Glass houses, pots and kettles: the state of CPAC
A funny thing happened during a Conservative Political Action Conference.
President Donald Trump stirred his base by garnering the familiar Hillary Rodham Clinton taunt of “Lock her up”, that attaches to the Commander in Chief’s reference of “Crooked Hillary”.
Trump should check out the list of his associates indicted or who have made plea deals and head toward prison.
While copped pleas by Trump associates will never match the alleged copped feels or paid trysts initiated by President Trump, Republicans should rethink their Hillary crusade, especially after Rick Gates became the latest person in the president’s circle to make a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller.
Gates, who served as a Trump campaign aide in 2016, pleaded guilty to two criminal charges, plus, agreed to cooperate with the probe into Russia’s interference in the U.S. previous presidential election.
Amazing what occurs when dapper men in fine suits begin thinking about serving time in prison. Gates, who had maintained his innocence, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to investigators as Mueller delivered a squeeze play with hopes of capturing Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort.
Gates and Manafort faced Mueller pressure in October when the special counsel delivered a 32-count indictment in Virginia that accuse the Trump associates of tax and bank fraud.
When Gates reversed field a day after the “Lock Her Up” chants, Mueller issued a fivecount indictment Friday that charges Manafort with conspiracy, money laundering, acting as an unregistered agent for a foreign entity and making false statements.
Paul Manafort questioned Gates’ change of heart.
“I continue to maintain my innocence,” Manafort said in a statement Friday after Gates’ plea deal. “I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence. For reasons yet to surface he chose to do otherwise. This does not alter my commitment to defend myself against the untrue piled up charges contained in the indictments against me.”
Mueller may eventually craft a holiday tune that rivals the 12 Days of Christmas as his team has either indicted or received guilty pleas from four Trump advisors, 13 Russian nationals, three Russian companies and one London-based lawyer.
The special counsel launched an invasion of Trump’s inner circle earning plea deals from Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos who said they made false statements about their contacts with Russians to FBI agents.
However, Mueller has been unable to charge any Trump associates with supporting Russian operatives in their attempt to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.
Trump tweeted, “Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong — no collusion!”
Trump during the 2016 campaign pressed for a special prosecutor to launch an investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server. Flynn joined an antiClinton chorus with his “Lock her up, that’s right,” comment, adding “If I did a tenth of what she did, I would be in jail today.”
More than a year later, Flynn faces jail time, caught up in Mueller’s expanding investigation that moves toward a guilty plea by Manafort. Lock him up.
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An even more interesting incident occurred during the CPAC’s Ronald Reagan Dinner when ACU Spokesman Ian Walters delivered the human version of the pot calling the kettle black. Walters, who is black, said the Republican National Committee made a mistake when it hired Michael Steele as chairman in 2009.
“We elected Mike Steele as chairman because he was a black guy, that was the wrong thing to do,” Walters said as the room hushed.
Walters got played, pawned and pimped out by a Republican party that could not ask a Caucasian male to deliver such a message. The fact that Walters, a black man, delivered the criticism hardly softens a continued message of discord delivered by a Republican party on the outs with African-Americans.
Steele, replaced by Reince Priebus, responded to the Observer.
“If (Walters) feels that way I’d like him to come say that to my face,” Steele said. “And then I’d like him to look at my record and see what I did. I can’t believe an official of CPAC would go onstage in front of an audience and say something like that .... I thought they raised them better than that here.”
The tumult between Walters and Steele continues a U.S. strategy of causing division between blacks. Can a black man dislike and act discriminatorily toward his own race? Obviously, yes.