The amunition Republicans are using right now in their assault on Robert Mueller and his investigation is that two FBI agents who were involved in the Clinton email probe as well as the Trump/Russia investigation texted each other negative messages about Donald Trump.
A review of the texts between senior FBI agent Peter Strzok and senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page were sent to lawmakers Tuesday night. The texts are the subject of an ethics investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general, and they show the senior officials repeatedly offering harsh opinions about political figures. Among many other comments, the two called Trump “an idiot.”…
On March 4, 2016, Page texted, “God, Trump is a loathsome human,’’ to which Strzok replied, “Yet he may win.’’ Strzok then added, “Good for Hillary,’’ to which Page replied, “It is.’’
That conversation, which takes place after 2 a.m., includes Strzok texting, “God, Hillary should win 100,000,000-0.’’
That same night, Page notes Trump’s comment about the size of his hands and says, “This man can not be president.’’
Republicans and the right wing media are making the case that those texts indicate that Mueller’s team is politically biased, and therefore not credible. The first thing to keep in mind is that the minute the special prosecutor learned about these texts, the agents were removed from the Trump/Russia probe. We could also point out that a member of Trump’s cabinet recently used even more colorful language to describe the president.
But David Frum did us the service of going back to that date of March 4, 2016 in order to take a look at what some other people were saying about Trump.
On that same day, Meg Whitman – past GOP nominee for governor of California – called Trump a “dishonest demagogue” “incredibly dangerous” “repugnant.” https://t.co/1HOnyEEpUf https://t.co/NWQ9UZwAQk
— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 13, 2017
On that same day, GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio called Trump a “con man” and candidate Ted Cruz called Trump “part of the corruption in Washington you’re angry about.” https://t.co/nqxdc1Yi6w https://t.co/NWQ9UZwAQk
— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 13, 2017
He also reminded us of what Trump was tweeting about that day.
The point here is to demonstrate that calling Trump an idiot and thinking he is a loathsome human being is not really a partisan take at all. Since he got elected, a lot of that talk from Republicans has gone behind closed doors. But they are as aware as anyone else of his fundamental unfitness for office. The attempts to discredit these FBI agents for saying something that everyone already knows is part of the dangerous partisan game that is playing out right now.
