Sunday School 5/26/19

Let's see how far we can make it, hoping for three classrooms today: two discussions with people of whom I'm not fond, and one with a person with whom I'm relatively unfamiliar.

So let's start there, with Face the Nation where Margaret Brennan  and Beto O'Rourke had a sit-down.  First up was immigration.

O'Rourke was asked if he favors 'catch and release' - no, this is not about fishing, it's about detaining and then releasing immigrants, giving them a court date and trusting them to appear as scheduled. He pointed out that, historically, when we assign them case managers, 99% of them come back for their hearing. He doesn't like the 'catch and release' term any more than I do.

I wouldn't call it catch and release. I'd call it helping those who are seeking asylum in this country to follow our laws. 

Brennan asked if, under his administration, the folks who cross illegally at non-points of entry would be detained

... Those families, if they pose no threat to this country or the communities in which they are apprehended should be released with a case manager who ensures they follow our laws, that they attend their court hearings, that they meet their appointments 

They talked about his campaign, and then Brennan asked if the Democratic Party needs some kind of "generational change." He pointed to the sense of urgency on the part of voters, saying in part.

All I know is that we need to match that with a relentless energy that brings people in who may have been left out before.... We need to be able to bring in new energy. We need to be able to bring in new voters. We need to make sure that this democracy, so badly damaged, works for everyone...

He said that Russia is our greatest adversary, noting that after the Mueller Report came out, Trump called Vladimir Putin for a private chat, noting

We've got the most dangerous person who's ever held office in the White House right now who's inviting the involvement of our greatest adversaries. And we've got to be able to stand up not as Democrats but as Americans to this challenge. 

He's right on that, I think.

Next, let's spend a few minutes with Lindsey Graham on Fox News Sunday. I can't stand Graham, I've made no secret about that over many posts, so I'll hone in on only a couple parts of their conversation - AG William Barr's investigation into the reasons why we had the Mueller investigation, and the battle between the president and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Wallace asked about Graham's thinking that Trump has to be careful not to be goaded into ignoring the country's problems and only focusing on the battles over investigations and subpoenas.

What started out as Nancy Pelosi is riding a bucking wild bronco called the Democratic Caucus. 70% of the Democratic base throughout America wants president Trump impeached. She knows that impeachment would be political suicide because there's no reason to impeach the president. So, she's trying to keep the party intact. If she goes down the impeachment road, Republicans take back the House, we keep the Senate, president Trump gets reelected, but her job is very much at risk. 

So what I think is going to happen here - I think that she's going to be drive towards impeachment. If she goes down that road, it will be suicide for the Democratic party. From president Trump's point of view, I disagree with the idea that you can't work with them while they're doing things like this. You have to work  with them. 

You can't control, Mr. president, what the Democrats do, but you can control what you do and you need to lead this country to better bridges and roads and lower prescription drug prices. They say 'no' to you, that will help you. They say 'yes' to you, and work with you, that will help the country. So, I don't believe that the idea of working with the Democrats should be taken off the table because they're going too far. 

Graham also said he has no problem with Snitty Snitty Bill Barr being solely in charge of declassifying anything and everything related to the underlying reasons the Special Counsel was appointed.  He has no qualms, he said, just as he says he was one of the Republicans who insisted Mueller should be allowed to do his job.

Now, I'm insisting that we get to the bottom of this. I want all the documents around  the FISA warrant application released. I want to find out exactly how the counterintelligence operation began. I think transparency is good for the American people. Not one Democrat seems to care. 

I was the hero when I said 'let's support Mueller.' I wish some Democrat would come forward to find out if the FISA court was defrauded by the FBI and the Department of Justice. 

Graham dodged the question on whether Barr can be trusted not to cherry-pick any info he finds "to make a case for the president."

 The people who are worried about this are worried about being exposed for taking the law into their own hands. It doesn't surprise me that the people we are looking at, they don't want transparency. We're not compromising national security here. We're trying to create a system to make sure this never happens again by shedding light on what happened with the FISA warrant process, the counterintelligence investigation. Did they have a lawful reason to surveil president Trump's campaign? Did they lie to the FISA court? 

Every American should want to find that out. 

Well, according to Sarah Sanders on MTP, we already know the answer to that. At least, that's what she repeatedly told Chuck Todd.

In one exchange, Todd asked why the president asked the AG to do an investigation, since Trump has tweeted that his campaign "was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this has ever happened in American politics. A really bad situation. Treason means long jail sentences, and this was treason." Isn't Trump "putting his thumb on the scale" Todd wondered? And would he accept if if Barr comes back and says everything was handled correctly and on the up and up?

Here are her responses to the questions, a lot of which were lost in the back and forth.

We already know that there was an outrageous amount of corruption that took place at the FBI. They leaked information. They lied. They were specifically working trying to take down the president, trying to hurt the president...we think Americans deserve the truth. The president's asked for that. And we should expect nothing less...

 ...I''m not going to get ahead of what the final conclusion is. But we already know that there was a high level of corruption that was taking place.  We've seen that in the IG investigation that has already happened...

There's a lot more there still that we need to know. And we're going to let the Attorney General do his job...

That's the reason  that he's granted the attorney general the authority to declassify that information, to look at all the documents necessary is so that we can get to the bottom of what happened. Once again, we already know about some wrongdoing. The president's not wrong in that. But he wants to know everything that happened and how far and how wide it went...

We know that there was corruption. Let's see... 

... we certainly expect that the people that were responsible  and that were part of this unprecedented obstruction and corruption at the FBI, those people should certainly be held responsible and held accountable and the president expects that to take place... 

Chuck, I think you're trying to muddy the waters too much here. We already know, once again, that there was wrongdoing. Now we want to know how much there was. I don't think it's crazy to want to know how far and wide the corruption at the FBI was. And that's what the president has asked the attorney general to find...

Since Trump is on record that James Comey, Andy McCabe, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page committed treason, I suspect he'll not be satisfied unless Barr comes back with that outcome from this investigation.

And, to Chuck Todd's point, if by any slim chance Barr finds that there was nothing wrong with how things went, and that Strzok and Page were just lovers engaged in pillow talk about Trump - like millions of lovers across the country and around the world engaged in back in 2015 and 2016 - and, most importantly given the outcome of the investigation, that there was no collusion, I find it hard to believe that there was treason here.

Unless, of course, it was treason done badly, just like the collusion was.

See you around campus.