Vice President Mike Pence. Image from the Onion.com
The last two weeks of the Trump Administration has been a disaster. Well, of course this could be said about his entire term thus far but I am not here today to litigate how rough this administration’s start may or not have been. I'm here to polygraph your politics people! With the mountain of lies and deceit coming from this administration I have a lot to cover. I could write an endless report on the comparison between candidate and President Trump. From flip flopping on his assessment that China is a currency manipulator and should be labeled as such or how he would immediately withdraw from the Iran deal, but right now we must deal with a more pressing matter….
Russia.
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On May 9th, 2017 President Trump fired James Comey who had recently testified in March that the Donald Trump campaign was under investigation and had been since July 2016. Comey concealed the existence of this investigation despite willfully sharing information pertaining to Hillary Clinton's email investigation twice publicly. Everything Comey said that condemned Clinton, Trump touted as proof of her corruption and everything he said exonerating Clinton, Trump expressed his disgust and disapproval. Despite how candidate Trump welcomed Comey's decision to reopen the Hillary Investigation just days before the November 8th election, the Trump Administration wasted no time suggesting that Trump only fired Comey due to the recommendation by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for how Hillary Clinton’s investigation was handled during the 2016 Presidential campaign.
The 2016 Trump campaign chair Kellyanne Conway and Vice President Mike Pence ensured the public that Comey's firing was simply the President acting on the recommendation of his Deputy Attorney's General. Would Trump surrogates really hope that we believe the Trump Administration is concerned with how unfairly Hillary Clinton was treated? Like really?
Truth or Fix (Fiction)
That ridiculous question brings us to the game I like to call Truth or Fix! Where we determine if politicians or media sources are simply telling the truth or deceptively "cooking the books" Today, we put Vice President Mike Pence to the polygraph machine.
Truth or Fix: "President Trump made the right decision at the right time to accept the recommendation of the Deputy Attorney General to ask for the termination and to support the termination of the Director of the FBI." - Vice President Mike Pence
This is a Fix! Just days after numerous interviews and press conferences from Trump officials, the President in an interview with Lester Holt admitted that regardless of recommendation he was going to fire James Comey and that there was no right time to do so.
Truth of Fix: "Let me be very clear, the President’s decision to accept the recommendation of the Deputy Attorney General and the Attorney General to remove Director Comey as the Head of the FBI was based solely and exclusively on his commitment to the best interest of the American people." -Vice President Mike Pence
Fix! We really have to unpack this quote because there is a lot propaganda to polygraph here. First, "the President's decision to accept the recommendation" is a lie all by itself. It is not accepting a recommendation if you tell me to do something that I have already told you I have decided to do. As reported by Business Insider, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told senators in a closed-door briefing on May 18th that he knew James Comey would be fired before he compiled the memo that the administration called the sole reason Comey was fired. So Pence's attempt at providing a clear understanding of why Comey was fired is 'clearly' a lie.
Secondly, the portion of the quote that states "the Deputy Attorney General and the Attorney General to remove director Comey" is especially troublesome for the Trump Administration. Attorney General Sessions had recused himself or being part of the investigation into Michael Flynn's connection to Russia because of his own concealment of meetings he himself had with Russian officials. How can you recuse yourself from an investigation, yet claim be an integral part of firing the lead investigator? Simple answer, you can't. In addition, the reasoning for the firing itself has since been exposed as a lie by the President, so Sessions' involvement seems to be a collective effort to cut the head off the investigation in hopes that the body would die. What the President didn't realize is that the federal government has a motto similar to Captain America's adversarial terrorist group Hydra of Marvel Comics’, "If you chop off one head, one grows in it's place". In this case the replacement "head" is former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, who has been appointed as the special counsel in the Russia/collusion investigation by forementioned Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Reports state that Rosenstein was angered by the Trump Administration's attempt to place Comey's firing on him and Rosenstein looked to restore public trust within him and his integrity with this appointment. The President should be careful with what he wishes for next.
Third and lastly, when Pence states that the President's decision was based "solely and exclusively on his commitment to the best interest of the American people." This is maybe the biggest most easily contested part of the Vice President's statement. In President Trump’s interview with Lester Holt we were awarded a glimpse into what contributing factors led to Director Comey's investigative demise. Trump told NBC News, " In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, 'You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won." Here Trump admitted that the Russia story played a factor in the firing after already acknowledging that Comey's firing was imminent with or without recommendation. Vice President Pence’s comments were betrayed by the man he was trying to protect in epic fashion on national television.
This leads us to the question can we trust anyone in the Trump administration to tell us the truth? Is Mike Pence informed of the Administration's goal to mislead the American people in order to protect the President? Or, is our Vice President so gullible that he believes whatever he's told and is incapable of manifesting his own thoughts and opinions? I believe a man of his accomplishments knows a lie when he says it and if not, is it any better that the second highest position in U.S. government is occupied by a man as gullible as a 4 year old? As far as I'm concerned his new name is Vice President Fix... Hope that catches on.
