Paul Harvey was a well-respected Midwestern radio broadcaster for ABC Radio Networks. When my dad used to take us on our epic summer cross-country road trips, Harvey’s broadcasts were highlights in otherwise endless drives from destination to destination. His segments near the end of every broadcast always began with the phrase “And now, the rest of the story.”
Ironically, Harvey was a conservative who believed a lot of things I didn’t, and don’t, but that didn’t stop his segment from having compelling threads and familiar themes. He’s been gone since 2009.
Last night, news broke all over the place of Donald Trump’s own email server and obstruction of justice problems, but there’s a “rest of the story” here, and it came to light this morning.
The GOP are so desperate for an October Surprise that will guarantee their supremacy in just a week, they managed to push the agenda one small step too far. I am absolutely certain that if the Democrats win in the numbers they ought to come this time next week, we will finally see sunshine blown into all the dark crevices of government, but for FBI Director James Comey, this could well be the end of a career as he steps off the Hatch Act ledge.
The news that there were additional emails on “a device” related to Anthony Weiner, which broke on October 28th, came straight from the top, but it’s not the end of the story. And it stinks.
It took all of four days to go from the story, which relates to investigations of Weiner’s laptop, the device in question, to the revelation that Comey decided to skip announcing Donald Trump’s direct link to the Ukraine.
And in that time, here’s a summary of the changes in the news, in three articles:
Rawstory: Cummings’ shocker: Americans don’t ‘have a clue’ how hard the GOP pushed the FBI to attack Clinton
New York Times: Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia
CNBC: FBI’s Comey opposed naming Russians, citing election timing (Auto-sound warning)
So we’ve just gone from a criminal violation of the Hatch Act to something considerably more insidious.
Given Trump’s public goading of Russia to hack servers and provide evidence that Hillary Clinton was a criminal (thanks, WikiLeaks), and his own issues with email and obstruction, this ought to be enough to take down Donald Trump and all the Republican cronies who are pushing him into office, except for one thing: His supporters don’t actually give a damn about any of this.
Trump has acknowledged that he’s committed sexual assault. He’s committed adultery (twice, at least), he’s LOST almost a billion dollars, and not one of these revelations is enough to sway his supporters from their goal of mutually assured destruction.
We are so, so fucked.