The daily coronavirus briefing took a turn into an unrelated subject on Sunday when a reporter asked President Trump if he was still considering pardons for former campaign associates such as Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, both of whom were convicted of crimes during the FBI’s probe of Russian meddling during the 2016 election. It is worth noting, of course, that neither Stone nor Manafort nor Michael Flynn were actually convicted of crimes that had anything to do with colluding with Moscow.
Trump’s response to the question was telling, if not exactly decisive. “You will find out,” he said, leaving the door wide open, of course, for pardoning his associates.
That decision would bring with it a certain amount of political fallout, but then again, that makes little difference in an environment where the liberal media will trash Trump for any reason under the sun – even if they have to make up the reason from whole cloth. The endlessly-combative media is, under the circumstances, its own worst enemy. When every day brings another front-page headline about how awful President Trump is, why is today’s scandal any worse than yesterday’s or the day before’s?
If only there were old fables telling us of the dangers of crying wolf.
Trump’s anger at the entire investigation remains palpable even now. He said that he considers the officials involved in perpetrating the probe “human scum” and he lamented the lives ruined by the nearly three-year-long witch hunt.
“Well, I just tell you this. Roger Stone was treated very unfairly. Paul Manafort, the black book turned out to be a fraud,” Trump said at the press conference. “We learned that out during the various last number of weeks or months. They had a black book that came out of Ukraine, turned out to be a fraud. Turned out to be a fraud. They convicted a man, turned out to be a fraud. General Flynn was a highly respected person and it turned out to be a scam on him. The FBI said he didn’t lie and Mueller’s people wanted him to go to jail. Okay? So what am I going to do? You’ll find out what I’m going to do. I’m not going to say what I’m going to do, but I will tell you the whole thing turned out to be a scam, and it turned out to be a disgrace to our country, and it was a take down of a duly elected President.
“And these people suffered greatly,” Trump continued. “General Flynn, I mean what they did to him, and even the FBI said, and they had some, and nobody bigger fan of the FBI than me at the level of the people that really matter. But the top of the FBI was scum, and what they did to General Flynn, and you know it and everybody knows it, was a disgrace. He was in the service for over 30 years. He ends up being a general and respected, respected, and almost his first day in office, they come in with papers. They want to investigate him. Never happened before and now the tables are turned. Investigate the investigators, I guess. These were crooked people. These are bad people. These are very dangerous people. You know what they are though? They’re scum. They’re human scum.”
People who tried to orchestrate the downfall of the sitting president, using rumor and innuendo and fake dossiers? Yeah, “human scum” just about gets to the heart of it.
Now let’s see some indictments.
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