Carter Page and the FISA warrant

Politics

[View here as a Twitter thread]

 

Carter Page and Fox News Seems clear by now that the FISA warrant was based on ample evidence that Carter Page was an agent of a foreign power.  makes a good point: The warrant ONLY allows surveil of Page. What, then, do we make of the Nunes meltdown?

1/ The Trump-Nunes-GOP meltdown must mean the allegations about Page are true & the people who talked to Page know they’re busted. From that, people conclude Trump is in a panic. So I went to check the 538 polling aggregate:

2/ Trump’s approval ticked up slightly over the past few days, but has largely held steady since May of last year. Despite Mueller, despite all the news about Russia hacking and attacking the United States & Helsinki, Trump retains 42% approval.

3/ (I trust the 538 aggregate, BTW, more than any given poll or statistic) I’ve been hearing rumors for months that Trump’s support is softening. The 538 graph since May 2017 tells a different story.

4/ Keep in mind that in Trump’s view, 42% approval is enough to save his presidency because, while impeachment requires a majority in the House, removal from office requires 2/3 of the Senate. We’ve had impeachments, but never a removal because the bar to removal is so high.

5/ That explains why Trump isn’t preparing a traditional legal defense. He intends to defend himself in the Court of Public Opinion and Fox News. My fear: The truth doesn’t matter because propaganda works, and Putin and Trump are masters with a well-equipped propaganda machine.

6/ Havard Prof. Sunstein (# Republic) and others argue that the biggest problem facing the nation are separate media bubbles. It seems to me that separate media bubbles is a symptom, not the problem.

7/ When researching how the GOP morphed from the Party of Lincoln to the Party of the KKK, I understood Fox News played a part in the transformation. To better understand Fox, I started reading this bio of Ailes, described as “A revelatory journey inside the world of Fox News”