mercredi 15 février 2017

The Firing of General Flynn

(Apologies if there is a thread on this. I saw numerous mentions in several threads, but not a thread specifically on this subject. If I am mistaken, please close the thread and direct me to the appropriate place.)

A month into office, and Donald Trump is in the middle of his first political crisis. Honeymoons ain't what they used to be.

I'll be honest about something right up front. I don't even actually know what Flynn did. I know it involved a phone call to the Russian ambassador. Doesn't seem like a good idea to me, given the circumstances. Also, he apparently wasn't exactly forthcoming about it. However is there anything actually wrong with calling the Russian ambassador? My guess is if I were to call him up myself, he wouldn't take my call. A lot of people say it wasn't illegal.

My other guess is that, regardless of whether or not it is legal, it's the kind of thing that some of his supporters are just really bent out of shape about. A bunch of people chanting "Drain the swamp!" and "Lock her up!" probably weren't picturing The Donald's cronies making clandestine phone calls to Russian ambassador's before they even took office. I just don't see that being something they wanted up near Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

So, since I really don't know enough to say whether Flynn truly did anything wrong, as opposed to merely unseemly, I won't comment on that. However, I will comment on Trump's reaction, specifically what he said at the press conference today. Trump talked about how unfairly General Flynn was treated.

Uh.....Donald? You are the one who fired him. The press didn't fire him. The leakers didn't fire him. You, Mr. President, fired him. If anyone treated Flynn unfairly, it was the President himself. I only see two possible explanations for why Flynn was fired. Either he did something wrong, and deserved to be fired, or Donald Trump is an untrustworthy person who threw his friend under the bus when he became a political liability. Have I missed something? Is there some other alternative?


The President was also mightily upset about the leaks of classified information. Assuming they happened, I guess that's something to be upset about. He'll have to be on guard against leaks. Maybe he should even appoint staff whose job is specifically to find and catch people who leak things. Maybe he could even give them a catchy name to promote team morale, something like "the plumbers". I'll bet no one has ever thought of that before. What could possibly go wrong with such a plan?

Well, in all seriousness, people ought not to leak classified data, but it doesn't really matter. Legal or not, the cat's out of the bag and there's no point denying it happened, so we're back to the beginning. Either Flynn did something he shouldn't have done, in which case why the praise? Or Trump stabbed Flynn in the back for political expedience.

Only 204 more weeks to go.


via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2lSyeEQ

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