Remember when John Bolton dropped this little tidbit in his book?
On the evening of Nov. 19, 2018, The Washington Post reported that senior presidential adviser Ivanka Trump had sent hundreds of emails to White House aides, Cabinet officials and her assistants using a personal account, many of them in violation of federal records rules.
The next morning, the White House issued a startling defense of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the killing and dismemberment, by bone saw, of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. The statement, which included eight exclamation marks, began: “America First! The world is a very dangerous place!” It attacked Khashoggi by repeating the baseless allegations from the regime in Riyadh that the journalist was an “enemy of the state” and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Post reported earlier that week that the CIA had concluded, with a high confidence, that the prince personally ordered the assassination of Khashoggi. In his statement, Trump said, “[W]e may never know” if Mohammed was involved. But, “in any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They have been a great ally … The United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia.”
Bolton reveals in his new book, whose publication Trump is trying to block, that the main goal of the president’s missive was to take away attention from the story about his daughter’s emails. After all, Trump had not just spent years attacking Hillary Clinton for using a private email server while she was secretary of state but had also said his 2016 rival should go to prison for doing so. As president, he had egged on chants of “lock her up” at his rallies.
“This will divert from Ivanka,” Trump said, according to Bolton’s book, as he drafted his defense of the Saudis. “If I read the statement in person, that will take over the Ivanka thing.”
I’ve never been one to adhere to the “distraction theory” of Trump behavior. I think he mostly just acts on impulse. But if Bolton is correct, there are occasions where he uses distraction techniques and if the Khashoggi incident is any example, he’ll easily go to extremes in order to get the necessary bang for his buck.
Sooo, I’m thinking it may make sense that this is another one of those distractions:
The fact that it is a distraction doesn’t mean it isn’t real, of course. It’s very real. But his motivation is transparent.
I think what disturbs me even more than Trump is the eager participation of DHS and its unconfirmed, half-wit of an “acting-director.” It’s one thing to “follow orders” but this fellow is downright excited about it.
Going back more than 17 years when I started writing this blog and they were creating the dystopian-sounding “Department of Homeland Security” I said “if you build it they will use it” meaning that it would eventually devolve into a Stasi-like agency of police repression. They’ve done that at the border already, we know that. Now they’re expanding it to America’s cities to quell dissent. Of course they are.
The next few months are going to be very dangerous and I’m not just talking about the pandemic.