I am with you on the getting sick of “Pence is bad, Barr is bad” stuff based on nothing whatsoever.
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I suspect that the context of the mentoring comments is in moving from the military to the halls of political power.
Someone had to take him under wing and guide him in developing the kind of knife fighting skills necessary to survive in the environment of the fedzilla.
But Miller’s praise was in the context of the most complex military operation in the history of the US.