Quote of the Week...from Joe Scarborough

Vladimir Putin did nothing to elect Donald Trump...James Comey did.      ---Joe Scarborough

Joe Scarborough cohosts the MSNBC show Morning Joe along with his wife Mika Brzezinski.  By political philosophy a conservative, he has been for many years a Republican...including a stint as a Congressman...until just recently, when his many objections to Donald Trump led him to switch his status to Independent.  He made the above quote on his Twitter account, and I have to hand it to him: he's right on target...

During the last weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign there had been allegations of Russian interference on behalf of the Trump campaign and against Hillary Clinton's.  The WikiLeaks release of illegally hacked emails pertaining to the Democratic National Committee carried with it much openly discussed suspicion that Putin's Russia was behind the hacking...the released material may have reaffirmed to Trump's already established voting base negative thoughts about the "other" side, but it wasn't likely to switch undecided voters or those leaning to Clinton.  James Comey, on the other hand...

The Department of Justice Inspector General's report on the Hillary Clinton email investigation...some 900 pages long...just came out, accusing then-FBI Director Comey of acting out of line with the organization's policies when he publicly came out in July of 2016 and berated Clinton for her emails...the FBI had always carefully avoided that kind of grandstanding.  He then compounded the effect of his interference into the campaign by revealing to Congress that the Weiner emails...related to Clinton...were being investigated...just ten days before the election and immediately following the presidential debate after which Hillary surged to a big lead over Trump...12 points in one poll.  Americans may have been suspicious of WikiLeaks or a lot of the crap circulating on Facebook, but Comey was considered by millions to be beyond reproach, a man of high integrity...hence, many took his renewed investigation to heart as they reconsidered Clinton's fitness for the high office.  And it didn't help one bit that, in that last week and a half, the campaign, instead of being able to clearly state its own vision for the future under a Clinton presidency, instead had to answer question after relentless question related to that Weiner email investigation.  The campaign stalled and Trump's surged...and you know the rest of the story...

After Trump fired Comey last year, I was glad he was gone...but the president may well have been trying to impede the developing investigations about possible collusion between him and the Russians in the election.  I personally don't believe that Putin got Trump elected, but I do strongly suspect that he has something very damaging on our president, and many things that Trump says or does relating to Russia seem to confirm this.  Whether this will ever be conclusively proven or refuted...I don't know.  What I do know is that pious, sanctimonious, self-righteous James Comey grossly interfered in the 2016 presidential election against one candidate, only one candidate: Hillary Clinton...