Our own intelligence agencies don’t trust the White House with sensitive information, on the assumption that whatever they tell Trump-Bannon will make a beeline to the Kremlin. U.S. allies, including Israel and the United Kingdom, have reportedly curbed intelligence sharing with the U.S. on similar grounds, and who could blame them? The Trump administration’s untrustworthiness isn’t an “alternative fact,” but an actual one, an indisputable reality openly displayed to the world nearly each and every time an administration spokesperson grants an interview.
And the prospect that Trump is a Putin mole/pawn is merely one of the many elements, alternatively bizarre and horrifying, of what is already, easily, the most disturbing and frightening presidency in U.S. history.
Unless you’re Mark Amodei.
“No, I’m not growing concerned after 25 days of the Trump administration,” Nevada’s only Republican member of the U.S. House told the Reno Gazette-Journal.
“On the Russian stuff, it’s like find out, committees who have the jurisdiction over what happened,” Amodei said.
If Amodei sincerely wants House committees to “like find out,” he should publicly call on them to do so.
Utah GOP congressman Jason Chaffetz, chair of the House Oversight Committee, flatly declared that there’s no need to investigate the many questions (including but not limited to the president’s role) surrounding disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russia. “It’s taking care of itself,” Chaffetz said.
California GOP congressman Devin Nunes, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, says he won’t investigate the Flynn fiasco as it might violate the president’s “executive privilege.” And while he cares little about confirming whether the White House is Putin’s most valuable intelligence asset, Nunes is much more enthusiastic about investigating and bringing to justice the dastardly leakers who think the prospect of a severely compromised/kompromat president is something people (other than Mark Amodei, of course) may want to know.
Meantime, after those committees complete their exhaustive non-investigations, “If (Trump) made a mistake, we expect him to be responsible for that,” Amodei told the RGJ.
Yes, by all means, if – if! – and when it is revealed that Donald Trump committed the unthinkable and — gasp! — made a mistake, Amodei will demand accountability.
Just so long as it doesn’t interfere with the plans of Amodei and his Republican colleagues to give rich people tax cuts and take health care away from Nevadans and let corporations do whatever they want whenever they want.
“I don’t think it should take all of the air out of the room,” Amodei said. “For God sake, Congress, multitask.”
Good idea. Amodei should do his bit to help Congress multitask. He should take seriously the institution’s constitutional duty as a viable branch of government with responsibilities to check excesses, abuses and corruption of the other branches. Unless of course he prefers to stand as a garden-variety case study in the collapse of constitutional separation of powers, in which case he should keep doing what he’s doing.
