I devoted my Sunday School classroom time to folks who have been tapped to serve in the incoming administration, including Jen Psaki, who'll be the new White House press secretary. She talked with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday about a number of things, including the day's hot topic. Take a look.
And, finally, the Hunter Biden questions: does Biden promise to let US attorney David Weiss (he's currently conducting the investigation) finish the job? And second, what does Biden think about a special counsel possibly being appointed to investigate his son?
Well, let me be crystal clear, Chris, and I appreciate you asking this question. He will not be discussing an investigation of his son with any attorney general candidates. He will not be discussing it with anyone he is considering for the role, and he will not be discussing it with the future attorney general. It will be up to the purview of a future attorney general and his administration to determine how to handle any investigation.
That's pretty clear, and boy, I hope she's not kidding.
A lot of classroom time was spent talking about the likely-committed-by-the-Russians computer breach, although some of the people interviewed pointed out that we do need to make sure we do the hard work on attribution before we go off all halfcocked and hog wild down the retribution path. I included those interviews in your Extra Credit.
One of the folks making the rounds was Kevin Mandia, CEO of FireEye, the cyber security company that initially discovered the breach. He talked with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation. Here's part of their discussion on how we keep this kind of thing from happening again.
He said we need to "have doctrine," like we do for the use of chemical weapons, so people know the rules of the game, and if we don't, he thinks it will just get worse.
We're going to see the borders continue to be pushed outward in cyber attacks-- to the point where, when do we finally do the work--when it's already intolerable, when it already got so bad that we have no choice but to respond. But like you said, it starts with doctrine. With doctrine, you have to get attribution right. And with attribution, then you have to do a proportional response to whoever the actors were.
I dropped a Trump in Transition post, the 48th in that series, on Tuesday. There'll be one on January 20th, I think. We'll see if he earns one before then. Here's a bit of that brain dump.
The millions who showed our displeasure, our distaste, our dislike, he cannot or will not comprehend. Our exhaustion, he cannot comprehend. How annoyed we are, how sick we are of his constant self-promoting, the embarrassing tweets, the grifting, the cast of characters by whom he is surrounded, that he foists upon us, that he honors and celebrates, he cannot comprehend.
Equally incomprehensible is that, as he pretends all of this isn't happening, didn't happen, isn't true, he continues to roil the waters in which his devout supporters swim, working them into a frenzy of martial-law supporting, havoc-wreaking, our-country-has-been-stolen fanatics. They are insisting he will be president, he will have his second-term inauguration come January 20th, and they don't care what it takes to make that happen.
Sometimes, trying to get my arms around this stuff between him and his followers, I beg for the chance to have my own 'Bobby Ewing in the shower' moment, I really do.
Disgraced former Buffalo-area Congressman Chris Collins was in the news again; he was the subject of a note from The Update Desk.
Tonight, the impeached, lame duck president issued 20 pardons and commutations, with Collins being among the lucky.
That the former congressman was the first one to support the president probably was very meaningful to Trump - and I can only imagine that, had he still been in office, Collins would have happily added his name to the list of 126 House Republicans supporting the 'Texas+' lawsuit (sorry, tired of listing the other states that joined that ridiculous case).
My Wondering on Wednesday included a bunch of random questions (including a couple related to Christmas) - and the ones below.
Why is the United States considering offering immunity to Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi royal who's such a good What's App friend of Jared Kushner, for his role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi?
Who will be the next target that the president will attack, now that he's gone after the #2 Republican in the Senate? Any guesses?
Why are people all of the sudden worried about foreign policy? Why haven't they been complaining all along? And why are reporters and politicians lying about it?
I took the rest of last week off, for a little holiday R&R, but we're back at it. See you later for Sunday School.
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