The long-running coup
Yesterday Trump gave a speech Wednesday in Louisiana in which he quoted tweets made by the current “whistleblower’s” lawyer back in 2017:
“I don’t know if you saw, I’m coming off the plane and they hand me — look at this character — they just hand me this story,” he said, referring to Mark S. Zaid, the attorney representing the so-called “whistleblower” in the impeachment inquiry against the president.
“Coup has started. First of many steps,” Zaid wrote. “Rebellion, Impeachment will follow ultimately.”
Trump called Zaid a “sleazeball” and read another post on Twitter from the lawyer predicting that “CNN will play a key role in Donald Trump not finishing out his first term.”
“It’s all a hoax, it’s a scam, and you know who helps them, these people, the media,” Trump said, pointing to the back of the hall, as the crowd booed.
This is the original Fox News article that Trump quoted. Zaid’s tweets occurred shortly after Trump was inaugurated and could not possibly have referred to anything he was later doing as president.
There is nothing surprising about those tweets by Zaid. They are reflective of a process that began even before Trump was inaugurated, and about which the plotters were actually quite up-front about their intent if not every one of their methods. I have previously written this post about the process, entitled “The Deep State hatched its plot against Trump very early, and they told us so.” In that post I cited this article from Vanity Fair which was published a mere twelve days after Trump’s inauguration. I’ll quote it again:
Others, however, view resistance as a part of the job. “Policy dissent is in our culture,” one diplomat in Africa, who signed the letter circulating among foreign diplomats, told The New York Times. “We even have awards for it,” this person added, in reference to the State Department’s “Constructive Dissent” award. One Justice Department employee told the Post, “You’re going to see the bureaucrats using time to their advantage,” and added that “people here will resist and push back against orders they find unconscionable,” by whistle-blowing, leaking to the press, and lodging internal complaints. Others are staying in contact with officials appointed by President Obama to learn more about how they can undermine Trump’s agenda and attending workshops on how to effectively engage in civil disobedience, the Post reports.
Zaid’s tweets are merely one part of this plan.
Zaid is now trying to defend himself in this way:
…Zaid sent Fox News a formal statement Thursday in which he said the social media posts were written with the belief that Trump would likely be “stepping over the line” at some point during his presidency.
“Those tweets were reflective and repeated the sentiments of millions of people,” Zaid said. “I was referring to a completely lawful process of what President Trump would likely face as a result of stepping over the line, and that particularly whatever would happen would come about as a result of lawyers. The coup comment referred to those working inside the Administration who were already, just a week into office, standing up to him to enforce recognized rules of law.“
Yeah, sure, Mr. Zaid. The word “coup” is a term always used to refer to “a completely lawful process” and particularly what happens “as a result of lawyers.”
Let’s revisit Zaid’s words: “Coup has started. First of many steps.”
He doesn’t say that it will start if and only if Trump crosses some line. He says it has already started. Lawyers know how to use words, and they tend to use them very precisely, and Zaid is a lawyer.
Zaid also wrote at the time: “Rebellion, Impeachment will follow ultimately.” Again, he is saying these things will happen, not as a result of anything Trump might do, but as a result of the coup that has already begun.
And no, impeachment is not ordinarily a coup – unless, of course, it’s a completely partisan act based on information cooked up by enemy moles plotting against a president, spying on him, planting traps for him, and then pretending they can read his mind and interpret what he really meant (a sort of thoughtcrime that they cannot prove) rather than relying on his actual words and deeds.
And they call Trump dumb.
We have other words fit to these situations: sedition, treason, overthrow, plotting, etc.
And glory be: crimes, charges, trials, convictions, punishments to go along with them.
I wonder how the DNC/MSM will spin this one? I’m sure we’ll find out soon after Manju reviews his emails with all his talking points to bring to us.
I wish I was being sarcastic, but I know this is how they operate. I still continue to be impressed how organized they are, and how disciplined they are, for all of them to stay so on point and in total lockstep. It’s their one real political strength.
Oh, and over at townhall, Pavlich reports that the second lawyer for good ol’ Eric was also part of the #resistance from the get go.
No-one on the right could easily have invented more odious and more sanctimonious creatures than Ciaramella and Zaid, who confirm almost every stereotype of the privileged denizens of the “Deep State”– those who, despite their contempt for the norms of a constitutional republic such as ours, imagine themselves to be principled and heroic members of The Resistance to Orange Man.
He probably thought his attempt at rewriting history was totally believable. But then he doesn’t seem to be entirely right in the head.
Legitimate national security and CIA/NSA whistleblowers agree. Zaid is the worst possible choice for a defense attorney in Washington D.C.
https://canadafreepress.com/article/trump-whistleblower-choice-of-lawyer-rises-suspicions
“’That [Mark] Zaid is involved in this case leads me to believe that the CIA whistleblower is either an idiot who has no idea what he’s gotten himself into or he’s been directed to make his ‘disclosure’.’— Former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou”
He also has a thing for really, really young Disney stars.
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=384193
“SelenaGate: Maybe The Whistleblower Isn’t the One Who Needs Anonymity
… The videos he has chosen to leave a Like on are about… the prettiest — or ‘hottest’ — Disney channel stars.
And Selena Gomez’s transformation from an infant into a woman.
… Here’s the one called “Selena Gomez from child to women (sic).” You can click on it if you want.
Here’s the other one.
It’s weird. I don’t know if I’d click on these. It just… raises questions. It might do strange things to your search algorithms.
YouTube might start recommending odd channels to you.”
Here’s one of Mark Zaid’s tweets:
“Mark S. Zaid
@MarkSZaidEsq
Take the test. How many Disney films have you seen @sam_vinograd, @AshaRangappa_?
You can’t beat me. I’ve seen them all. Multiple times.”
Attached is a “Disney watch list” that is at least 42 children’s movies long.
I felt like a police detective pursuing a lead and stumbling across a child molester’s shrine.
Reading both articles together I had to wonder how this weirdo still has a law license.
I’m going to take a shower now.
I can’t believe some of these traitorous SOBs are still breathing free air.
Steve57:
According to this profile of him, Zaid has been into comic books since he was a kid, and now even has his own business selling “investment grade comics”. Maybe at least a partial explanation for his love of Disney movies.
I can’t believe some of these traitorous SOBs are still breathing free air.
Nansen passports for all of them. Out out and don’t ever come back.
When, oh when, do we see any indictments?
Such sleazebags, so many of them.
Of course they are all disciplined – by the CYA boot-licking process they’ve been using since college to get promoted inside the gov’t.
They’re smart enough to do well on tests. They figured out how to avoid doing hard work, by doing what their bosses most want done, and being careful about covering their own butts, at all times.
A current fantasy I have is RICO process against all the top bureaucrats in DOJ who were not appointed, Obstruction of Justice, Abuse of Power. Ain’t gonna happen, I know.
I still predict some indictments, but know that predictions are hard. Especially about the future.
For your question — When, oh when, do we see any indictments? –Tom Grey (click through to the video for a suggestive answer):
Lou Dobbs @LouDobbs
I never liked Trump and thought his running was a joke and his being chosen as the Repub candidate a real joke. His winning shocked me and I was surprised at how delighted I was to see the smarmy media et al so shocked as the numbers came in. I was positively rolling on the ground laughing at the morans . I knew they would have their revenge and it started the next day…the coup in all its various glory. It has exposed all those who engage in it as enemies of democracy and spoiled a-holes. It has ruined comedy and late night TV and almost every TV series and any respect I ever had for most actors/singers I use to enjoy. The only good thing that could ever come of all this is if Trump won again and those who claimed they would actually moved to some other country. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
The new “Die Hard” is out: “Die Hard or Go Deep State” |
(click through for 24 sec. video meme starring Samuel L Jackson & Bruce Willis)
“Yeah, sure, Mr. Zaid. The word “coup” is a term always used to refer to ‘a completely lawful process’ … ” — Neo
Zaid is doing what some lawyers do. He’s making an argument. A completely full of crap argument, but one that will have a slender thread of credibility to those partisans out there. Those folks will think and tell their friends, “See, he was just talking about a completely lawful process. Nothing to see here.”
I could understand comic books, Ann. I’ve known a couple of guys who tried to take a stab at the comic book business.
But based on his YouTube likes he just seems too into actual little girl Disney stars.
AD — I was thinking more Jailhouse Rock than Man Without a Country.
But sure…whatever works.
The release of the IG Report has been postponed, and postponed, and postponed again, and despite many people telling us that “their sources” say that it will be forthcoming “in a few days,” “in a week or two,” or “very soon,” it has yet to show up.
Sundance at ConservativeTreehouse –who has done an incredible, painstaking job of analyzing actions and documents, and piecing the pieces of the coup puzzle together, thinks he knows why.
See https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/11/07/is-pending-ig-report-on-fisa-abuse-being-held-up-to-facilitate-nsa-bulk-data-re-authorization-that-expires-december-15th/
Snow – among the few indispensable posters on the political scene, and especially the Leftist Coup, Sundance is particularly important.
Some recent offerings from other great sources (thanks to PowerLine Headline Picks, which is my go-to list of breaking stories every day):
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/469504-the-curious-timeline-for-taking-down-trump
The curious timeline for taking down Trump
BY SHARYL ATTKISSON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 11/08/19 09:00 AM EST
https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/07/the-anonymous-coup/
The Anonymous Coup
History is littered with bloodless coup attempts. But in the Trump era, enemy combatants not only are spared bloodshed, they don’t even have to give their names.
Julie Kelly – November 7th, 2019
I voted for Trump. I was really, really sure that he’d lose but I didn’t want Hilary. He won. The modernists and media had a meltdown that I’ll never, ever forget. Women I knew were crying because they believed America voted in an openly sexist man – the worst of all the Privileged White Males that were candidates. The LBGT+ folks were oh so scared because, well, that’s how they usually feel if one doesn’t profusely proclaim support for their demographic. The PoC were worried that they’d be lynched and beaten by all the closeted racists – that never happened.
Now I want Trump to win a second term. I want a second meltdown. I want to see how deep the “maligned” can go into their worldbuilding of their Clown World. And I know they won’t disappoint because they’re masters at crafting great, yet messed up, fiction.
Another possible reason why the Horowitz report is being delayed again and again may be that it takes a long time for Wray and the many other remaining Obama holdovers in the FBI, DOJ, CIA, NSA et al to politically scrub it all of any incriminating information to politically and legally emasculate its conclusions. I imagine there are hundreds of places where revisions
of words like “treason”, “coup”, “subversion” need to be replaced by “justifiable action”, “faulty judgment” and “lack of criminal intent” to conclude that no reasonable prosecutor would ever think of indicting anybody.
Call me cynical.
geokstr – being cynical doesn’t mean you are wrong.
I am hoping that the delay is caused by Barr fighting back against the scrub team.
Well, it seems like the “resisters” were (and likely still are) found throughout the White House and Trump Administration.
Thus, according to former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley’s new book, both former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and former White House Chief of Staff Gen. Kelly both had conversations with her about how their “resisting” what President Trump wanted to do/directed them to do was really each one of these men’s way of “saving the country.”
Boy, they each thought a lot of themselves, didn’t they?
In other words–as in so many other cases we’ve seen revealed–these un-elected government employees, who were placed in their positions and were clearly subordinate to President Trump as our elected Chief Executive, and Commander in Chief–thought that their judgment was superior to that of their President, that their way of doing things should prevail and, so, they each tried to block and usurp the power of the President and, instead, to do things their way.
Like so many other high level former members of the Trump Administration, each one of these men came into the Trump Administration floating on a cloud of glowing recommendations about their characters and qualifications and, at the time of their firing, I was wondering why such apparently sterling men were being let go.
Well, now, it is very obvious why they were both fired.
This President, any President is the individual the voters have put in charge –and that means that he should actually be in charge, should set policy and action, and be able to count on those who he picks to staff his Administration doing as he directs, not try to second guess and sabotage him.
A President needs a loyal staff.
Yes, people who can offer different opinions and approaches, yes give their advice.
But, in the end, after the President has made up his mind on a course of action, he needs–he must have–staff he can rely on to carry out his orders, not try to stab the President in the back and sabotage them.
Halley is right, if each one of these men had strong objections to what President Trump wanted to do, they should have made their cases against the President’s approach and, if he still persisted in wanting to take his approach to something, they should have resigned in protest, and made their case, their opposition publicly, not tried to sabotage the President’s policies and actions.
See https://www.foxnews.com/politics/nikki-haley-reveals-tillerson-kelly-privately-discussed-resisting-trump-it-was-offensive
Wray and the many other remaining Obama holdovers in the FBI, DOJ, CIA, NSA et al to politically scrub it all of any incriminating information to politically and legally emasculate its conclusions. I imagine there are hundreds of places where revisions
Wray’s not a holdover. He’s another baffling appointment by the President. One thing that bothers me about this administration is that the personnel office at the White House performs so indifferently in recruiting and screening talent.
The man who ran the Personnel Office from January 2017 to May 2019 was for six years (2007-13) employed by…John Boehner.
Art Deco:
Here is a clue; long serving high level career civil servants, wait for it, may be more loyal to their institution (agency and peers) than to the constitution.
Inconceivable that a bureaucrat would have a higher loyalty to the agency than to the head of the executive branch and the constitution.
Many have commented on the revolving door nature of Trump’s White House, as if stability was necessarily the be all and end all.
I, too, think that some level of stability is a plus.
But, I see Trump acting based on his experience of being the head of several businesses, and that is, he hires people and he expects them to do a good job and to be loyal to him, and when they don’t do a good job and/or aren’t loyal to him he fires them, which seems to me to be a much better solution–in the long run–than to just leave the deadwood and “resistors” in place, to do their mischief, and trying to work around them.
I’ve seen this approach at work in a governmental organization, and it creates a tremendous amount of “drag” on an organization, which, I think, among other negative consequences, accepts a penalty of maybe 20%-30% or more in inefficiency by keeping such deadwood on board, as everyone who is doing a good job has to work that much more to try to make up for the inefficiencies and deficiencies caused by the deadwood and resisters.
Of course this “work around the deadwood policy” also relieves the supervisors concerned from having to perform the likely unpleasant job of showing the deadwood the door.
P.S.–Keeping on the deadwood, allowing these people to get away with being deadwood or resisting–much less allowing them to get their fairly automatic government pay increases and even promotions–not only makes the other good workers have to take up the slack but, it also discourages them.
Why should the good workers work, even work harder and stick to the rules–strive to do a good or superior job, while the deawood sashays around, does what it wants, thumbs its nose at everyone else, and at the supposed “standards” and “rules” and, yet, not only never gets punished, but might even get promoted?
The deadwood just automatically getting a reward that the good workers may have to work years to achieve, or perhaps are never even able to attain.
Ken, I have no wish to speak for you or even try. But. But.
This may not have been what you were driving at.
But the more intensely people hate Trump, the more I like the guy.
I was like you. I didn’t like Trump. When the ….
Somebody fetch me a bucket I am going to puke.
But here’s the deal. I know this is going to sound trite. But my fellow Americans chose him fair and square. And having worn the uniform of the United States Armed Forces for 20 years, I think it’s important to respect their choice.
Now I get to witness the Brennans and the Clappers. I always knew they were there. They infested my world.
If it cost me my own life I would sacrifice it just to smoke these bastards out.
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2019/11/01/thank-god-for-the-deep-state-former-cia-director-praises-efforts-to-oust-trump-846817
Thank God for the deep state? No. Thank God for Donald Trump. If that is what it will take, I can take a joke.
Change my mind.
I’m constantly told that we won WWII because our Germans were better than their Germans.
But our Italians were also better than their Italians. This maybe doesn’t seem like a big deal. After all, the Italians were a joke.
That would be news to a British general, who said the Italians were the bravest men he ever saw. He had to grant them Honore del Armi, the honor of arms. They fought to the last bullet at El Alamein and wouldn’t surrender unless they were permitted to retire with their weapons.
You have to understand. When the Germans bugged out they took all the transport with them.
I’m not trying to make more of it than there was. There were a few units that were quality. La Paracudisti Folgore. La Flotiglia Decima Mas. That’s pretty much it, as far as I can recall. So good, the Germans were asking the Italians for trainers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ4Umy9X3hA
A good Italian unit was no joke. But the problem was there were just so many bad Italian units. For the most part the Italians were just looking for someone to surrender to. I remember in 1980 watching the world cup with a Milanese.
Mostly because his girl friend was a hottie. The part that sticks out in my mind is how he commented that it was just then, in 1980, that he first saw an Italian flag.
If you don’t speak Italian, now is a good time to learn.
Mangia, mangia, you a too skeeney!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ4Umy9X3hA
BRIGATA PARACADUTISTI FOLGORE
The Thunderbolts.
You might think I’m just expressing some ethnic pride. I have none, and my uncle Tony returning from the Med didn’t fill me with any.
But after the Madrid subway bombing the Spaniards cut and run. It was always supposed to be the Spaniards being the tough Latins. But it was the Italians who stuck around.
Here I was thinking, there’s nothing there. My grandparents were right walking away from all of it. And now, maybe there is something besides the food to hold onto.