In a forthcoming interview with “60 Minutes,” former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe confirmed that he and a handful of other Justice Department officials openly discussed recruiting Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment in the wake of President Donald Trump”s decision tofire FBI Director James Comey in May 2017.
That revelation proves something BIG about Trump’s presidency. What is it? That depends on how you feel about him.
If you are a Trump supporter, this news from McCabe is confirmation of a “deep state” network in place at the Justice Department — a group of senior officials embedded in the top ranks of the federal bureaucracy that views itself as all-powerful, able to deploy the resources of the government to accomplish its goals even if those goals subvert the will of the people.
Trump himself seized on that idea in the wake of the McCabe news. He tweeted this Thursday morning:
“Disgraced FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe pretends to be a ‘poor little Angel’ when in fact he was a big part of the Crooked Hillary Scandal & the Russia Hoax – a puppet for Leakin’ James Comey. I.G. report on McCabe was devastating. Part of ‘insurance policy’ in case I won. Many of the top FBI brass were fired, forced to leave, or left. McCabe’s wife received BIG DOLLARS from Clinton people for her campaign – he gave Hillary a pass. McCabe is a disgrace to the FBI and a disgrace to our Country. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
There’s A LOT going on in that, er, statement from the President. But you get the gist: McCabe is a secret Democrat — because his wife ran for the state legislature as one — and wanted Hillary Clinton to win in 2016. To that end, he and the rest of the senior leadership at the FBI — including Comey — decided not to indict Clinton for her use of a private email server as secretary of state. Then, once Trump won, they led an effort to disgrace him and disenfranchise his voters.
From that perspective, what McCabe is revealing is nothing short of a coup in the making, an attempt by unelected bureaucrats to throw out a duly-elected President solely because they disagreed with his views. It’s the clearest proof yet that the deep state will say and do anything to get Trump!
“Wait, so is McCabe admitting that he attempted to lead a deep state coup against the President? #WitchHunt,” tweeted Donald Trump Jr., the President’s eldest son and the medium through which the most pro-Trump readings of the news move through.
If you are a Trump opponent, this news from McCabe is confirmation that senior officials within the Justice Department were so worried about Trump’s behavior in office that they broached the unthinkable: Removal by means of the Constitution. The fact that such serious and professional people — men and women charged with enforcing the laws of the country — were driven to such extreme action (or at least the contemplation of such extreme action) proves just how abnormal and dangerous Trump really is to both the presidency and the country.
In that light, the consideration of invoking the 25th Amendment is an act of ultimate patriotism by people who put country before party. This wasn’t about whether Donald Trump was a Democrat or a Republican president. It was about the rule of law, and the need to insulate the office of the presidency from a bad actor. And they believed Donald Trump to be that bad actor!
Like I said, this McCabe news means something BIG. It’s just that the country isn’t likely to agree on what.
It speaks to the divides not only in our politics generally but in our views of the country. One side will claim the McCabe revelation as proof positive that there is indeed a broad-scale conspiracy within the upper echelons of the government aimed at ousting and/or hamstringing President Trump. The other will see the McCabe news as proof positive that Trump is deeply incompetent and dangerous, as assessed by some of the top figures in law enforcement.
We live in an era of choose-your-own reality.
