President Trump is so riled up by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff's refusal to believe Attorney General William P. Barr's four-page cliff notes of the Mueller Russia investigation report that he's resorted to what he does best, name calling.
When Trump feels threatened, his history has been to attack and that's now resulted in a new shirt being sold by the Trump 2020 reelection campaign mocking Schiff, dubbed by Trump as "Pencil Neck." Actually, it is so tempting to toss it back at Trump in kind. Could he be called "Blubber Neck?"
But I won't do that. Wait. I just did.
Sorry, but I'm just a retired keyboard crusader (I was dubbed that by one of my friends who is a Trump loyalist), not the president of the United States. So if I toss a little crap back at Trump, it won't really affect anyone except to piss off his supporters. So, who cares?
Trump, however, has the biggest audience possible -- the entire world. And whenever he is threatened or angered, what does he do? He calls people names and mocks them. From "Crooked Hillary" to "Lying
James Comey," Trump has used this childish tactic to get attention and denigrate his enemies. Remember "Rocket Man?" Oh yea, now they have a "beautiful" relationship, I forgot.
This name for Rep. Schiff (D-CA), however, seems different. It smells of fear.
All week Trump and his allies have gloated, trotting out Barr's four-pager as proof that the president has been cleared of any wrong doing in connection with Russia's attempt to fix the 2016 election in favor of Putin's pal, Donald Trump. And many people have believed them, never thinking past the fact that Trump put Barr in his job to do exactly what he did.
So when Schiff boldly called them out on Thursday, Trump flinched. The result, the stupid "pencil neck" shirt shown above. But here is just a part of what Schiff had to say:
"“The Russians offered dirt on a Democratic candidate for president as part of what was described as the Russian government’s effort to help the Trump campaign.
“When that was offered to the son of the president, who had a pivotal role in the campaign, the president’s son did not call the FBI, he did not adamantly refuse that foreign help. Instead that son said that he would love the help of the Russians.
“Paul Manafort, the campaign chair, someone with great experience in running campaigns, also took that meeting…. The president’s son-in-law also took that meeting…. They concealed it from the public…. Their only disappointment after that meeting was that the dirt they received on Hillary Clinton wasn’t better.”
And Schiff kept going. Through Manafort’s offer of campaign information in exchange for debt forgiveness; through his offer of campaign polling data to someone linked to Russian intelligence; through Jared Kushner’s attempt to open a Russian back channel; through Trumpworld contacts with the GRU (“a hostile intelligence agency”); through denied-but-true Moscow Trump Tower negotiations and the promulgation of a “new and more favorable policy toward the Russians” as Trump sought “the Russians’ help — the Kremlin’s help” to make himself a fortune.
Call me crazy, Schiff said, but it all strikes me as immoral, unethical, corrupt — and, yes, as collusion, even if it isn’t part of a criminal conspiracy.
Throughout his incantation, Schiff repeated the phrase: “You might think it’s OK that…” as he walked through the facts. Since he delivered the litany, no one has called him on a single error. And yet, Republicans on the committee seemed to find all the evidence of Trump’s treachery OK.
None of this is OK. And neither is Trump's stupid, juvenile name calling.