June 4, 2018

It doesn't happen often, so we celebrate it when it does. Matt Schlapp got slapped around on a Fox News panel by A.B. Stoddard. They were discussing the GrEaT LeAdEr's frantic and nonsensical exhortations that he has limitless pardon powers and is completely protected from indictment or definitely not in any way guilty of obstructing justice.

Thank the heavens above Stoddard was there to make sense. I swear, Matt Schlapp couldn't draw a straight line from the beginning of a sentence to the end of it if his life depended on it. He was spewing crap about lots of "legitimate questions" and "spying" on the Executive Branch. I think he tried to use the words "extra-Constitutional" and "Special Counsel" together at some point, who knows, but basically, he was all, "Yeah, Trump and Giuliani are just saying they're gonna fight back with all they got!"

Stoddard was calm and rational as she explained that Giuliani was waging a spin war to sway Trump supporters and Congressional Republicans, whom she called "supine and completely acquiescent" when it came to his abuses of power, which she described as "near dictatorial." She began to discuss the Trump Tower meeting, but the host, Shannon Bream, cut her off.

Schlapp came back like a walking thesaurus with vertigo, talking about what things "hinged on" a lot, calling Mueller a virtual "Senate-confirmed officer of the Constitution" for the second time of the segment (what?) and a bunch of other words I don't think really belonged together, but it sure looked like they made Matt feel accomplished.

Bream came back to Stoddard to put words in her mouth, saying she'd called the "president" "dictatorial." Don't mess with A.B., though. "I said NEAR-dictatorial." And then she laid out in very clear terms (pay attention, Matt - this is how you speak real sentences...) the ways in which Trump is setting himself up as a ruler without limits.

Between the memo and his tweets he is basically saying, "I can terminate this at any time, I can't be indicted. I can pardon myself." He used the words "Absolute Right," and he is presenting himself as above this investigation, let alone the laws that confine it. They are preparing...Rudy Giuliani is preparing a political campaign...basically saying he can't be indicted, he can only be impeached, but the reason I raise the Trump Tower meeting and the statement about it is because they know that Mueller perceives it to be an obstruction of justice, and it's likely to be presented in the report that way. So the letter from January with those assertions is designed to say, "But you can't even really assess it as obstruction of justice because I can't obstruct the law." So what he's saying to Republicans is you can't even impeach him for obstruction of justice.

Got it? Don't cut A.B. Stoddard off - she will get RIGHT back to her point. Don't put words in her mouth - she will call you on it. And don't try to keep her from telling the truth. Even on Fox News.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon