CNN's Chris Cillizza on Thursday rationalized the actions of former FBI acting Director, Andrew McCabe, who revealed that he and other top ranking DOJ officials discussed recruiting Cabinet members in order to remove President Donald Trump from office. Cillizza absurdly attempted to justify it.
Cillizza's gimmick was to provide what he calls two ways of looking at what McCabe and his colleagues attempted to do. In the first example which Cillizza provided in a mocking tone was that of Trump supporters who would view this as a deep state coup. The second example respectfully cited was that of Trump opponents (which would include CNN and the author) who looked upon this as merely "removal by means of the Constitution."
The title of Cillizza's excuses for how DOJ officials would be justified to go beyond just enforcing the law to actually sitting in judgement of whether an elected president is fit to remain in office is "How Andrew McCabe's 25th Amendment bombshell tells us everything -- and nothing" which tells us quite a lot about Cillizza's mindset.
In a forthcoming interview with "60 Minutes," former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe confirmed that he and a handful of other Justice Department officials openly discussed recruiting Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment in the wake of President Donald Trump''s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey in May 2017.
That revelation proves something BIG about Trump's presidency. What is it? That depends on how you feel about him.
And we will see how Cillizza feels about the President...if for some strange reason you didn't already know.
If you are a Trump supporter, this news from McCabe is confirmation of a "deep state" network in place at the Justice Department -- a group of senior officials embedded in the top ranks of the federal bureaucracy that views itself as all-powerful, able to deploy the resources of the government to accomplish its goals even if those goals subvert the will of the people.
Trump himself seized on that idea in the wake of the McCabe news. He tweeted this Thursday morning:
"Disgraced FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe pretends to be a 'poor little Angel' when in fact he was a big part of the Crooked Hillary Scandal & the Russia Hoax - a puppet for Leakin' James Comey. I.G. report on McCabe was devastating. Part of 'insurance policy' in case I won. Many of the top FBI brass were fired, forced to leave, or left. McCabe's wife received BIG DOLLARS from Clinton people for her campaign - he gave Hillary a pass. McCabe is a disgrace to the FBI and a disgrace to our Country. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"
There's A LOT going on in that, er, statement from the President. But you get the gist: McCabe is a secret Democrat -- because his wife ran for the state legislature as one -- and wanted Hillary Clinton to win in 2016. To that end, he and the rest of the senior leadership at the FBI -- including Comey -- decided not to indict Clinton for her use of a private email server as secretary of state. Then, once Trump won, they led an effort to disgrace him and disenfranchise his voters.
From that perspective, what McCabe is revealing is nothing short of a coup in the making, an attempt by unelected bureaucrats to throw out a duly-elected President solely because they disagreed with his views. It's the clearest proof yet that the deep state will say and do anything to get Trump!
Note Cillizza's not so subtle tone of mockery as he presents that point of view. A tone which changes to respectful when presenting the viewpoint of Trump opponents.
If you are a Trump opponent, this news from McCabe is confirmation that senior officials within the Justice Department were so worried about Trump's behavior in office that they broached the unthinkable: Removal by means of the Constitution. The fact that such serious and professional people -- men and women charged with enforcing the laws of the country -- were driven to such extreme action (or at least the contemplation of such extreme action) proves just how abnormal and dangerous Trump really is to both the presidency and the country.
In that light, the consideration of invoking the 25th Amendment is an act of ultimate patriotism by people who put country before party. This wasn't about whether Donald Trump was a Democrat or a Republican president. It was about the rule of law, and the need to insulate the office of the presidency from a bad actor. And they believed Donald Trump to be that bad actor!
So DOJ officials who go well beyond enforcing the law to attempting to remove a duly elected president are "demonstrating an act of ultimate patriotism" because they believed him to be a "bad actor." Wow! And notice how Cillizza himself descibes Trump as "abnormal and dangerous."
