Tag: John Dean

Bob Woodward’s new book and the anonymous op-ed by a senior official have merely confirmed, albeit in hair-raising new detail, the long obvious: Mr Trump is so blatantly unfit to be president that those who work for him ignore or thwart his orders. His ability to maintain his position could yet depend on the other individual in the spotlight: Brett Kavanaugh. That was by design. What we did learn, despite a process legal scholars have described as unprecedented in its “hurried and defective” nature, came largely thanks to disclosures by the Democratic committee member Cory Booker and a leak to media. It was in essence confirmatory rather than revelatory. It will put conservatives in firm and likely long-term control of the supreme court, endangering both voting and abortion rights, and incidentally putting it out of step with public opinion. And despite disingenuous attempts to blur his position on abortion law, Planned Parenthood said: “We already know how Brett Kavanaugh would rule on Roe v Wade, because the president told us so.” As a candidate, Mr Trump vowed to appoint supreme court justices who would overturn the landmark abortion ruling. And it is critical in maintaining his position now. The real issue is not individuals, but the rottenness of those backing them. We did not need the last week to tell us that Mr Kavanaugh is bad news on the supreme court and that Mr Trump is much more so in the White House.

Let's begin this hour with that and security clearances with Mara Liasson. GARCIA-NAVARRO: So that first item about President Trump's White House lawyer Don McGahn comes to us via The New York Times. All of this goes to Mueller's investigation of whether Trump obstructed justice when, among other things, he told McGahn at one point to try to fire Mueller, which McGahn didn't do. But the most extraordinary thing about The New York Times story is that it suggests that McGahn talked to Mueller to show Mueller that he did nothing wrong. And today, the president tweeted that he didn't like The New York Times suggesting that McGahn was a, quote, "John Dean type rat." LIASSON: Well, the president is threatening to revoke the security clearances of a whole bunch of critics of his. LIASSON: The impact could be pretty chilling, according to a lot of former intelligence officials. In other words, the president talked about removing the security clearance of a top Justice Department official. If you're going to tell the president about intelligence that he might not like, you might be worried that he'll yank your security clearance. GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's NPR national political correspondent, Mara Liasson.

Fox News host Sean Hannity has consistently argued against the investigation, well, in nearly every way imaginable. And on Monday, Dershowitz and Hannity agreed on what they saw as Mueller’s endgame. Nixon’s resignation followed shortly after the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment for consideration by the full House. A Democratic majority could then impeach Trump. Because conservative Republicans support Trump more than Republicans overall (89 percent approval, per Gallup), there’s little value in those Republicans’ bucking Trump at this point. Party loyalty means that many Republican voters will stick with their party despite questions about the president. About half of Republicans consistently identify Fox News as their most-trusted news outlet in Suffolk University polling. During the 2016 election, social media were even more partisan than was network news, with Breitbart leading the way on the right. As Nixon’s White House counsel John Dean put it in January, “There’s more likelihood [Nixon] might have survived if there’d been a Fox News.” Views of the Watergate investigation, we’ll note, were consistently fairly mixed over the course of 1973 and 1974. Some would argue that there’s a key differentiator between where Nixon was when he resigned and where Trump is now: evidence.