monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

(...) Finally there are bits and pieces of what we know about Strzok himself. U.S. intelligence officials that I talked to about him tell me he is an outstanding counter-intelligence officer who worked well with both the Obama and Trump administrations. What's more, Strzok was one of the FBI agents who interviewed Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, about his phone calls to the Russian ambassador in January. Multiple news outlets reported that the FBI officials who interviewed Flynn did not conclude he had deliberately lied, even though this month Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in that interview. If Strzok had allowed his anti-Trump bias to influence his work, why wouldn't he report that Flynn had intentionally deceived him?

That is another good question for the oversight committees and the Justice Department's inspector general. All of this is to say that we should reserve judgment about Strzok and Page.

The Justice Department’s decision to instead release private communications is reminiscent of the weeks before the 2016 election, when FBI officials leaked their own complaints about how the investigation into the Clinton Foundation was stymied -- when documents involving former attorney general Eric Holder's handling of former President Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich were mysteriously tweeted out from a long-dormant FBI account. Back then, the same Republicans who now accuse the FBI of trying to destroy Trump were cheering the bureau's last-minute intervention in the election on his behalf.

There is a coup in progress.

Trump will be removed through the wiles of the FBI leaders, each of whom is a Republican.

Then Hillary will be the President.

In a series of tweets, Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor, said the Republicans were “playing politics – but this is a bad sign for them”.

“Of course Mueller obtained emails from a third party,” he said. “Prosecutors in most white collar criminal investigations do that. It’s not ‘inappropriate’ or even unusual. Anyone who claims otherwise has no idea what they’re talking about.”

If Mueller didn’t follow the law, a court would suppress the evidence so it couldn’t be used. The reason Trump’s lawyers are writing letters to Congress instead of Mueller or a court is because their legal arguments have no merit.

It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.

A huge majority of Republicans stuck with Moore and Trump last Tuesday. And we’ve learned one new and sickening thing this past month: Republican tribalism demands that the Mueller investigation be aggressively smeared in advance, its findings preemptively discredited, and its lawyers smeared for political loyalties, even when there is no evidence that this is affecting the special counsel’s work. In much of Trump media, Mueller’s alleged corruption and bias are fast becoming an article of faith. Night after night on Fox, it’s an endless diatribe against the special counsel, a constant drumbeat of propaganda about a “tainted probe.” Central to it is that waddling eminence, Newt Gingrich, who is openly arguing that Mueller is engineering some kind of coup against the will of the Trump masses.

This is not just from the media fever swamps. Take even formerly “Never Trump” National Review, which this week gave prominent space to an essay that draws this conclusion: “By now there are simply too many coincidental conflicts of interest and too much improper investigatory behavior to continue to give the Mueller investigation the benefit of doubt. Each is a light straw; together, they now have broken the back of the probe’s reputation.” The House Judiciary Committee’s grilling of Rod Rosenstein this week also revealed a near-universal Republican consensus that the investigation is rigged. E.J. Dionne recently noted “the statement of Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, that if every member of Mueller’s team who was ‘anti-Trump’were kicked off, ‘I don’t know if there’d be anyone left.’” Jordan also declared that “the public trust in this whole thing is gone.” Ben Wittes is rightly worried that the House Republicans “are braying for actions inimical to the very idea of independent law enforcement. They are doing it about someone, Mueller, with whom they have long experience and about whom they know their essential claims to be false.”

Mark Twain wrote:
It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.

Republicans are refusing to name new witnesses in the Congressional investigation into the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 election and may be prematurely winding down the probe, according to the ranking Democrat in the House Intelligence Committee.

Firing off a nine-tweet thread on Friday, Adam Schiff (D–California) warned he had become “increasingly worried Republicans will shut down the House Intelligence Committee investigation at the end of the month,” before going on to explain that the Majority hasn’t lined anyone up to testify after Dec. 22.

Like Cyrus 2,500 years ago, Trump is seen as an instrument of God. And the plan: to build the Third Temple on the Temple Mount – where the Al-Aqsa Mosque currently stands

Political junkies and Middle East analysts have had to bone up on their conservative Christian theology to properly understand why Donald Trump’s declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was so important to the evangelicals who lobbied hard for it and have been lauding it all week.

Trump was already a hero to a wide swath of evangelicals for his efforts to fight abortion, keep transgender kids out of the wrong bathrooms and fill the U.S. courts with die-hard conservative judges. But the role he’s playing in what many believe is the fulfillment of divine prophecy has gotten him promoted to king for some of them – an ancient Persian king to be precise.

For his willingness to confront conventional diplomatic wisdom, shrug off dire warnings of triggering Middle East unrest and declare Jerusalem Israel’s capital, Trump is increasingly being compared by evangelicals – and Jews on the religious right – to Persia’s King Cyrus II, also known as Cyrus the Great. "Trump in his generation, as Cyrus in his", tweeted Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. The bolder have gone so far as to suggest that Trump doesn’t just merely resemble the Persian king, he’s Cyrus reincarnated.

It’s not a new concept. Trump-Cyrus comparisons have been batted around on the religious right since the New York businessman’s presidential campaign, particularly as he began to aggressively court evangelicals. But since the Jerusalem declaration, such comparisons are appearing more frequently and intensely than ever in sectarian media and on social networks.

... ... ...

Your quote from New York Magazine, in my never humble opinion, shows how desperate the Republicans have become.

If Trump wins, he’ll be held more or less in check by the House and Senate because that’s the way our system of government is set up. Not even Republicans are eager to follow Trump’s lead.

There won’t be a wall. He won’t impose any religion-based immigration restrictions, because even Trump isn’t that lame-brained. He’ll dress up and behave at state dinners and be funny when called upon. He’ll even invite the media to the White House holiday party. He won’t nuke Iran for rude gestures. He won’t assault women. He and Vladimir Putin will hate each other, respectfully.

It's useless to try to justify it on policy or moral grounds.