Sunday School 4/15/18

I only visited one classroom today, ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos -- I just didn't have it in me to go sit through the rest of them. 

If you're interested, here are transcripts for Fox News Sunday (UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and lame duck Congressman Trey Benghazi Gowdy),  Meet the Press (Sen Joni Ernst, former CIA Director John Brennan, and lame duck House Speaker Paul Ryan), Face the Nation (Haley again, former veep candidate Sen. Tim Kaine) and State of the Union (Sen. Angus King, Preet Bharara, and Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels' attorney).

So why ABC and George?  Mostly because Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was giving an interview, something that doesn't happen all that often. What did she have to say?

On Syria: The mission 100% met its objectives to destroy critical chemical weapons infrastructure, and send the 'red line' message to Russia, Syria and Iran. On 'next steps', she offered

Look, the president has got three big objectives when it comes to the conflict there. He wants to defeat ISIS. He has talked about this relentlessly. We are almost there. We have made extraordinary gains against ISIS...And this president has lead that effort. And he's been successful on that front.  The other things we have to do, we have to contain Iran, We have to make sure that the bad acting that they have been a part of doesn't continue and doesn't grow. Those are big and key points. And then last, we have to stop the spread and the use of mass chemical weapons, and that was one of the things you saw the president take action on, on Friday. Those are big things that the president has been focused on  and we've had some success so far. We're going to continue building on that.

And on James Comey, about whom the president tweeted rudely during their discussion, Sanders gave us this information in response to a handful of questions.

Look, it's been very clear that James Comey is a self-admitted leaker. He lied to Congress. He's been inconsistent...

Look, he said that he opened the Hillary Clinton investigation on its merits, now we're finding out certainly it had something to do with the political landscape. I find it outrageously unbelievable that Jim Comey, the man that takes these copious notes and recollects every detail of every conversation that he had can't remember why he would have specifically opened an investigation into a presidential candidate, particularly somebody he thought would become the president.... I mean, give me a break. The guy knew exactly what he was doing. He thought Hillary Clinton would win. And he thought this would give him some cover. He thought that he made these decisions based on the political landscape and not on the facts of the case.

And when the person that is supposed to lead the highest law enforcement agency in our country starts making decisions based on political environments instead of on what is right and what is wrong, it's a really dangerous position. And I think that's one of the reasons there is such a huge bipartisan consensus that James Comey doesn't have credibility and shouldn't be leading the FBI any longer. 

Regarding the president's pardon of Scooter Libby, former VP Dick Cheney's guy, and whether it was Trump's way of sending a message to Mueller and everyone,

That couldn't be further from the truth. Once again, Adam Schiff barely - rarely bases any comments in reality. Talk about a grandstander. He probably is hook line and sinker buddies with Jim Comey. They both have never found a TV camera they don't love to be in front of.

And finally, Stephanopoulos asked

Is the president actively considering firing Robert Mueller or removing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein from overseeing the investigation?

Sanders' response?

I'm not aware of any plans to make those movements. Look, the president has been extremely cooperative, as have a number of members of the administration. Everything that's been asked of us, we've provided. And we're continuing to be cooperative. But we do have some real concerns with some of the activities and some of the scope that the investigation has gone, but 100% maintain that at this point, after repeating it for nearly a year and a half, there absolutely was no collusion with Russia and that's exactly what they've been investigating.

Not only has the special counsel but a number of different congressional committees have been looking at this for over a year and come up with nothing. I think it really is getting time to move on and I certainly think the American people would appreciate Congress and the rest of the country being able to focus on some of the things that really impact them.

Of course, everyone keeps telling us nothing's going to happen the rest of this year, with the mid-terms and all, so I wish George had pushed her on that one a little.

And Adam Schiff, the Congressman from California who has been a thorn in the Administration's side in his role as ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, had this to say about Sanders.

I don't think she likes me very much, George.

See your around campus.