The media went into full meltdown mode on Friday when the memo alleging surveillance abuse by the FBI was released. While many downplayed the contents of the memo as a “nothing burger," others continued to harp on the narrative that President Trump is at war with the FBI.
During an appearance on CNN’s The Situation Room, just hours after the release of the memo, counterterrorism analyst Phil Mudd suggested that the FBI would have the upper hand in a war with the Trump Administration as he attempted to serve as a mind-reader for rank-and-file FBI agents. According to Mudd, the FBI agents were saying, “I guarantee it, you think you could push us off this because you can try to intimidate the director, you’d better think again, Mr. President. You’ve been around for 13 months; we’ve been around since 1908. I know how this game is going to be played and we’re going to win.”
Perhaps Mudd did not realize that his comments unwittingly gave credence to the theory that the FBI is committed to undermining the Trump Administration. In their never-ending quest to expose corruption in the Trump Administration, the media have chosen to ignore the credible claims of corruption at the FBI; which poses an equally serious threat to our democracy. Notice how very little of the media’s coverage of the memo actually discussed its contents.
As demonstrated by the release of the movie The Post, the American press has always generally supported the idea of transparency; that the more the American people know, the better. That is, unless, transparency has the potential to vindicate a President that they hate. Then, they have no problems with keeping the American people in the dark.
Here is a transcript of the February 2 commentary from Mudd:
5:39 PM ET
PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Boy, you would think on the surface, Wolf, looking at this from the outside, that this would be demoralizing. I'm going to judge that it is not. You've got a group of people who don't join a company. What they join is -- and you sense this when you walked the halls of the Hoover building as I did. They joined a mission that says, I'm here to protect the American people, from everything, from gangs and organized crime to intelligence threats from Russia and China. The president and the White House think that by saying we support the mass at the FBI, but we oppose in its strong language, the president is talking about basically corruption at the FBI today, but we oppose the leadership.
The workforce is going to look at this and say, this is an attack on our ability to conduct an investigation with integrity. There are hundreds of agents and analysts working on this investigation. It's not just Christopher Wray, the FBI Director. So, the FBI people -- I'm going to tell you are ticked, and they're going to be saying, I guarantee it, you think you could push us off this because you can try to intimidate the director, you'd better think again, Mr. President. You've been around for 13 months; we've been around since 1908. I know how this game is going to be played, and we're going to win.
