Posted on 06/08/2017 10:55:22 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Ex-FBI Director Comey released a statement ahead of his appearance before Congress, and it has heads spinning. I’ll tell you how things look through what I call the Persuasion Filter.
There are several related stories swirling around the news that involve Russia, Trump, Trump’s campaign staff, and Comey. All together, the stories are beyond the capacity of the human brain to hold the details and keep them from automatically conflating in our minds and becoming more soup than individual ingredients. When you have this level of complexity, humans reflexively default to using bias over reason. Our capacity for reason isn’t up to the job in this case because all the Russia-Comey-Trump stuff has started to run together in our minds. We would happily use our limited powers of reason in this situation if we could, but the complexity of it all makes that a dream beyond our grasp.
Could a trained lawyer sort out this complexity and at least tell you whether or not a law has been broken? Apparently not. Otherwise the lawyers on both sides would agree. They don’t.
So what we are seeing is a super-clean example of what I call two movies on one screen. The anti-Trump media and citizens are peering into the Comey fog and seeing some serious Trump-related wrongdoing that is impeachable at the very least, and treasonous at worst. Meanwhile, Trump supporters are looking at the SAME FACTS and seeing nothing illegal except for some leaking by anti-Trumpers.
Now add to the Comey fog the recent news of how President Trump worded his conversations. The nation will be word-thinking like crazy today, trying to figure out whether “honest” and “hope” mean something. That’s just enough ambiguity to create confirmation bias in literally every observer. (Including me, of course.) We’re all seeing what we want to see at this point.
I’m not a lawyer, and I’m as biased as the rest of you on this topic. But for what it’s worth, I’ll tell you what I’m seeing through my filter.
“Honest Loyalty”
Comey reports that Trump asked him during a private meeting for “loyalty.” Comey promised “honesty” instead. When Trump pressed the point a second time, Comey said he would give “honest loyalty.” Trump agreed that “honest loyalty” is what he wanted. The way you interpret this conversation depends on whether you think Trump or his associates are guilty of anything. If you think Trump is guilty of a crime, the conversation sounds like a Mafia-style threat. But if you believe Trump and his associates are innocent of any crimes, you probably see honesty and loyalty as the same thing in this situation. Innocent people want law enforcement to be honest. For the FBI to act otherwise would be disloyal to both the Constitution and any citizens involved in the investigation. In the context of an investigation of an innocent citizen, honesty and loyalty from law enforcement are the same thing.
“Hope you can let it go”
Regarding the FBI investigation of Flynn, if you think there was wrongdoing by Flynn, Trump’s expression of hope that the FBI can “let it go” sounds like a gangster sending a threat. But if you believe Flynn was innocent of everything but lying to Pence (for which he was fired) then you see it as entirely reasonable that Flynn’s friend (Trump) would “hope” Comey could “let it go.” The alternative would be hoping that Flynn was harmed for no reason, and the government continued to be distracted over nonsense. Does anyone hope for that outcome?
I won’t defend what President Trump said or did on this issue. Clearly it was problematic because we’re discussing it instead of something more useful. But I don’t see a broken law.
Persuading Comey
Was President Trump trying to persuade Comey in any of their private conversations? Of course he was. In a political context, all conversations are about persuasion. Comey was trying to persuade Trump that Comey was a competent and capable player with no bias. Trump was expressing his preferences from a power position, which is persuasive by its nature.
Persuasion isn’t inherently good or bad. Persuasion is a tool. It’s goodness or badness depends on the context of its use. If you believe Trump knows he and his associates were innocent of any wrongdoing, and you observe that the investigations are making the government less effective, it feels entirely legitimate for the President to persuade in a direction that is a benefit for all citizens. No one wants to waste time, money, or energy on a useless investigation. But if you think there is some wrongdoing yet uncovered, presidential persuasion would be wildly inappropriate in this case, even if technically legal.
I haven’t seen evidence of any crimes on the Trump side, so my filter sees a president trying to remove some obstacles that are not serving him or the American public. That kind of persuasion doesn’t feel wrong to me.
If new information emerges, I’m happy to update my opinion.
He didn’t read all of his statement at today’s sworn hearing. So am I to believe that some of the statements he made in Wednesday’s public leak were NOT sworn testimony and could be partial truths, fibs, and outright lies?
Comey admit he obstructed justice with Loretta Lynch. Trump strings him up by the balls and spins him around.
The Commie Pig.
Could be that the statement was sworn to under oath.
Shall we play a game?
Comey admit he obstructed justice with Loretta Lynch.
I’m betting we’re going to see Comey fade into obscurity now as the Left realizes he is exposing criminal activity... on the Left.
“Our capacity for reason isn’t up to the job in this case because all the Russia-Comey-Trump stuff has started to run together in our minds.”
“We are all seeing what we want to see”.
Sorry Scott, I think your persuasion theories are interesting and sometimes spot on, but this time, you might want to just sleek for yourself - it’s not all that confusing.
The left’s Russia/Trump narrative can’t be made sense of because it doesn’t make sense, that’s all. It is so contrived and so full of sh!t that it’s fraught with inconsistencies and absurdities.
The TRUTH about Trump/Russian collusion is extremely simple to sort out: it simply does not exist.
Once you get that one simple fact, it does not take a rocket scientist or a legal scholar to sort it all out. Some of us understand it quite clearly.
“If a legal scholar could understand it, then they would all agree”
Well, they probably do understand it and they probably do agree in their hearts, but the anti-Trump legal scholars don’t say what’s on their heart - they say what they can to advance the fake news narrative.
The honest ones, like Alan Dershowitz, Greg Jarret, and others seem to have no problem making sense of this whole mess - and they don’t need to put it through the persuasion filter, they just put it through the fake news filter.
Once you understand its all fake news, everything makes sense.
By the way, I really like most of Scott Adams’ insights -
According to what evidence? Comey’s self-serving memos and his opening statement?
According to CNBC, Trump's lawyer says that Trump denies asking Comey to back off the Mike Flynn investigation, and that Trump denies asking Comey for his loyalty.
And if Trump did ask, so what?
The citizens of the USA lawfully elected Trump to be the Chief Executive Officer of the Justice Department.
Trump can order Comey to start or stop any investigation. And Trump has the power to pardon Flynn, or even himself, if it comes to that. And Comey can resign any time he wants if Comey doesn't agree with Trump's orders.
After a 10 month investigation, the only “evidence” we have seen is that the Russians sent phishing emails to election officials.
I get phishing emails from Russia three or four times a week!
I haven’t heard if it was. I did hear that he was under oath.
I’m not certain if Hitlery’s testimony before Trey Gowdy was even under oath. I know that her statements to the FBI were not and no notes were taken.
I think Adams would agree with you, except he’s not yet admitting the Left self-created (fictionalized) the whole narrative. The Left’s jumble of absurdities is what has made it difficult to sort out rationally - by design.
In contrast, 30 years of Clintons taught them that a different type of jumble of absurdities (such as, who could be that evil?) can create enough of a fog to keep people out of jail. Except most of the Clinton scandals were likely not fiction.
One almost thinks Trump is a genius as inserting just the right weasel words into a conversation to confound the Libs—but only after getting them super riled-up.
It’s the Rope-a-Dope strategy.
What would be the difference between Trump asking for Comey’s loyalty, versus Comey carrying out the duties and responsibilities as he pledged do uphold when he took his oath of office?
I would think they would be one in the same. Was Trump asking FOR Comey’s loyalty, or asking Comey to carry out the oath he had sworn to uphold?
"Mr. Comey admitted that he unilaterally and surreptitiously made unauthorized disclosures to the press of privileged communications with the President.
The leaks of this privileged information began no later than March 2017 when friends of Mr. Comey have stated he disclosed to them the conversations he had with the President during their January 27, 2017 dinner and February 14, 2017 White House meeting.
Today, Mr. Comey admitted that he leaked to friends his purported memos of these privileged conversations, one of which he testified was classified.
He also testified that immediately after he was terminated he authorized his friends to leak the contents of these memos to the press in order to “prompt the appointment of a special counsel.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The last one listed involves CONSPIRACY, with multiple people, against the U.S. Government.
Comey is going to prison. And I hope he rolls over on The Cankle too!
Because Adams is accepting the truth of the basic premises underlying the fake news stories, he gets drawn into explaining them.
For example, there is a fake news narrative that Trump is guilty of trying to obstruct FBI investigations by threatening, pressuring and ultimately firing Comey.
Underlying that narrative, there are certain premises that simply become taken for granted.
1)That the Russians tried to influence our 2016 elections in Trump’s favor. When first suggested, this sounded absurd - for one thing, in what world would Russia rather have Trump than Clinton as POTUS? Totally absurd, yet in the hearings, none of the senators of either party dared to question that premise, but instead grandstand about the viscous threat to our democracy by a foreign nation.
2) That Trump is an impulsive and egotistical and inexperienced POTUS, whose background as the CEO of a self-made empire make him unaccustomed to accepting limits to his authority and unwilling to take no for an answer. That his administration is therefore in turmoil and subject to infighting as various factions vie for control of the puppet strings.
Once you accept those premises, as Scott Adams apparently does, you are left defending his alleged actions, rather than questioning the veracity of them. Adams therefore basically accepts that Trump tried to obstruct the investigation but justifies it as persuasion - Trump is a master persuader, why wouldn’t he try to persuade his subordinates to do his bidding?
But Adams is conceding too much, methinks.
I, for one, do not accept either premise. I think the entire Russian influence story was made up out of whole cloth to explain why the Dems and MSM got the election so wrong, and to discredit Wikileaks info as Russian propaganda. It also distracted attention from the HRC email scandal which exposed thousands of classified documents to our enemies - the argument was that any breach was due to Russian hacking, not HRC unsecured server.
I also don’t buy the premise that Trump is an out-of-control hot-head used to getting his way. He’s actually very methodical and patient and he’s operating well within the range of appropriate POTUS behavior - the any difference between Trump and Obama public perception is the number of political enemies he has, and the extent of the double standard being applied, and the number of lies being told about him.
All of this is fake news. All of it.
that Adams is getting sucked in
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