Trump said the FBI was “in tatters” and “dishonest”.  Congressional Republicans claim there is a “deep state” within the FBI which has political biases.

How soon we forget.

In late 2016, the perception by many was the opposite – the FBI was pro-Trump and anti-Clinton.  FBI Director Comey had damaged the Clinton campaign by twice publicly discussing the investigation of her emails.

This column from right before the 2016 election states  “According to numbers from August, 67 percent of FBI agents are white men. Fewer than 20 percent are women. The number of African-American agents hovers around 4.5 percent, with Asian-Americans about the same and Latinos at about 6.5 percent. If Trump were running for president with an electorate that looked like that, he’d win in a landslide.”

While FBI leadership has changed, I assume most of the career employees are still there and are probably pro-Trump.  Sad!

4 years after taking up the mantle of leak-hunting my stories about the FBI in 2016, the justice dept. IG is out today with a report that found… not much of anything (a thread about the power of bullshit to influence world events): https://t.co/9AMN50h519

— Devlin Barrett (@DevlinBarrett) August 5, 2021

This column discusses findings by two political scientists about how to identify an authoritarian leader.

They have four criteria:

“1. The leader shows only a weak commitment to democratic rules.

2. He or she denies the legitimacy of opponents.

3. He or she tolerates violence.

4. He or she shows some willingness to curb civil liberties or the media. ”

Trump meets all four criteria.  Sad!

 

Trump’s frequent visits to his golf courses have drawn a lot of media attention.  One of the main reasons is his double standard.  He wrote 27 tweets bashing Obama for playing golf.  Trump said he wouldn’t have time to play golf when he was the president but he has been to one of his golf clubs 92 times so far.  His administration claims that he is meeting with members of Congress there but that’s a scam too – it hasn’t happened often.  Sad!

If Trump really wants bipartisanship, he shouldn’t act like this.  Trump invited the two Jewish Republican members of Congress to the White House Hannukah party but didn’t invite any of the 29 Jewish Democratic members.  This has normally been a bipartisan celebration but Trump turns everything into “for Trump” or “Against Trump” – us vs. them.  He’s going to have to do a lot better than this if he wants cooperation from Democrats.

Here’s the New York Times article about the party.

In the past, Trump criticized Obama for holding the party before the holiday but he did the same thing in 2017.

Sad!

This is old but still good.  Go here to make your own Trump hat!