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Questioning the President’s Mental Fitness
For the past week, we’ve been hearing about supposed “concerns” regarding President Trump’s mental fitness to serve, and his statement that he’s a “very stable genius” in response. But how did this all start? It was because of a bill on Capitol Hill (introduced by Democrats, of course), that would require every President to be evaluated for mental fitness. These Dems went so far as to bring in a psychiatrist from Yale, Dr. Bandy Lee, who just happens to be the editor for a book called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump that came out last year. Lee, who told Politico she met with a group of Democrats and “one unnamed Republican” on December 5th and 6th, said President Trump is “unraveling, losing his grip on reality and reverting to conspiracy theories.” Ed alert: “Well Dr. Bandy Lee, I just don’t buy your BS…and I don’t think Oprah wants to be the next President.” Ed also has some examples of so-called “conspiracy theories” espoused by the President that turned out to be the truth all along, like Trump Tower being bugged. His point: There are things the President knows that sound like “conspiracies” to people who don’t know.
The Fire and Fury Book
The other big story of the week is all the lies printed in journalist Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, which is already a New York Times bestseller. Thanks to the President’s former advisor “Sloppy” Steve Bannon giving Wolff open-door access to the White House for months, Wolff was able to speak with dozens of people who supposedly told him unflattering things about the President; the problem is, most of them say his book is a work of fiction. You’ll hear from some of them on this week’s show, including CIA Director Mike Pompeo, campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney – and, you’ll hear Wolff say that those people “are all lying.” Hmm, ok.
The Dossier that Won’t Die
On January 5th, Senators Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley of the Senate Judiciary Committee formally recommended a criminal investigation again Christopher Steele, the author of the “Trump dossier” that made salacious and false claims about Trump’s ties to Russia.
Here’s a recap on Christopher Steele, the dossier and the firm behind it, Fusion GPS:
- Someone representing one of Trump’s Republican opponents in the primary was paying a (via a third party) for Fusion GPS to do opposition research on Trump.
- Then around March 2017 (most likely when that person dropped out of the race), Fusion GPS approached attorney Mark Elias to see if he wanted to retain the firm and continue the research on behalf of his clients. Who were his clients? Both the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
- Elias said yes, he would hire Fusion GPS to do the work – and that’s what led to former British spy Christopher Steele being hired by Fusion GPS to write the dossier, which was mysteriously released and published on the website Buzzfeed just before the inauguration (coincidence? Nope.).
This week, some new revelations came to light and one of them is downright shocking. Joshua Levy, attorney for Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “Somebody’s already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier and no harm should come to anybody related to this honest work.” Whoa! Ed alert: “Honest work? That sounds like perjury to me.” (According to reports, the best guess on who this was seems to be a former KGB operative Oleg Erovinkin, who was found dead in the back of his car on a Moscow street in December 2016.) In any case, Senator Dianne Feinstein is who we have to thank for this information and you’ll hear her say she decided to release this 312-page transcript because she’s “had a bad cold and it slowed down my mental facilities for a little bit.” Ed has a lot to say about that and much more on this week’s show!
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