Dirty Trick?
In all the coverage of the Buzzfeed report about Trump's subornation of perjury, and the Mueller non-denial denial of it, I have yet to see a single mention of what, to me, seems to be a highly likely explanation of what happened: that this information was planted with Buzzfeed by Republicans to give themselves an opportunity to go on one more screaming tirade about the phony press, and in the process make this impeachable revelation radioactive, so it is just dropped.
The Republican party has, after all, a history of this sort of thing. The Most notorious, and most successful of such schemes was the deliberate releasing, a couple of months before the 2004 election, of false evidence of George W. Bush's desertion from the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war. And let me be clear that the evidence that Bush did desert is and was at the time absolutely incontrovertible; but this fake scandal made the entire issue, which could well have derailed Bush's reelection, out of bounds to the mainstream press.
There have been other examples of such behavior from Republicans over the years, the most recent of which has been the widely publicized effort by Republican operatives to gin up a phony story that Robert Mueller was a rapist.
So, why do we not suspect that we have the same thing happening here? The Trump people, knowing that they have now strayed into incontrovertible impeachment territory, acted swiftly to use a tried and true Republican tactic to make the issue uncoverable by the mainstream media. Buzzfeed, obviously, does not have the fact checking resources that, say, the New York Times or the Washington Post do, so they were selected as the patsies in this plot. That, to my mind, is simply by far the most likely explanation of what happened with this report, and it may very well work.
The Republican party has, after all, a history of this sort of thing. The Most notorious, and most successful of such schemes was the deliberate releasing, a couple of months before the 2004 election, of false evidence of George W. Bush's desertion from the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war. And let me be clear that the evidence that Bush did desert is and was at the time absolutely incontrovertible; but this fake scandal made the entire issue, which could well have derailed Bush's reelection, out of bounds to the mainstream press.
There have been other examples of such behavior from Republicans over the years, the most recent of which has been the widely publicized effort by Republican operatives to gin up a phony story that Robert Mueller was a rapist.
So, why do we not suspect that we have the same thing happening here? The Trump people, knowing that they have now strayed into incontrovertible impeachment territory, acted swiftly to use a tried and true Republican tactic to make the issue uncoverable by the mainstream media. Buzzfeed, obviously, does not have the fact checking resources that, say, the New York Times or the Washington Post do, so they were selected as the patsies in this plot. That, to my mind, is simply by far the most likely explanation of what happened with this report, and it may very well work.
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