President-elect Donald Trump’s press conference yesterday was so bizarre, so convoluted, that academics will be pouring over it for years to come. Indeed, it’s already worthy of its own CliffsNotes special edition on how not to conduct a press conference. It was like a spiteful parody of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense: Rare Nonsense by Donald Trump.
Trying to find the exact center of crazy was almost impossible; 19th-century explorers had less difficulty locating the magnetic poles.
Because his speech looked like the live-stream from a TED talk on the next big thing in dementia research. Pundits abandoned all attempts at sophisticated analysis and resorted to listing Snafus like they were recalling episodes of Friends.
You know, the one where he went all Jerry Springer Show with that CNN reporter. Or perhaps the one where he told everyone ISIS was ‘number one tricky.’
The one where he thought an impressively large stack of papers would put an end to the whole conflict of issues thing.
The one where he issued a veiled threat to his own intelligence agencies.
Oh yeah, that one.
President-Erect
He’s clearly mad at them. Who wouldn’t be?
Whether the leaked document is authentic or not is entirely beside the point. That it was released in the first place is of much more interest. It suggests a certain tension between the incoming president-to-be and existing agencies.
I wonder what caused the rift?
The "Intelligence" briefing on so-called "Russian hacking" was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2017
Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to "leak" into the public. One last shot at me.Are we living in Nazi Germany?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017
Oh yeah, Twitter and shit.
Full Of Piss And Vinegar
Trump kicked off the national trauma inducing press conference with a bang. Musing on the possibility that the intelligence agencies themselves might have released the report that it would be:
” A tremendous blot on their record if they, in fact, did that. A tremendous blot, because a thing like that should have never been written, it should never have been had and it should certainly never been released.”
As usual, Trump’s somewhat unique relationship with the English language was rendering his actual meaning somewhat opaque.
One thing was clear. Anyone watching his opening concerto could tell he was mad, really mad.
Heads were going to roll.
CIA -Hole
Amazingly, he wasn’t done. Without pausing to reflect on how obsessed he sounded, he returned to the topic stating that he thought it was:
“Pretty sad when intelligence reports get leaked out to the press. First of all, it’s illegal. These are classified and certified meetings and reports.”
As that stellar insight settled on those gathered like a warm fart in a walk-in fridge, Trump revealed that he had already taken steps to tackle the problem.
He whined that:
“I have many meetings with intelligence. And every time I meet, people are reading about it.”
Perhaps Trump was referring to his inability to sit through daily briefings, a fact revealed to the press last December? Such an assertion would be confusing; it would be more like people reporting that he was not having meetings. They were simply dying to take a leak but just couldn’t go.
Like the intelligence community has some kind of UTI.
At any rate, not to be outsmarted by people unquestionably smarter that he is, Trump hatched a cunning plan. He devised a way of out-spying the spies:
“So I said, ‘Maybe it’s my office. Maybe my office. Because I’ve got a lot of people … Maybe it’s them?’ What I did, is I said ‘I won’t tell anyone. I’m going to have a meeting, and I won’t tell anybody about my meeting with intelligence.'”
The trap was set, the jaws of death were pried open, waiting to spring shut on the unsuspecting professional intelligence operatives.
Meeting held. Meeting leaked.
At last, Trump knew with a fair amount of certainty who it probably wasn’t.
Genius.
Sting
Still, exactly what Trump plans to do with this information is hard to fathom. Having successfully eliminated the hundred or so people who work for the transition team he was now left with the notion that the leak came from someone else. Someone in the intelligence community.
A community some 854,000 people strong.
At such a rate he will have to conduct another 8.540 sting operations in order to narrow the list of potential leaks down to 100 people. That’s one sting a day for the next 23 years, or if he really wants to get to the bottom of it before he’s up for re-election, 5.8 stings a day, 7 days a week for the next 4 years.
Either way, hard work to be sure.
If only he had access to an intelligence agency that could run these stings for him.
Indeed, if only he had a fucking clue.
Watch Trump attack U.S. agencies like they have no way of biting back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1OIf0Qrjwg
Featured Image: Screenshot Via YouTube Video.
