Your kind of analysis helps teach your readers and listeners to think better and to notice more, to start to see the structure of what is happening. Thank you for your many good contributions to understanding!
The Republican attitude for decades has been it’s ok if we cheat because the Democrats are doing it. (Whether the democrats are actually cheating or not is irrelevant. The Republicans just assume they are because they assume that the Democrats are like them.) Isgur’s response is the same, the democrats would have done the same in this situation so what’s the problem.
Trump steamrolled the Republican Party with his attitude that cheating is smart. Cheating investors and declaring bankruptcy is smart. He doesn’t need an excuse that the other side is cheating. If they are too stupid to cheat effectively then they deserve to lose. If he can cheat better than his opponent then he deserves to win. If he can use the presidency to enrich himself and his family, then everything is how it should be in his world.
The people who went to Trump University knew he was a conman. They thought he was going to teach them how to be conmen (or conwomen). Instead he conned them. I think something similar is going on with MAGA supporters. They knew Trump was a scumbag but thought he would be working to screw over their joint enemies. They are slowly coming to realize that he is screwing them over too.
Exactly, he just took it up a notch. They needed political cover to cheat - the Democrats are doing it so we need to do it to keep up. He doesn't bother with an excuse - he thinks cheating is a legitimate way to go about doing business.
Like many of your essays, Mike, this one had particular resonance with me. That's because back in the days of Bush's Iraq invasion, it struck me that "loyalty" -- the type you first mentioned -- was a factor in America's inability to come to grips with the criminality of that invasion. So I typed out on a piece of paper the following:
"Loyalty is the Devil's Favorite Virtue"
and put in on my bulletin board.
I don't know why exactly I did that, but it felt right. And it still feels right.
The point is even simpler than you suggest. If the posited question is "wouldn’t any administration, faced with the same fact pattern, do exactly the same thing" (the 'thing' being a coverup of a global child abuse ring involving the President and/or his friends) and the implied answer is "of course they would", then you are part of the problem.
Sarah Isgur is a hack. She’s very smart but can’t allow herself to notice the moral difference between the parties. Republican politics - her politics - always led to MAGA. Democrats were always better. What would this party do if it were in charge?
With Democrats, we have seen that and it’s clearly better both in terms of policy but also in terms of process. Her arguments are very ignorant.
Ryan, as a onetime Democrat believer, I think you are focusing too much on their optics. If you look closely at their actual accomplishments, I believe you will find less substance about which to crow. Between the two parties, I generally prefer the Democrats. OTOH, I feel that points to a very dysfunctional aspect of our entrenched two-party political superstructure.
Democrats aren’t the Second Coming, they’re just the only party we have working in the public interest. I feel pretty good about Obama’s achievements on health care and Biden’s on clean energy, but it’s rough because of course the Republicans party is constantly trying to strip mine the country and sell it for parts.
How good was Obama?! The JCPOA is a testament to that...people slowly figuring out how good that needed to be as this Iran mire keeps getting worse. He had a grand bargain where the speaker wouldn't pick up his calls:; he had an immigration reform that gop deliberately killed. Biden's too. One party for all its flaws is actually head and shoulders better than the other. Not marginally.
Yes. I don’t think I have all the answers or that I’m a policy polymath, but I don’t need to be to see that Obama’s policies were basically reasonable attempts to do good things in the face of an idiotically intransigent opposing party counting on racism to put them back in power (which worked)
Sam, I agree the JCPOA was a high point for Obama foreign policy. OTOH, both Crimea/Ukraine and Syria must be seen as low points. Both Obama and Biden are wanting when it comes to real support for Ukraine. We can’t really give either president good marks on Gaza/West Bank.
Ryan, as I said before, I tend to prefer the Democrats within our current system. However, I think that system must change dramatically before we have any chance of avoiding a repeat of the latest corporate takeover of our former democracy. The demolition of the strong two party politics is one of the needed reforms, in my opinion. Obama would have been an even stronger president if he hadn’t always started negotiations with an attempt to meet the Republicans somewhere in the middle. Biden also did well but then forgot he wasn’t irreplaceable.
Ryan, I agree completely. What I don’t see, however, is a move among the Party leadership to acknowledge the need for change. Instead, they continue to oppose the candidates and even the incumbents who want to change the message and the sponsors of the party. As long as the leadership wants to drink at the trough filled by AIPAC and other special interests offering big money, the party will not offer real change. Of course, the violence may eventually come because no one allowed real change within the system.
Additionally, the MSM is no different—they live in structured environment that allows Trump and his minions to run circles around them. They create false equivalencies to justify the administration’s actions—or just distract us with the outrage of the day because they don’t know how to handle this administration or any administration committed to destroying our democracy and rule of law. It’s that, or they are complicit, or worse: They’re afraid!
All the while, the real work is being conducted behind the scenes by Vought, Miller, The Heritage Society, Federalist Society, DOGE and all of the tech bro’s who have attained all of our social security, IRS and Treasury records.
Echoing the rest of your readership -- good stuff! Bad faith -- the default of the emotionally immature -- is beyond sad. They reflexively resort to word games in bad faith, to innuendo in the attempt to avoid lying, to cover their original sin of incompetence.
Kristopher Ealy has a piece in Lincoln Square that ties in nicely to what you’ve written. I recommend reading it to broaden understanding of how what this piece lays out works at scale.
John Dean finally said “no” to Nixon. He chose loyalty to the law and to the Constitution over loyalty to the president and the party. Why aren’t there any John Deans now? Is it because what Dean then diagnosed as the cancer on Nixon’s presidency was not successfully treated by the revelation of the cover-up, the House voting articles of impeachment, Nixon’s resignation, the convictions and jailing of Dean, Mitchell, Haldeman, Erlichman, et al.? Ford’s pardon aborted that treatment and allowed the cancer to seemingly disappear from view while it actually submerged and insinuated itself in the body politic, only to subsequently metastasize. This actually happened to someone I know. They were successfully treated and pronounced “cancer free” after seven years. But when they died, thirteen years later, the autopsy revealed that it was the very same original cancer that had killed them. Thus there was something amiss with Dean’s initial diagnosis. It wasn’t a particular cover-up that was the cancer. That was only a symptom of the underlying disease. It is not for nothing that Roger Stone has a tattoo of Nixon on his back, and has been gainfully employed since 1972.
Great point about the real deep state at work (not the administrative state that is being dismantled by Trump)! This person is a shady operator but at least we can kind of infer the truth about some of the coverups and leaks 😏😡
Soooo good and careful and helpful to me. I see lawyers up above quibbling from their prof’l points of view. But I am not a lawyer, I’m just one of the hundreds of millions of citizens being snookered and silenced and ill-served by this professional class of dissemblers — on Right and Left. Isgur is one I had clocked years ago, who bothered me in very particular ways. But I didn’t know much about her, it was her manner & personality that drove me nuts. So smug and self-certain, but never seemed like she was speaking *to* humans, *in* human language. She was a prime reason I did not last long as a Dispatch subscriber. It was easy to predict Jonah & Steve would go with the money & the institutions they’d helped build. Kevin Williamson, though, is a real disappointment. I genuinely thought him to be more like you, capable of as honest an investigation as you have done here, Mike. He did not seem to be from inside the compound, but I guess he’s an inmate now.
Isgur is a right wing Streberin—nothing more, nothing less. You doth protest too much about Lisa Page. How a once excellent lawyer could be so stupid as to trade prejudicial texts with her lover Strozak about the subject of an ongoing investigation is beyond me. Operation Crossfire Hurricane, especially the role played by CIA bad penny Stephan Halper, is a national embarrassment. In the end, Page has done just fine. Not only did she get paid 800k from the DOJ (Strozak got 1.2m), Page also got gigs at NBC/MSNBC, and the top DC law firm ZwillGen PLLC. She and Strozak paid a very small price for their unprofessional, amateur hour conduct.
You treat this as a fact like the weather when it's actually a consequence of Isgur's behavior. Her texts have been read aloud by Trump and a hundred other grifters, leading to death threats.
The only person to not suffer consequences in that affair was Sarah Isgur.
It is a fact like the weather. 21st century American politics is a bare knuckle arena. Page knew the rules—you slip you fall. Embarrassment, humiliation and death threats are the price of admission. Lisa and her lover Strozik are not shrinking violets, they have landed on her feet. As for the odious Isgur, her circle of the sun has only just begun.
He knew the rules of a normal DOJ. Trump made it abnormal, so now we have the FBI director on calls in the Situation Room about how to suppress the Epstein files.
Contrast with James Comey. He spoke with Obama once -- at the announcement of his nomination -- and never again thereafter.
Couldn’t disagree more! If Operation Crossfire Hurricane was an embarrassment, it’s only because it was never completed (thanks to Trump and a sycophantic Republican Congress), as well as it not going far enough in scope!
We had amble evidence of Russian interference, as well as members of Trump’s team colluding with Russian’s oligarchs in various stages of the election including social media. We also know that many on Trump’s team, including his family did business with oligarchs associated with Putin? Anyone would be investigated if they were running for president on those allegations alone—never disclosed and was denied by Trump and his family!
We also had the Egyptian government, which gave $10 million illegally to Trump’s campaign in October 2016 when the Access Hollywood tape came out–the investigation was immediately tailored by Barr to be as narrowly focused as possible—and eventually starved to death, just like the Mueller Report.
So seriously, if you think illegal shenanigans didn’t take place—which are now provable, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale with your name written all over it!…:)
Robert: Moral guilt and legal guilt are not the same. Legally speaking, Crossfire Hurricane was a debacle. Using CIA nepo baby Stephan Halper as a paid confidential informant was the first mistake. From Debate Gate (1980), to Palmer National Bank/Iran Contra (1983), to the South African-backed Renamo guerillas in Mozambique (1989), to charges for possession of crack cocaine (1994), decade after decade, “the Walrus,” turns up like a bad penny.Most recently, Halper, along with disgraced former MI6 head Richard “Dodgy Dossier” Dearlove and disgraced MI6 spy and “pee tape” progenitor, Christopher Steele, were exposed as the taproot of Russiagate. “Their story is both a tragedy and a farce—think Jason Bourne meets Austin Powers,” wrote Halper’s former student and State Department official, Stephen Schrage. “Yet the damage they did is deadly serious.” Before the Walrus’s cover was blown, he secretly recorded Trump campaign officials and selectively leaked intelligence that even the FBI concluded was “not accurate” and “not plausible” to his friends and former students in the mainstream press. For his ham-handed efforts, the U.S. government paid Halper more than a million dollars. Like the increasingly opaque Epstein Affair, Russiagate should not be a partisan issue, but a matter of grave concern to all Americans who are tired of being divided by lies and played like rubes.
Fair enough, I was looking at this from a different perspective; however, my point hasn’t changed. And this moral and legal distinction is another distraction from my point of view. These are the same tactics this country has used for the entire war on terror—perhaps objections should have been raised well in advance of Trump; if this was ever an issue. And now you and many others have weaponized this as an excuse: it’s a distinction without a difference!
Furthermore, you are basing everything on perception, not reality; or at least the reality of working with informants and assets for law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
And as for Strzok and Page, sloppy work happens all the time. If you take a microscope to just about anyone, you’ll find ways to dissect their work. It’s never a reason to dismiss a case outright—killing the messenger! Remember, these people were charged under Trump’s administration, not Obama. Trump’s DOJ and FBI indicted these people—it wasn’t political.
Secondly, the DOJ IG found no evidence that Strzok, Page, Halper, or the others participated in an effort to damage Trump’s candidacy — they participated in legitimate law enforcement inquiries, and nothing in the OIG review suggested any of them took politically motivated actions. So your accusations aren’t even justified—other than being politically correct in a perfect world which doesn’t exist!
Furthermore, we can also go back to Fannie Willis in GA—the investigation, which was legitimate (including GOP operatives gaining access to voter machines). It was derailed because two prosecutors had sex? Seriously? There is no conflict of interest—prosecuted are tasked with putting criminals in jail, and this wouldn’t be the first time prosecutors had sex during a case. Trump’s genius is his ability to turn everything that takes place often into controversies that for anyone else would be a moot or insignificant point!
Bottom line, when working in intelligence and counterintelligence operations, you’re always dealing with crooked and morally bankrupt and flexible informants; rarely do you find choir boys and boy scouts in this line of work. If complete credibility of FBI and CIA assets and informants were a litmus test for convicting people; no one would ever be convicted of a crime.
Sorry, this isn’t the movies, these cases aren’t black and white—no good or bad guys, just morally flexible and the despicable everywhere you look.
The real question we should be asking is why have Trump’s people been so successful in burying every one of these investigations before they ever come to light? That’s real power, and shows that these stories are just distractions.
Additionally, ask yourself how SCOTUS was able to conjure up a bogus immunity clause in the constitution for one man? Or how they slow rolled two investigations into a former president—documents case (treason), and another that proved election fraud and interference on Trump’s part?
And when you can answer these questions, then tell us how Eileen Canon can get away with dismissing a relevant case, getting overturned twice by the Circuit Court (unanimous ruling), and let a guy who took over 300 of our country’s most top secret documents from the Whitehouse (SAP programs and SCI’s—Secret Compartmentalized Information) get away with treason—claiming political persecution. These documents are never supposed to leave a SCIF! Anyone else would have done something similar—would been thrown in jail immediately and never seen the light of day again!
My point, you’re focused on the distractions—the Hader’s exist everyday and have put many people away. What you’re not focusing on is what’s staring you straight in the face—the institutional corruption protecting Trump and his minions—including SCTOUS, the people behind Project 2025, and an entire right-wing media ecosystem that carry’s water for the man and his movement.
Lastly, you’re finding ways to justify the unjustifiable with a moral versus legal argument—and ironically, your doing so for a man who is the antithesis of moral! So the bridge’s price just doubled!…:)
Robert: Not everyone was silent about the misguided “Global War on Terror.” I criticized it in NY Newsday opeds from 2001-2007, then addressed it again in my 2010 book Law and War: American History and International Law. As Robert Jervis pointed out in his book The Logic of Images in International Relations, perceptions are often more important than empirical facts, especially in international politics. We can agree to disagree that this was not political. If nothing else, the August 3, 2016 Brennan, Clapper, Biden and Obama meeting in which “The Clinton Plan” was unveiled was highly suspicious. I too read the Horowitz Report (and the Durham Report) and we can again disagree that there was “no evidence” Halper “participated in an effort to damage Trump’s candidacy.” The Lokhova case documents and the secretly recorded transcripts of Halper’s meetings with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos tell a different story. I worked as a war crimes investigator in Cambodia for much of the 1990s and had informants from all walks of life. I kept them on a very short leash, especially the former Khmer Rouge. I wrote about these experiences in my book Facing Death in Cambodia. I never voted or supported Trump and have written quite critically of him since the took office. My May 28 essay, “The Empire Wears No Close: Fingerpainting with Feces” was hardly complimentary of Trump or his administration. My point is a simple one—Halper, Page, Strozak, Willis and James shit the bed. For reasons that can be debated, they failed to make their cases. Worse, they made Trump into a martyr, rallied his MAGA base and got him reelected. Americans across the political spectrum need to do better. We have been on a downhill, unconstitutional run since 9/11. In 2024, I wrote “America Needs A Truth and Reconciliation Commission” because I believed our criminal justice system had grown too politicized to do anything but create more martyrs. Moreover, because neither party holds a monopoly on political or military power, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is one of the few effective remedies available to a bitterly and dangerously divided nation. I believe this should be part of a larger reckoning that forces America to open our national closet, face our past, then ask what we have become and where we are going as a nation. Rather than gallows and primitive political justice, our political, financial, and foreign policy miscreants should get a choice. They can trade testimony for amnesty or face a military tribunal and a life sentence without the possibility of parole. After the TRC and trials conclude, there should be a third Constitutional Convention that includes national referendums on basic issues: borders, citizenship, free speech, healthcare, pollution, law enforcement, taxes, lobbyists, monopoly/crony capitalism, AI, foreign policy alliances/entanglements, and more. Yes, my idea sounds Polyanna-ish, but what other options do we have? After all, the bloodiest war in U.S. history was the Civil War. If we could kill 700,000 of each other with single shot rifled muskets, bayonets and primitive artillery, imagine what Palantir could do. Now, about that bridge, I’ve got some land in Florida. Would you be willing to trade? It gets a little wet at high tide, but you can probably build on it.
“My point is a simple one—Halper, Page, Strozak, Willis and James shit the bed. For reasons that can be debated, they failed to make their cases. Worse, they made Trump into a martyr, rallied his MAGA base and got him reelected.”
I agree with your larger viewpoints about holding everyone to account—like I said, “In a better and more perfect world.” Unfortunately, I’m a pragmatist and live in the real world—we have a robust justice system (it’s good, has corruption, and need improvement), yet, it still favors the rich and powerful. Consider the system to be like how humans evolve: we are always a work in progress—excluding the current administration. At least, those of us always looking to improve ourselves and the world!
And you so eloquently stated, we did have Iran-Contra and other major debacles; in all these cases, no one was held to account. Yet, in most cases, the real corruption and abuses, all took place under republican administrations, yet the perception is that democrats use their power as corruptly as republican administrations; all evidence points to the contrary—just like republicans are better with the economy.
For the record, I have equal disdain for both parties, so I have no stake in this game, and mostly agree with you on politics, so there is that.
However, by making these analogies against democrats (especially since Strozak and page were bureaucrats)—their actions were possibly political when nothing could be further from the truth; it gives the appearance of making like false equivalencies (whether just perception or not), since Trump’s actions are all political and have had severe consequences for this nation and the world—and continue to do so. He needs to be stopped at all costs if we’re going to have even a chance at survival.
As for the claim against Willis, Jack Smith, etc..; couldn’t make cases—let’s not forget they were never allowed to proceed.
The distractions kept the cases moving at a snails pace, and SCOTUS slow rolled their decisions, making it impossible to hold a criminal proceeding before the elections—which from my perspective was entirely the point!
Bottom line, I don’t disagree with you on your positions, as much as I believe the framing of your positions can be easily misconstrued or manipulated by Trump’s team; making it easy for these unqualified and corrupt—morally bankrupt social paths, to continue to keep the sheeple in line, while having the ability to lay waste to our republic-democracy with complete impunity! That’s my point!..:)
I agree the Lisa Page/Strozak debacle was foolish and stupid. How can such intelligent people do such stupid things? It undermined the investigation into Trump much to his own personal advantage. That situation reminds me of the stupidity of Fani Willis in Fulton County with her boyfriend/co-prosecutor which ended up blowing apart all of her carefully investigated indictments against Trump involving election interference, conspiracy to commit fraud and racketeering, where she had a good chance of prosecuting Trump in the end. But the end didn’t end as it ought to have. It was a mixture of overly self- confidence on her part and assuming she was above reproach. (She was accused of having a personal/sexual relationship with her partner in the investigation which ended the investigation faster than a brick can hit the ground). Her weaknesses from those traits set up Trump to attack and attack hard (through his sycophants) who would do anything to take her down which he succeeded at doing rapidly.
Don’t get me wrong, I was on Willis side and thought the whole accusation was BS. But anyone taking on trump must have a clean nose 24/7 and neither Fani nor Lisa nor Peter used good judgement which we all are now paying the price of those decisions.
You’re right. But most intelligent people understand cause and effect:
When you are prosecuting the man who wants to become potus for the second time, and you have indictments against him all lined up in a row, and you are responsible for leading (possibly) one of the most notorious trials of the 21st century and you sleep with your professional partner, there will be an effect, a consequence that will take you down faster than a brick falling from a building from a man who hates you, who hates your gender, who hates your race and will do anything to stop you.
Cause and effect: yes most intelligent people understand what it is and how it works.
Fani screwed up (no pun intended) and my final word is she should have known better in such a high stakes situation. And she should have known better given her intelligence and experience as a DA.
We are in heated agreement. 21st century American politics is a bare knuckle arena--you slip you fall. Fani, Leticia et al made Trump into a martyr for the second time and exhumed what should have been his corpse from the graveyard of American politics.
He needed to be prosecuted. No one is above the law as John Locke reminds us. The problem is when a cult believe their leader is the Jesus of our moment, then he does become a martyr. What’s the option? Let the powerful run ram shod over the law?
As the Epstein affair demonstrated and continues to demonstrate—our elites—from both sides of the political spectrum—do run roughshod over the law. As Polyannish as it sounds, I believe America needs a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We have been in a cold Civil War since 2016. Between 1862-5 we killed @ 700,000 of each other. Imagine what we could do to each other with Palantir's help!
Isgur is a regular on Left,Right, and Center on public radio. She is a Beltway pundit and full of herself. I find her extremely disagreeable. She seems intelligent enough to know that she could use her skills to better the Country for all of us. She chooses otherwise.
This is overthought and overwrought. There aren't two definitions of loyalty. Loyalty (loyal) requires the preposition "to," so one can know who's loyal to what/whom. Conflicting loyalties is an old idea, been around for ages. There's also nothing new in a defined hierarchy of loyalties. What is new is the overt presentation of self-benefit parading as either somehow moral, and if not that, than merely conforming to standard practice. Isgur's loyalties are to herself, not anything else.
Isgur is a cynic. It's absurd to think she didn't know what was going on. She did what any good lawyer would do: she reframed the issue, otherwise known as shifting the standards to those which benefit her client. Her actual argument, implied rather than stated explicitly, is standards don't matter if political exigencies require it. Then she acted as if standards do matter. She became a Never-Trumper because she saw that as in her best interest. That's another way of saying Isgur understood the shame of staying within Trump's orbit would be more costly than abandoning it.
Whether she truly believes Democrats would act the same way—if that's how she justifies herself—is a her-problem. That fact she is manifestly wrong about that is an us-problem. I offer no edits or clarifications to the piece as posted.
Why would you? No one, least of all me, suggested you should. The time for editing is before publication, not afterwards.
There's nothing remarkable about her. She's a capable lawyer of the sort of which there are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, who've always acted, as have most politicians, as if power were the highest principle.
She's an "us problem" to the extent we've a massive institutional problem requiring changes we may not have the political will to do.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
~Upton Sinclair
Well said! Paul Krugman used the quote in an interview today. How timely!…:)
Excellent. We need more knowledge and principle like this.
Your kind of analysis helps teach your readers and listeners to think better and to notice more, to start to see the structure of what is happening. Thank you for your many good contributions to understanding!
The Republican attitude for decades has been it’s ok if we cheat because the Democrats are doing it. (Whether the democrats are actually cheating or not is irrelevant. The Republicans just assume they are because they assume that the Democrats are like them.) Isgur’s response is the same, the democrats would have done the same in this situation so what’s the problem.
Trump steamrolled the Republican Party with his attitude that cheating is smart. Cheating investors and declaring bankruptcy is smart. He doesn’t need an excuse that the other side is cheating. If they are too stupid to cheat effectively then they deserve to lose. If he can cheat better than his opponent then he deserves to win. If he can use the presidency to enrich himself and his family, then everything is how it should be in his world.
The people who went to Trump University knew he was a conman. They thought he was going to teach them how to be conmen (or conwomen). Instead he conned them. I think something similar is going on with MAGA supporters. They knew Trump was a scumbag but thought he would be working to screw over their joint enemies. They are slowly coming to realize that he is screwing them over too.
It cant just be Trump. He merely used the scaffolding others built. They were waiting.
Exactly, he just took it up a notch. They needed political cover to cheat - the Democrats are doing it so we need to do it to keep up. He doesn't bother with an excuse - he thinks cheating is a legitimate way to go about doing business.
Like many of your essays, Mike, this one had particular resonance with me. That's because back in the days of Bush's Iraq invasion, it struck me that "loyalty" -- the type you first mentioned -- was a factor in America's inability to come to grips with the criminality of that invasion. So I typed out on a piece of paper the following:
"Loyalty is the Devil's Favorite Virtue"
and put in on my bulletin board.
I don't know why exactly I did that, but it felt right. And it still feels right.
The point is even simpler than you suggest. If the posited question is "wouldn’t any administration, faced with the same fact pattern, do exactly the same thing" (the 'thing' being a coverup of a global child abuse ring involving the President and/or his friends) and the implied answer is "of course they would", then you are part of the problem.
Sarah Isgur is a hack. She’s very smart but can’t allow herself to notice the moral difference between the parties. Republican politics - her politics - always led to MAGA. Democrats were always better. What would this party do if it were in charge?
With Democrats, we have seen that and it’s clearly better both in terms of policy but also in terms of process. Her arguments are very ignorant.
Ryan, as a onetime Democrat believer, I think you are focusing too much on their optics. If you look closely at their actual accomplishments, I believe you will find less substance about which to crow. Between the two parties, I generally prefer the Democrats. OTOH, I feel that points to a very dysfunctional aspect of our entrenched two-party political superstructure.
Democrats aren’t the Second Coming, they’re just the only party we have working in the public interest. I feel pretty good about Obama’s achievements on health care and Biden’s on clean energy, but it’s rough because of course the Republicans party is constantly trying to strip mine the country and sell it for parts.
How good was Obama?! The JCPOA is a testament to that...people slowly figuring out how good that needed to be as this Iran mire keeps getting worse. He had a grand bargain where the speaker wouldn't pick up his calls:; he had an immigration reform that gop deliberately killed. Biden's too. One party for all its flaws is actually head and shoulders better than the other. Not marginally.
Yes. I don’t think I have all the answers or that I’m a policy polymath, but I don’t need to be to see that Obama’s policies were basically reasonable attempts to do good things in the face of an idiotically intransigent opposing party counting on racism to put them back in power (which worked)
Sam, I agree the JCPOA was a high point for Obama foreign policy. OTOH, both Crimea/Ukraine and Syria must be seen as low points. Both Obama and Biden are wanting when it comes to real support for Ukraine. We can’t really give either president good marks on Gaza/West Bank.
Dont forget Cuba.
Yeah they shd have done better on Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Etc.
Ryan, as I said before, I tend to prefer the Democrats within our current system. However, I think that system must change dramatically before we have any chance of avoiding a repeat of the latest corporate takeover of our former democracy. The demolition of the strong two party politics is one of the needed reforms, in my opinion. Obama would have been an even stronger president if he hadn’t always started negotiations with an attempt to meet the Republicans somewhere in the middle. Biden also did well but then forgot he wasn’t irreplaceable.
In your view what is the way this change will happen? Because electing Republicans for sure won’t do it.
Democrats are going to have to become the party of change or the change will be brought about by violence.
Ryan, I agree completely. What I don’t see, however, is a move among the Party leadership to acknowledge the need for change. Instead, they continue to oppose the candidates and even the incumbents who want to change the message and the sponsors of the party. As long as the leadership wants to drink at the trough filled by AIPAC and other special interests offering big money, the party will not offer real change. Of course, the violence may eventually come because no one allowed real change within the system.
Right.
Republicans can be counted on to do the worst thing at all times.
Democrats will do the least inconvenient thing their constituents force them to.
Those are the choices.
Excellent newsletter and quite revealing.
Additionally, the MSM is no different—they live in structured environment that allows Trump and his minions to run circles around them. They create false equivalencies to justify the administration’s actions—or just distract us with the outrage of the day because they don’t know how to handle this administration or any administration committed to destroying our democracy and rule of law. It’s that, or they are complicit, or worse: They’re afraid!
All the while, the real work is being conducted behind the scenes by Vought, Miller, The Heritage Society, Federalist Society, DOGE and all of the tech bro’s who have attained all of our social security, IRS and Treasury records.
And yet, here we are!
Echoing the rest of your readership -- good stuff! Bad faith -- the default of the emotionally immature -- is beyond sad. They reflexively resort to word games in bad faith, to innuendo in the attempt to avoid lying, to cover their original sin of incompetence.
Kristopher Ealy has a piece in Lincoln Square that ties in nicely to what you’ve written. I recommend reading it to broaden understanding of how what this piece lays out works at scale.
John Dean finally said “no” to Nixon. He chose loyalty to the law and to the Constitution over loyalty to the president and the party. Why aren’t there any John Deans now? Is it because what Dean then diagnosed as the cancer on Nixon’s presidency was not successfully treated by the revelation of the cover-up, the House voting articles of impeachment, Nixon’s resignation, the convictions and jailing of Dean, Mitchell, Haldeman, Erlichman, et al.? Ford’s pardon aborted that treatment and allowed the cancer to seemingly disappear from view while it actually submerged and insinuated itself in the body politic, only to subsequently metastasize. This actually happened to someone I know. They were successfully treated and pronounced “cancer free” after seven years. But when they died, thirteen years later, the autopsy revealed that it was the very same original cancer that had killed them. Thus there was something amiss with Dean’s initial diagnosis. It wasn’t a particular cover-up that was the cancer. That was only a symptom of the underlying disease. It is not for nothing that Roger Stone has a tattoo of Nixon on his back, and has been gainfully employed since 1972.
Great point about the real deep state at work (not the administrative state that is being dismantled by Trump)! This person is a shady operator but at least we can kind of infer the truth about some of the coverups and leaks 😏😡
Soooo good and careful and helpful to me. I see lawyers up above quibbling from their prof’l points of view. But I am not a lawyer, I’m just one of the hundreds of millions of citizens being snookered and silenced and ill-served by this professional class of dissemblers — on Right and Left. Isgur is one I had clocked years ago, who bothered me in very particular ways. But I didn’t know much about her, it was her manner & personality that drove me nuts. So smug and self-certain, but never seemed like she was speaking *to* humans, *in* human language. She was a prime reason I did not last long as a Dispatch subscriber. It was easy to predict Jonah & Steve would go with the money & the institutions they’d helped build. Kevin Williamson, though, is a real disappointment. I genuinely thought him to be more like you, capable of as honest an investigation as you have done here, Mike. He did not seem to be from inside the compound, but I guess he’s an inmate now.
Isgur is a right wing Streberin—nothing more, nothing less. You doth protest too much about Lisa Page. How a once excellent lawyer could be so stupid as to trade prejudicial texts with her lover Strozak about the subject of an ongoing investigation is beyond me. Operation Crossfire Hurricane, especially the role played by CIA bad penny Stephan Halper, is a national embarrassment. In the end, Page has done just fine. Not only did she get paid 800k from the DOJ (Strozak got 1.2m), Page also got gigs at NBC/MSNBC, and the top DC law firm ZwillGen PLLC. She and Strozak paid a very small price for their unprofessional, amateur hour conduct.
"she get paid 800k from the DOJ"
You treat this as a fact like the weather when it's actually a consequence of Isgur's behavior. Her texts have been read aloud by Trump and a hundred other grifters, leading to death threats.
The only person to not suffer consequences in that affair was Sarah Isgur.
It is a fact like the weather. 21st century American politics is a bare knuckle arena. Page knew the rules—you slip you fall. Embarrassment, humiliation and death threats are the price of admission. Lisa and her lover Strozik are not shrinking violets, they have landed on her feet. As for the odious Isgur, her circle of the sun has only just begun.
He knew the rules of a normal DOJ. Trump made it abnormal, so now we have the FBI director on calls in the Situation Room about how to suppress the Epstein files.
Contrast with James Comey. He spoke with Obama once -- at the announcement of his nomination -- and never again thereafter.
Couldn’t disagree more! If Operation Crossfire Hurricane was an embarrassment, it’s only because it was never completed (thanks to Trump and a sycophantic Republican Congress), as well as it not going far enough in scope!
We had amble evidence of Russian interference, as well as members of Trump’s team colluding with Russian’s oligarchs in various stages of the election including social media. We also know that many on Trump’s team, including his family did business with oligarchs associated with Putin? Anyone would be investigated if they were running for president on those allegations alone—never disclosed and was denied by Trump and his family!
We also had the Egyptian government, which gave $10 million illegally to Trump’s campaign in October 2016 when the Access Hollywood tape came out–the investigation was immediately tailored by Barr to be as narrowly focused as possible—and eventually starved to death, just like the Mueller Report.
So seriously, if you think illegal shenanigans didn’t take place—which are now provable, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale with your name written all over it!…:)
Robert: Moral guilt and legal guilt are not the same. Legally speaking, Crossfire Hurricane was a debacle. Using CIA nepo baby Stephan Halper as a paid confidential informant was the first mistake. From Debate Gate (1980), to Palmer National Bank/Iran Contra (1983), to the South African-backed Renamo guerillas in Mozambique (1989), to charges for possession of crack cocaine (1994), decade after decade, “the Walrus,” turns up like a bad penny.Most recently, Halper, along with disgraced former MI6 head Richard “Dodgy Dossier” Dearlove and disgraced MI6 spy and “pee tape” progenitor, Christopher Steele, were exposed as the taproot of Russiagate. “Their story is both a tragedy and a farce—think Jason Bourne meets Austin Powers,” wrote Halper’s former student and State Department official, Stephen Schrage. “Yet the damage they did is deadly serious.” Before the Walrus’s cover was blown, he secretly recorded Trump campaign officials and selectively leaked intelligence that even the FBI concluded was “not accurate” and “not plausible” to his friends and former students in the mainstream press. For his ham-handed efforts, the U.S. government paid Halper more than a million dollars. Like the increasingly opaque Epstein Affair, Russiagate should not be a partisan issue, but a matter of grave concern to all Americans who are tired of being divided by lies and played like rubes.
PS How much do you want for that bridge?
Fair enough, I was looking at this from a different perspective; however, my point hasn’t changed. And this moral and legal distinction is another distraction from my point of view. These are the same tactics this country has used for the entire war on terror—perhaps objections should have been raised well in advance of Trump; if this was ever an issue. And now you and many others have weaponized this as an excuse: it’s a distinction without a difference!
Furthermore, you are basing everything on perception, not reality; or at least the reality of working with informants and assets for law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
And as for Strzok and Page, sloppy work happens all the time. If you take a microscope to just about anyone, you’ll find ways to dissect their work. It’s never a reason to dismiss a case outright—killing the messenger! Remember, these people were charged under Trump’s administration, not Obama. Trump’s DOJ and FBI indicted these people—it wasn’t political.
Secondly, the DOJ IG found no evidence that Strzok, Page, Halper, or the others participated in an effort to damage Trump’s candidacy — they participated in legitimate law enforcement inquiries, and nothing in the OIG review suggested any of them took politically motivated actions. So your accusations aren’t even justified—other than being politically correct in a perfect world which doesn’t exist!
Furthermore, we can also go back to Fannie Willis in GA—the investigation, which was legitimate (including GOP operatives gaining access to voter machines). It was derailed because two prosecutors had sex? Seriously? There is no conflict of interest—prosecuted are tasked with putting criminals in jail, and this wouldn’t be the first time prosecutors had sex during a case. Trump’s genius is his ability to turn everything that takes place often into controversies that for anyone else would be a moot or insignificant point!
Bottom line, when working in intelligence and counterintelligence operations, you’re always dealing with crooked and morally bankrupt and flexible informants; rarely do you find choir boys and boy scouts in this line of work. If complete credibility of FBI and CIA assets and informants were a litmus test for convicting people; no one would ever be convicted of a crime.
Sorry, this isn’t the movies, these cases aren’t black and white—no good or bad guys, just morally flexible and the despicable everywhere you look.
The real question we should be asking is why have Trump’s people been so successful in burying every one of these investigations before they ever come to light? That’s real power, and shows that these stories are just distractions.
Additionally, ask yourself how SCOTUS was able to conjure up a bogus immunity clause in the constitution for one man? Or how they slow rolled two investigations into a former president—documents case (treason), and another that proved election fraud and interference on Trump’s part?
And when you can answer these questions, then tell us how Eileen Canon can get away with dismissing a relevant case, getting overturned twice by the Circuit Court (unanimous ruling), and let a guy who took over 300 of our country’s most top secret documents from the Whitehouse (SAP programs and SCI’s—Secret Compartmentalized Information) get away with treason—claiming political persecution. These documents are never supposed to leave a SCIF! Anyone else would have done something similar—would been thrown in jail immediately and never seen the light of day again!
My point, you’re focused on the distractions—the Hader’s exist everyday and have put many people away. What you’re not focusing on is what’s staring you straight in the face—the institutional corruption protecting Trump and his minions—including SCTOUS, the people behind Project 2025, and an entire right-wing media ecosystem that carry’s water for the man and his movement.
Lastly, you’re finding ways to justify the unjustifiable with a moral versus legal argument—and ironically, your doing so for a man who is the antithesis of moral! So the bridge’s price just doubled!…:)
Robert: Not everyone was silent about the misguided “Global War on Terror.” I criticized it in NY Newsday opeds from 2001-2007, then addressed it again in my 2010 book Law and War: American History and International Law. As Robert Jervis pointed out in his book The Logic of Images in International Relations, perceptions are often more important than empirical facts, especially in international politics. We can agree to disagree that this was not political. If nothing else, the August 3, 2016 Brennan, Clapper, Biden and Obama meeting in which “The Clinton Plan” was unveiled was highly suspicious. I too read the Horowitz Report (and the Durham Report) and we can again disagree that there was “no evidence” Halper “participated in an effort to damage Trump’s candidacy.” The Lokhova case documents and the secretly recorded transcripts of Halper’s meetings with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos tell a different story. I worked as a war crimes investigator in Cambodia for much of the 1990s and had informants from all walks of life. I kept them on a very short leash, especially the former Khmer Rouge. I wrote about these experiences in my book Facing Death in Cambodia. I never voted or supported Trump and have written quite critically of him since the took office. My May 28 essay, “The Empire Wears No Close: Fingerpainting with Feces” was hardly complimentary of Trump or his administration. My point is a simple one—Halper, Page, Strozak, Willis and James shit the bed. For reasons that can be debated, they failed to make their cases. Worse, they made Trump into a martyr, rallied his MAGA base and got him reelected. Americans across the political spectrum need to do better. We have been on a downhill, unconstitutional run since 9/11. In 2024, I wrote “America Needs A Truth and Reconciliation Commission” because I believed our criminal justice system had grown too politicized to do anything but create more martyrs. Moreover, because neither party holds a monopoly on political or military power, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is one of the few effective remedies available to a bitterly and dangerously divided nation. I believe this should be part of a larger reckoning that forces America to open our national closet, face our past, then ask what we have become and where we are going as a nation. Rather than gallows and primitive political justice, our political, financial, and foreign policy miscreants should get a choice. They can trade testimony for amnesty or face a military tribunal and a life sentence without the possibility of parole. After the TRC and trials conclude, there should be a third Constitutional Convention that includes national referendums on basic issues: borders, citizenship, free speech, healthcare, pollution, law enforcement, taxes, lobbyists, monopoly/crony capitalism, AI, foreign policy alliances/entanglements, and more. Yes, my idea sounds Polyanna-ish, but what other options do we have? After all, the bloodiest war in U.S. history was the Civil War. If we could kill 700,000 of each other with single shot rifled muskets, bayonets and primitive artillery, imagine what Palantir could do. Now, about that bridge, I’ve got some land in Florida. Would you be willing to trade? It gets a little wet at high tide, but you can probably build on it.
“My point is a simple one—Halper, Page, Strozak, Willis and James shit the bed. For reasons that can be debated, they failed to make their cases. Worse, they made Trump into a martyr, rallied his MAGA base and got him reelected.”
I agree with your larger viewpoints about holding everyone to account—like I said, “In a better and more perfect world.” Unfortunately, I’m a pragmatist and live in the real world—we have a robust justice system (it’s good, has corruption, and need improvement), yet, it still favors the rich and powerful. Consider the system to be like how humans evolve: we are always a work in progress—excluding the current administration. At least, those of us always looking to improve ourselves and the world!
And you so eloquently stated, we did have Iran-Contra and other major debacles; in all these cases, no one was held to account. Yet, in most cases, the real corruption and abuses, all took place under republican administrations, yet the perception is that democrats use their power as corruptly as republican administrations; all evidence points to the contrary—just like republicans are better with the economy.
For the record, I have equal disdain for both parties, so I have no stake in this game, and mostly agree with you on politics, so there is that.
However, by making these analogies against democrats (especially since Strozak and page were bureaucrats)—their actions were possibly political when nothing could be further from the truth; it gives the appearance of making like false equivalencies (whether just perception or not), since Trump’s actions are all political and have had severe consequences for this nation and the world—and continue to do so. He needs to be stopped at all costs if we’re going to have even a chance at survival.
As for the claim against Willis, Jack Smith, etc..; couldn’t make cases—let’s not forget they were never allowed to proceed.
The distractions kept the cases moving at a snails pace, and SCOTUS slow rolled their decisions, making it impossible to hold a criminal proceeding before the elections—which from my perspective was entirely the point!
Bottom line, I don’t disagree with you on your positions, as much as I believe the framing of your positions can be easily misconstrued or manipulated by Trump’s team; making it easy for these unqualified and corrupt—morally bankrupt social paths, to continue to keep the sheeple in line, while having the ability to lay waste to our republic-democracy with complete impunity! That’s my point!..:)
I agree the Lisa Page/Strozak debacle was foolish and stupid. How can such intelligent people do such stupid things? It undermined the investigation into Trump much to his own personal advantage. That situation reminds me of the stupidity of Fani Willis in Fulton County with her boyfriend/co-prosecutor which ended up blowing apart all of her carefully investigated indictments against Trump involving election interference, conspiracy to commit fraud and racketeering, where she had a good chance of prosecuting Trump in the end. But the end didn’t end as it ought to have. It was a mixture of overly self- confidence on her part and assuming she was above reproach. (She was accused of having a personal/sexual relationship with her partner in the investigation which ended the investigation faster than a brick can hit the ground). Her weaknesses from those traits set up Trump to attack and attack hard (through his sycophants) who would do anything to take her down which he succeeded at doing rapidly.
Don’t get me wrong, I was on Willis side and thought the whole accusation was BS. But anyone taking on trump must have a clean nose 24/7 and neither Fani nor Lisa nor Peter used good judgement which we all are now paying the price of those decisions.
"How can such intelligent people do such stupid things?"
In humans, the traits of high intelligence and good judgement are unlinked.
You’re right. But most intelligent people understand cause and effect:
When you are prosecuting the man who wants to become potus for the second time, and you have indictments against him all lined up in a row, and you are responsible for leading (possibly) one of the most notorious trials of the 21st century and you sleep with your professional partner, there will be an effect, a consequence that will take you down faster than a brick falling from a building from a man who hates you, who hates your gender, who hates your race and will do anything to stop you.
Cause and effect: yes most intelligent people understand what it is and how it works.
The fact that the traits are unlinked doesn't mean they can't co-occur. It only means that one doesn't necessarily predict the other.
Prediction is a heavy lift.
Fani screwed up (no pun intended) and my final word is she should have known better in such a high stakes situation. And she should have known better given her intelligence and experience as a DA.
We are in heated agreement. 21st century American politics is a bare knuckle arena--you slip you fall. Fani, Leticia et al made Trump into a martyr for the second time and exhumed what should have been his corpse from the graveyard of American politics.
He needed to be prosecuted. No one is above the law as John Locke reminds us. The problem is when a cult believe their leader is the Jesus of our moment, then he does become a martyr. What’s the option? Let the powerful run ram shod over the law?
As the Epstein affair demonstrated and continues to demonstrate—our elites—from both sides of the political spectrum—do run roughshod over the law. As Polyannish as it sounds, I believe America needs a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We have been in a cold Civil War since 2016. Between 1862-5 we killed @ 700,000 of each other. Imagine what we could do to each other with Palantir's help!
Isgur is a regular on Left,Right, and Center on public radio. She is a Beltway pundit and full of herself. I find her extremely disagreeable. She seems intelligent enough to know that she could use her skills to better the Country for all of us. She chooses otherwise.
This is overthought and overwrought. There aren't two definitions of loyalty. Loyalty (loyal) requires the preposition "to," so one can know who's loyal to what/whom. Conflicting loyalties is an old idea, been around for ages. There's also nothing new in a defined hierarchy of loyalties. What is new is the overt presentation of self-benefit parading as either somehow moral, and if not that, than merely conforming to standard practice. Isgur's loyalties are to herself, not anything else.
Isgur is a cynic. It's absurd to think she didn't know what was going on. She did what any good lawyer would do: she reframed the issue, otherwise known as shifting the standards to those which benefit her client. Her actual argument, implied rather than stated explicitly, is standards don't matter if political exigencies require it. Then she acted as if standards do matter. She became a Never-Trumper because she saw that as in her best interest. That's another way of saying Isgur understood the shame of staying within Trump's orbit would be more costly than abandoning it.
Whether she truly believes Democrats would act the same way—if that's how she justifies herself—is a her-problem. That fact she is manifestly wrong about that is an us-problem. I offer no edits or clarifications to the piece as posted.
Why would you? No one, least of all me, suggested you should. The time for editing is before publication, not afterwards.
There's nothing remarkable about her. She's a capable lawyer of the sort of which there are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, who've always acted, as have most politicians, as if power were the highest principle.
She's an "us problem" to the extent we've a massive institutional problem requiring changes we may not have the political will to do.