rig his own witch hunt against Bruce Ohr and that’s what all the tweets and insults, “Bruce Ohr Is a disgrace” are about.

As usual, it’s much a tweet about nothing.

As yet, there is little evidence to support Trump’s contention that Ohr helped Steele find dirt on Trump. He appears to be only a messenger. At this point, it’s unclear what Ohr even told his friend at the FBI about Steele’s information and whether any of that reporting ended up influencing the Russia investigation. There is also, as yet, no evidence that senior Justice Department officials were even aware of Ohr’s sideline communications with Steele about the Russian probe.

Trump’s mention of Ohr’s wife appears gratuitous. Her role in the matter, as yet, appears minimal.

Trump tweeted early this morning, “Study the late Joseph McCarthy, because we are now in a period with Mueller and his gang that make [sic] Joseph McCarthy look like a baby! Rigged Witch Hunt!” The tweet was part of a multi-tweet tantrum disparaging the media, as usual, and the New York Times in particular.

Whatever provoked Trump to his latest meltdown on Twitter, he’s clearly telegraphing that he’s a) afraid of what could come out next about him, b) plans to keep knocking the press to attempt to debunk whatever comes out, c) intends to throw yet another sacrifice into the arena to be eaten by lions whenever he needs to create a distraction and regain control of the news cycle. This pathetic gamesmanship is all that Trump knows and he thinks it’s fine because he conceives of himself as a great strategist.

What he doesn’t appreciate, ever, is that in dealing with the Mueller probe and the intelligence community he is not dealing with trifling people. He thinks he’s the star in a world of, what appear to him, as stock characters and supporting players who necessarily must please him or be written out of the script.

This is the mind set that Trump displays to his power axis, consisting of Fox News and Twitter. Unfortunately, the only one dimensional cardboard cut-out character in this scenario is Trump himself. The adversaries he’s taking on, Mueller, Brennan, Yates, the lot of them, are highly developed beings and the milieu in which they operate is a great deal more complex than reality TV. Trump believes that if he can just set his audience up to believe whatever lie he’s spinning, he’ll somehow avoid accountability for his actions. Trump’s narcissism is his fatal character flaw and just like in a Greek tragedy, that flaw, manifesting as an unshakeable belief that he’s a genius surrounded by morons, is what will bring him down. It can’t happen soon enough.

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