The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)

The media’s Trump crisis of the week

- Michael Reagan Making Sense

What’s the mainstream liberal media’s most overblown Trump crisis of the week?

First, it was the president’s tweet calling former staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman a “dog” for betraying him and his administra­tion with her new book, “Unhinged,” and her stash of secret White House recordings.

Then on Wednesday came the president’s revocation of the security clearance of John Brennan, Obama’s former CIA director and full-time Trump basher.

From the liberal media’s reaction, you’d have thought Pres- ident Trump had sentenced Brennan to death and declared himself dictator for life.

The New York Times called it “a striking act of retaliatio­n against an outspoken critic.”

Poor hysterical Andrea Mitchell of NBC, who pretended to worry that the president was “denying his own CIA ... access to the wise counsel of Brennan,” said the action was “akin to the Nixon enemies list.”

Trump’s action was, as usual, pure Trumpian. Brennan definitely deserved to have his security clearance taken away.

Instead of acting like a respectabl­e ex-government servant and keeping his partisan comments to himself, he’s been acting like a political hack or MS- NBC talk show host.

After the Trump-Putin press conference in Helsinki, for example, Brennan tweeted that the president’s performanc­e “rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeano­rs.’ It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???”

Other former Obama/Hillary partisans with security clearances who’ve been investigat­ing or critiquing Trump and his staff are reportedly being considered for the same treatment - including James Clapper, James Comey and FBI super villains Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Bruce Ohr.

Some people apparently think that Brennan and the other exObama people with security clearances are able to just walk into their nearest federal building and start looking at top-secret stuff.

No, they can’t do that. They have to be invited by the current administra­tion to come and look at material or give them advice based on their experience­s or knowledge.

As usual, the president messed up. He managed to turn a decision he had every right to make into a vindictive political and personal act. If he’s going to pull security clearances on Obama alums, he should have done it on everyone at the same time and done it a long time ago.

My problem with revoking the clearances is that once a president goes down this road, it’s bar-the-door Sally.

We Republican­s may all be happy and excited about what Trump did to Brennan, but one day we’re going to be angry and upset when a Democrat president does it to one of our guys.

We’re now at a point where no one in D.C. works together. No one looks for common ground.

The reality is, while this is going on in D.C., the American economy is growing at 4.1 percent, unemployme­nt is down dramatical­ly and taxes and regulation­s have been cut.

What gets lost in the big media’s over-the-top coverage of petty D.C. beltway crap like the Omarosa tapes and revoked security clearances is that America is doing pretty great - again.

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