When the FBI announced in October 2016 that it was reviewing new emails related to its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server as secretary of state, it gave Donald Trump a priceless gift. Not because, as it turned out, Clinton had deliberately mishandled classified information or was about to be charged with a crime, but because it gave the impression of impropriety, which the reality-TV host rode all the way to the White House. Unfortunately for Trump, whose polling couldn’t be worse, we are living in the year 2020 and he is running against Joe Biden, not Hillary Clinton. These are the sort of simple questions a doctor might ask a patient to assess whether they’ve suffered a traumatic brain injury, yet, weirdly, it appears that neither the president nor his employees know the correct answers.
Speaking to Fox News on Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Dana Perino, “We’ve got the emails. We’re getting them out. We’re gonna get all this information out so the American people can see it. You’ll remember there was classified information on a private server, should have never been there. Hillary Clinton should never have done that. It was unacceptable behavior. It’s not the kind of thing that leaders do…. Classified information needs to stay on the right places. Secretary Clinton, when she was here at the State Department, did not do that…. We’ll get the information out that needs to get out…as fast as we can. I certainly think there’ll be more to see before the election.”
The news that the federal government is working on releasing Clinton’s emails “as fast” as it can, as though there are no other pressing issues to deal with, comes one day after Trump called in to Fox Business to rant about the fact that his former opponent hasn’t been “indicted” (which may have something to do with the fact that she was cleared of wrongdoing), saying that he was “not happy” with Pompeo for failing to get her emails out to the public. (He also complained that his attorney general hasn’t indicted Biden and Barack Obama, saying that Bill Barr will go down in history “as a very sad, sad situation” if he fails to prosecute the president’s enemies.)
In a sign of how utterly bizarre it is that Trump is screaming about Clinton’s emails and thinks releasing them might help his reelection chances, even some of the gang at Fox Business have wondered why he thinks voters care about any of this. “President Trump didn’t follow what the Wall Street Journal was saying in terms of staying on policy,” anchor Dagen McDowell said following the interview with Maria Bartiromo. “I am not sure it helped his campaign to talk about Hillary Clinton’s emails and going back down that rabbit hole like it was four years ago…. It was kind of, well, all over the place. It didn’t really focus on the very issues of what the American people want to hear. Some of it did, but some of it clearly did not.”
Anyway, it’s not clear what the president plans to do with his time should he lose in November and actually vacate the White House, but if he does and those close to him finally get him the help he needs, the odds are pretty high he’ll still regularly be calling in to Fox in 2024 claiming he’s got classified information about Clinton “that’s going to shock voters like you wouldn’t believe.” Then he’ll whisper, “I gotta go, they’re here” while an orderly’s key turns in the lock, adding, “The DOJ doesn’t want you to know this because it’s part of the deep state, but her husband had an affair with an intern. It’s all there in the documents.” Then the phone will drop and we’ll hear him yell ”Stay back! Keep your hands off of me! Presidential harassment!”
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And speaking of Trump’s mental faculties…
Nancy Pelosi is supporting a bill that would create a panel to assess if the president is a stark raving lunatic who should be removed from office: