Real Characters Episode 30 Fighting for Media Exposure in the Face of the IG Report

                Mike is a staffer for Bill Barr looking over some documents trying to gather as much information on the origins of the allegations that President Donald Trump colluded with Russia to affect the 2016 election.  Whether or not he did was pretty much destroyed on July 24, 2019 when Bob Mueller, the head of the special counsel investigating it testified on Capitol Hill and appeared not to know anything about his own case.  This is after it should have been his life for three years.  Oddly, the very next day, July 25, 2019, the National Security Council (NSC) advised President Trump to call the new president of Ukraine to congratulate him on his winning the election.  President Trump doesn’t believe this to be a bad thing so he makes the call and has an innocuous conversation with the Ukrainian president, which any interested party can see for themselves at this point because President Trump had to release the transcript as the House Intelligence Committee lied about what he said on the call.  Despite this, they still have been meeting in secret to impeach the president.   Although the staffer is well aware of this, it is not his job to look into that.  He is beginning to believe that the entire investigation into President Trump was a massive entrapment campaign of people desperate to have their corruption not exposed.  Working on that theory, he decides to see if the same people who are perpetuating the lie that Trump threatened Ukraine in a quid pro quo to take down Biden, were the same people involved in the setup back in July 2016. 

                As Mike’s job is to look at origins, he naturally thinks to look at how the Ukraine phone call controversy happened.  A whistleblower told Democrat house intelligence chairmen Adam Schiff that he heard from a White House source that President Trump threatened Ukrainian president Zelensky.  Mike now knows that the whistleblower is Eric Ciaramella, a low level NSC employee.  Naturally, that’s who Mike looks into first.  A main source in the origins of the Russia scandal are the texts between FBI lead investigator Peter Strzok and his mistress FBI lawyer Lisa Page.  Mike has one screen open to the numerous text messages that have been released and on the other he has information about Eric Ciaramella to see if anything overlaps. What he finds will make him smile and encourage him to go into his boss’ office.

                Attorney Bill Barr is sitting in his office looking over documents trying to piece together how the Russia investigation got started.  As he keeps digging, he finds more and more corruption, which led his partner in this, US Attorney General John Durham, to make it a criminal investigation.  He has been distracted because New York City has shown their political bias that he is aiding the president by having the investigation by threatening to disbar him.  Barr has stayed the course as he believes these threats mean he’s getting close.  As he’s sitting there, he hears a knock on his door.  He calls out, “Come in”

                One of his employees, Mike, comes to his office with documents and a big smile on his face.  Barr chuckles and utters, “Well you look excited.”

                “I think I found something.”

                “Go on”

                “In February 2017, Strzok texted Page ‘Just heard from (redacted) he said that he just went up to Flynn’s office and he was unable to get (redacted).’

                “That’s not usually one of the texts that people get excited about so why should this one matter?”
                “Mike Flynn was targeted by Mueller and arrested for lying to the FBI when the FBI agents that arrested him wrote in their 302 (FBI summary of an interview) that they didn’t think he was being deceptive.”
                “I am aware that the good general was pressured by bankruptcy and threats to his family by the justice department to plead guilty.  Flynn’s excellent new attorney, Sidney Powell, has been doing a sensational job given the circumstances in helping Flynn fight this.  That, however, is not our task.  Leave defending Flynn to Ms. Powell; she is very capable.”

                “I’m not defending Flynn but the cases do overlap.  At the time of this text message, Mike Flynn was that National Security Director.”

                “Alright”

                “That means it’s probable that the person that would be going to his office to get something works for the NSA (National Security Administration).”

                “That makes sense.”

                “The whistleblower in the Ukraine phone call scandal, Eric CIaramella, works for the NSC, which is part of the NSA.  Also, in other texts, Strzok and Page are discussing whether to send ‘Charli’ back to the White House.  The first syllable in ‘Charli’ and ‘Ciaramella’ is the same so when the FBI is talking about ‘Charli,’ they mean Ciaramella since he also frequented the White House and worked with DNC member Alexandra Chalupa who colluded with the Ukrainians to take down Manafort.”

                “So, Ciaramella was working for Flynn at the NSA and may have been a confidential informant for the FBI given that they refer to ‘Charli’ as a ‘CI guy’ in that text.”

                “That’s where I was going too.  Then I thought of motive.  Besides the obvious that Ciaramella doesn’t like the president.  I found notes from Mike Flynn that he was very suspicious about Ciaramella and wanted to keep an eye on him.”

                “That would motivate him to take down his boss and help the FBI in the process.”

                “That is my working theory.”

                Bar took a deep breath.  “Every time we find something out, it unleashes a barrage of more questions.  Good work, keep following this and get corroborating evidence.  If the Ukraine phone call scandal and the Russian collusion investigation involve the same players, then it’ll make our job easier because the players don’t have three years to cover up their corruption.  Their new scandalous actions will shine light on past sins and we can get them on both.”

                “Will do.”

               

                While Mike and Barr work on the origins of Crossfire Hurricane, the investigation into whether Russia colluded with President Trump, Nancy Pelosi is trying to juggle the fact that she knows that President Trump didn’t do anything impeachable and the massive amount of pressure she is getting from her fellow Democrat Congressman to impeach.  When the Democrats took back the house, the talks to impeach Trump happened right away.  Pelosi came out with a statement that unless there was some egregious behavior that had bipartisan support, she wouldn’t impeach the president.  Her reasoning was that it would be too divisive and that it was a bad idea.  At the time, she thought that would be the end of it and it would fizzle out.  Unfortunately, Adam Schiff just couldn’t keep his mouth shut.  He constantly hounded her to impeach and went all over television riling up the media to get public support.  Finally, Pelosi had had enough, she compromised with Schiff that she would have an impeachment inquiry.  That way it’s not really impeachment so Democrats in slightly blue or red districts won’t have to choose between alienating their constituents and letting down their fellow Democrat congressmen.  She, however, told Schiff that he would have to be the face of this.  It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

                Schiff took the green light from Pelosi and ran with it.  He suspended all rules and precedents and only allowed Democrats in his meetings to talk about impeachment.  He told any critics that it was like a Grand Jury and the defense isn’t allowed in grand jury testimonies.  This sounded good on paper but the Grand Jury is made up of a variety of people that make a decision on whether or not to indict someone.  The equivalent of indicting to be removed from office is impeachment.  The people who vote on impeachment are the members of the House of Representatives.  Therefore, the Republican congressman wouldn’t be the ‘defense’ in this example; they would be part of the grand jury.  Given this, they should be in the hearings.  Schiff would refuse to allow the Republicans in realizing Pelosi’s fear of divisiveness.  The one thing that Democrats had always been better than Republicans in was standing by their party and backing each other up.  Schiff’s excluding them from the impeachment inquiry hearings shattered that because it put the Republicans in a position where it’s us against them and united them.  Pelosi tried to get around this by refusing to have a vote.  This was unprecedented as the house voted in all three previous impeachment hearings in American history.  That is when the President got involved and decided he would no longer cooperate with witnesses or documents unless she voted.  A furious Schiff reopened his accusations about obstruction and came into Pelosi’s office screaming to add obstruction. Pelosi responded, “Adam, we already tried this with Mueller, it was an epic failure.”

                “That’s only because the president fully cooperated with Mueller with witnesses and documents whenever we wanted.  Why can’t he do that with me?”

                “Because he knows that we don’t care if he cooperates, we’ll accuse him of obstruction anyway.”

                “Now he is actually obstructing.”

                “That’s not how it looks.  Most Americans know that this Republic is about voting.  People are going to believe that if all we need to do to get what we want is vote, then that’s not too much to ask.”

                “I’ve put into works an accusation of a quid pro quo with the Ukrainian president.  We can use this to make it seem like that’s what Trump does.  He threatens people with quid pro quo.  He threatened to withhold military aid from Ukraine unless they investigated Hunter Biden and he had a quid pro quo with us that if we vote, he’ll cooperate.”

“Did he make that threat to the Ukrainian president?”

“No, but we have the media on our side and they’ll believe whatever I tell them to believe.”

“Adam, can you please listen to what you just said.  You’re alleging that investigating his potential political opponent in the 2020 election is the same thing as the house voting.”

“Yes.  He has every right to make deals with the President of Ukraine so he could actually make this quid pro quo.  His job is to talk to and make deals with foreign presidents just like how our job is to vote on measures, bills and, sometimes, impeachment.  Trump always talks about being a deal maker.  My story talks about how he makes deals so it can work.”

“No, Adam.  They aren’t the same thing.”

“Look what I’ve already accomplished with the media’s help.  Americans don’t even know that the migrants being detained at the border could go home whenever they wanted.  Common sense eludes the American people.”

“Adam, find something else.  Obstruction has already been a failure.  Just leave that part and focus on your quid pro quo with Ukraine.  Just don’t link it to him not cooperating unless we vote.”

Adam stormed out of her office and went to the media about obstruction anyway.  It didn’t get much traction and died quickly just as Pelosi predicted.  What she didn’t predict was that Donald Trump would release the transcript with his phone call to Ukrainian President Zelensky proving Schiff and his whistleblower were lying about the phone call.  They couldn’t even claim that President Trump was loose with classified material because they were the ones that asked him to release it.  They thought the controversy that he refused to release it meant he had something to hide and the people would believe that.  Pelosi felt outmaneuvered again but laughably, Schiff just got another whistleblower to come forward.  Shockingly it was working because people were acting like the transcript wasn’t public knowledge to begin with.  Every single whistleblower or involved party said that the transcript was authentic and a word for word account of the conversation, yet many Americans still thought it wasn’t a real transcript.  While Pelosi was pondering this shocking sequence of events, she had an epiphany.  She ran it by one of her aides, Hannah.  “Hannah, if Trump can troll us by calling our bluff about the transcript, why can’t we do the same thing?”

“What do you mean?”

“We told him to release the transcript thinking there was no way that he would and we’d use that against him.  He released it making us look bad but the people don’t know.  He wants us to vote on the impeachment resolution or inquiry or whatever we’re calling it to make it more appealing to the non-radical Democrats.  He doesn’t think we’re going to do it, I say we show him and do exactly that.”

                “I think that’s an excellent idea.  Especially because the IG report is about to come out and rumor has it that it’s really bad for our intelligence department and Democrats.”

                “Right, so the Democrats will have to vote with us and abandon their constituents because the IG report will make them look bad.  We’ve already tried to get ahead of it with these Ukrainian scandals but now they’re dying and the IG report still hasn’t been released.  An impeachment is a great thing to distract the country from the IG report.”

                “I agree.”

                Pelosi calls a vote of the house for an impeachment resolution.  When the press asks her what’s going on with the impeachment, she tells them it’s not an impeachment to coddle the Democrats in red or slightly left districts.  The resolution passes as predicted since Democrats have a majority in the house.  The results, however, only confirmed that her original belief about impeachment was correct. 

 

                While Pelosi is struggling what to do about all her co-Democrats and the internal belief that it’s a mistake, the Democrat congressmen Schiff is out to prove her wrong.  He sends staffers to Ukraine to dig up everything he can about this July 25 phone call.    Unfortunately, they can’t find any Ukrainians that had any problem whatsoever with the phone call with Trump.  He screams at his staffers in Ukraine “There is no way that Donald Trump can have a conversation with someone and offend nobody.  It is absolutely impossible given that he is a bully who refuses to use politically correct speech.  He is an obvious racist and misogynist and nobody can like his rhetoric.  How can you not find one person who had a problem with it?!”

                Most of the staffers don’t want to answer as Schiff is an angry person.  Even worse, he’s a power hungry tyrant that throws his weight around and uses power that he doesn’t even have.  He puts the pressure on others to call him out on it and when they do, he whines to the media to attack that person.  One of his staffers has a strange feeling that Schiff may be in for a fall sooner rather than later.  He still needs to hedge his bets in case he’s wrong but that’s what gives him the courage to simply answer Schiff’s question, “You need to understand, sir, that this is Ukraine.  They don’t have a problem with blunt speech as they are much blunter than Americans.  These are people that don’t smile, use as few words as possible and are very curt and get right to the point.  There is no small talk with these people.  That is why they can deal with someone like Trump because he talks like them.”

                “Just find something.  It’s obviously there!” Schiff barks as he hangs up the phone. 

                Schiff calls Pelosi and explains to her what’s going on.  Pelosi replies, “Well, I think I’m going to take a vote after all.  You’ve done a good job with the media convincing people what a document says that they can look at themselves.  I don’t know how you sold something that ridiculous but you did despite all the Ukrainians and whistleblowers not backing you up as nobody wants to be embarrassed since the transcript is word for word and not a summary since that is not procedure.”

                “Fuck procedure.  It’s not procedure to exclude the Republicans but after they scoured Mueller and Al Sharpton, I couldn’t have them embarrass any more of my witnesses so I kicked their asses out.  That’s not procedure but I did it.  We’re in charge now.  This is our government.  It’s time to make these Republicans remember that for years they have been eating from the scraps we give them.  Donald Trump comes in and gives them a seat at the table; it’s time we remind them that they belong on the ground like the dogs they are.”

                “You have definitely been embracing the role of villain in this.  It helps that your district may not have any Republicans in it so you can afford to be this obnoxious.”

                “Is it working?”

                “Yes, so much so that I’ve decided to take a vote and prove that Trump isn’t the only one that can do things that nobody expects him to do.”

                “That’s a great idea.  Turnabout is fair play.  What do you have in mind?”

                “I’m going to take a vote.”

                “Excellent, you won’t regret this.  I’ll work on the media and behind the scenes to pressure the spineless Republicans to come to our side or else.”

                “Do your thing.”

                The vote is in and it turns out that Schiff couldn’t scare the Republicans like he thought he could as no Republican voted for the impeachment inquiry.  To make matters worse, two Democrats voted against it.  Nancy is looking at these results and buries her head in her hands.  She wonders why she didn’t just stick to her original belief.  She said it would be divisive and it polarized the house.  She wanted to only do it with bipartisan support but there was bipartisan support against it not for it.  Though two votes are hardly ‘bipartisan’ but it’s still more bipartisan than for it.  As high ranking government officials normally do, she thinks about her legacy.  She is going to be the Speaker of the House during the only time in American history an attempt to impeach the president was done with bipartisan support against it. Since Johnson was so long ago, she doesn’t bother with that impeachment as nobody alive today remembers it.  She relooks at the data to see if she was wrong.  After all, people loved Bill Clinton.  As she checks, she realizes that 36 Democrats voted to impeach Bill Clinton.  Although Nixon wasn’t impeached, technically, neither has Donald Trump.  Nixon’s congress, in a sense, did the same thing and then Nixon resigned.  Pelosi had a strange feeling that although she’s been wrong in predicting President Trump’s actions, he wasn’t going to resign over this.  She barely has to even look at the Nixon numbers.  Only four people voted against impeachment.  If you want to talk about bipartisan support to impeach a president, Nixon is the prime example.  No wonder he resigned.  Her vote was 232-196.  She knows that she needs to do a press conference so she goes and, predictably, people ask her about the impeachment results.  She answers, “I’m not answering any questions about the Republican’s problem with the impeachment inquiry.  If you want to talk about drug prices and other things, we’ll talk about that but I’m not talking about the Republican concerns about impeachment.”

                Although the media will bend over backwards and spin anything to help the Democrats, they are caught off guard with this one.  For about a month now, all the Democrats could talk about was the impeachment inquiry and now she expects them to ask about drug prices, which nobody even knew they were doing?  In fact, the press doesn’t even know if they were doing that.  There was a conference about energy in North Dakota but pretty much all the House has been talking about was this impeachment inquiry.  They are at a loss for words, which is odd considering their job is to write words. 

                Pelosi leaves the press conference quickly and is in her office lamenting for allowing Adam Schiff to take control over her house.  The phone rings and it’s Adam Schiff.  She answers it, “Hi Adam.”

                “Hey, so it’s not all bad news”

                “How do you figure that?”

                “Well, I’ve had my staffers go all over Ukraine scouring for anti-Trump material.”

                Pelosi knows not to be excited by these generic statements.  She responds with skepticism and in a bored tone, “What did they find?”

                “That’s not important.  My point is my people are working on it and I’m the one in charge of what gets leaked and what doesn’t.  I approve all questions asked of witnesses.  I am in complete control of this investigation.”

                “You do realize you’re not an investigator right?  You’re a witness because you knew the Whistleblower.”

                “Nobody can call me to testify.  I’m above the law.”

                “There’s no precedent for anyone to be the only person that determines what leaks to the media and what questions to ask.  Leaks are exactly that, leaks.  They come from all sources”

                “No, I got the house on lock down.  Everyone is afraid of me.”

                “So afraid that no Republican voted for the inquiry and two Democrats defied you.”

                “The resolution passed by a landslide.  The vote wasn’t even close.”

                “Adam, 234 Democrats and 194 Republicans voted on the inquiry. The vote was 232-196, what do you think happened?”

                “We Democrats threw our weight around and showed the Republicans that we are the majority and we’re in charge.”

                “You’re ridiculous.  The optics of this is bad.  Clearly, no Republican is as afraid of you as you think.”

                “That’s what you said about doubling down on the Ukrainian transcript and people still believe it’s not an authentic transcript.”

                “Need I remind you that the vote showed no Republican bought your story and two Democrats put themselves on the record that they don’t either.”

                “No, that seems to be the only thing you’re focusing on.  You’re being so myopic you’re missing the bigger picture.”

                “Oh, I think you have that backwards.”

                “Fine, I’ll prove you wrong again.”

                “No, you just proved that I was right from the beginning.  This was a mistake.”

                “Just don’t talk about it.”

                “Yea, because after years of telling the American people that if someone doesn’t want to talk about something, they’re guilty, they’re not going to be suspicious at all that we don’t want to talk about it.” Nancy fired back with heavy sarcasm.

                “Just leave everything to me.  I got a guy Tim Morrison that testified, I’ll strategically leak it to get the public opinion on our side.”

                “All I’ve done is leave it to you and look where that got us.”

                “Yea, look where it got us.  Nobody is talking about the IG report, mission accomplished.”

                “It also hasn’t been released yet.”

                “Yea, because Horowitz is afraid of me.”

                “You really think everyone is afraid of you don’t you?”

                “Because they are.”

                “Alright, I’m done with this.  You’ve been the face of impeachment, so you keep being the face but don’t bullshit me.  I know you’re full of shit.”

                Pelosi hangs up the phone and shakes her head.  How did she let Adam get this hot headed?  It was too late to rein him in though.  Almost on cue, Pelosi looks up and a commentator opines, ‘If the Democrats thought this was such a winner, why wouldn’t they talk about it.’  Nancy nods her head.  She thinks ‘take that Adam’ not realizing that Schiff is the one talking about it; it’s Nancy that’s silent on it. 

                Almost as if Republican congressman Collins wanted to prove Pelosi’s point that the Republicans aren’t afraid of Schiff, he stops in front of reporters to issue an off the cuff statement.  Since the impeachment resolution has been voted on to make it official, comparisons to the Clinton impeachment are warranted.  Collins challenges Schiff to be like Ken Starr (the head of the House intelligence committee that impeached Bill Clinton) and come to the judicial committee and take every question asked starting with your involvement with the whistleblower.”  He goes on to declare, “Substance always wins out in the ends and this president has nothing to worry about in substance.”

                This impromptu press conference enrages Adam Schiff.  He mutters to himself, “I’ll show him.  Just wait until I leak what happened with Tim Morrison’s testimony.  He confirmed that there was a quid pro quo and that the transcript is false.”  That isn’t actually what Morrison said but Schiff truly believes that nobody leaks anything unless he approves it first.  He calls CNN, “I wanted to let you know what I found out from a White House Aid named Tim Morrison.”

                “Alright, shoot.”

                “He confirmed there was a quid pro quo in the conversation with Trump and Zelensky.”

                “You know this is the third time you’ve come to us with this and the previous two were excoriated since it was all hearsay?”

                “No, but he actually heard the call.”

                “That’s all well and good but the transcript was released.”

                “That doesn’t matter.”

                “I would think it does but there’s another problem.”

                “What’s that?”

                “We already have credible information that Morrison testified that he wasn’t concerned that anything illegal was discussed in the Trump/Ukraine phone call.”

                “Who are you going to believe me or your source?”

                “Now that the impeachment is official, you have to release the transcripts of the testimony.  Can I see it?”

                “I’m required to release them to the Republicans and I won’t even do that.  What makes you think I’m going to give them to you?”

                “Well then, to answer your question, I believe my other source.”

                “I’m telling you, his testimony is devastating and damning to Trump”

                “So much so you won’t let anyone see it including the Republicans yet the American people will be convinced.”

                “The American people believe anything the media tells them.  Whose side are you on anyway?”

                “Yours.  Always yours but you really make us look foolish when they release the transcripts and it doesn’t resemble anything you allege. “

                “Run the story.”

                “Fine, but they’re going to release the transcripts and I’m going to throw you under the bus for lying if it reflects poorly on me.”

                “I’ll take responsibility, that’s fine.”

                “I’ve also heard from this testimony that Morrison confirmed that the Ukrainians didn’t know about the military aid being withheld until late August.”

                “So what?”

                “The call was in July”

                “And….”

                “How do you threaten someone with something when they’re unaware of the threat till a month later?”

                “Say it was his tone not the words”

                “You expect me to run with a guy’s interpretation of a tone?”

                “Think about it.  The President of the United States, the most powerful country in the world, it’s a little intimidating talking to him so the mere fact that Trump called him is pressure.”

                “By that logic, the president of the United States can never call a foreign president.”

                “Just do what I say.”

                “I have a feeling we’re just going to go through the same thing again but I’m amused by this.  Like I said, I’m going to blame you but I need to do some sense of journalistic integrity and ask the question.  I heard that Morrison testified that the transcript is accurate and completely describes the substance of the call.”

                “He didn’t; he said the opposite”

                There was obvious skepticism in the CNN representatives voice, “Right, alright, I asked, you answered.  I’ll run with that Morrison confirmed the quid pro quo then all the conservative outlets will get the same leaks I did and find out that you lied to me.”

                “Have I ever let you down?”

                “Yes, everything you have ever said about Russian collusion, the impeachment and the call with the Ukrainian president Zelensky has been a lie.”

                “Watch how you talk to me?”

                “Why? You’re in charge of what information gets out.  Nobody will know about this phone call.  I’m printing what you want me to so what do you care?”

                “That’s a good point.  Sorry, I’ve been really stressed lately.”

                “I bet.”

                Schiff hangs up the phone and calls NBC.  He has decided there’s a lot of the falsehoods he needs to flood the market with so there are multiple things distracting the American public from the IG Report.  He needs the media to discredit things he believes will be in the report.  He tells the NBC representative, “I’ve heard things circulating that the there is evidence that the DNC colluded with Ukraine to take down Manafort.  I just wanted to let you know that this is not true.

                The NBC representative has the same respect for Schiff’s integrity as CNN. Just so he can cover his tracks, however, he goes through the questions knowing that everything Schiff will answer will probably be a lie.  “The Washington DNC confirmed that DNC employee Alexandra Chalupa contacted the embassy to find dirt on Manafort by talking to, then, Ukrainian President Porchenko.”

                “That’s a lie.”

                “The Ukrainian embassy also confirmed this story.”

                “They’re lying too.”

                “Great, thank you for clearing that up.”

                The NBC executive shakes her head and runs with the story Schiff wants her too.  Schiff then calls ABC, “I need to clear the record”

                In the same skeptical tone Schiff has been getting all day, the ABC executive responds, “Clear it.”

                “People have been lying that when Biden wanted Ukraine to fire Shokin, there was an open investigation into Burisma and his son Hunter.”

                “Yes, I heard about this.”

                “Well, it’s not true.  The Burisma investigation was closed.’

                “I saw the original case files and it shows there were two open investigations at the time into Burisma.  One was the corruption charge and the other was unpaid taxes in early 2016.”

                “That is categorically false.”

                “The case documents are public; I’ve seen them.”

                “Those documents have been altered.”

                “Do you have any proof of that?”

                “Would I be telling you if I didn’t?”

                “Yes, I believe you would.  Anyway can I see it?”

                “No, you’re not authorized.”

                “I see sources and methods right?”

                “Yes, it’s a real thing.”

                “Not the way you use it.”

                “I have to go.  I just wanted to let you know that.”

                “Great, thank you” not hiding the exasperating and incredulity in his voice that Adam thinks he’s dumb enough to believe anything Schiff tells him.  ABC will run with the story anyway because they hate Donald Trump and the enemy of my enemy is my friend so they’ll support him no matter what lies he tells.

                Schiff’s next phone call is to MSNBC.  While on the phone with the executive, he communicates, “The Republicans are lying again.”

                “Oh really?  How?”

                “When they said that Lutsenko, the Ukrainian prosecutor general that replaced Shokin, was given a ‘do no prosecute’ list from Marie Yovanovitch, it is absolutely ridiculous. Salacious lies I tell you.”

                “Who’s Marie Yovanovitch again?”

                “She was the Ukrainian ambassador for the United States that Trump recalled for no reason whatsoever.”

                “Oh yea, that’s right.  Sorry, I forgot.”

                “Well Lutsenko recanted that statement so I wanted to make sure you have the updated information.”

                “Huh, that’s funny, I have a note here that says that Lutsenko didn’t recant it, he merely articulated the fact that some of the people on the list weren’t actually on her list.  That would mean that there really was a list.”

                “No, there wasn’t.  See, there are already holes in the statement.”

                “Alright, thank you for letting me know.  I’ll revise the note.”

                Schiff let out a huge breath.  It was hard putting out all the fires his lies had caused.  He needed to stop everything from getting out.  Luckily, everyone in the media believed what he said despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and almost no support for it.  The only support was from media reports that Schiff asked to be written in the first place.  This wasn’t lost on the media but they had an agenda and they had gone too far to stop now.  There was one other person that took notice to the Democrats scurrying to try to discredit the IG report before it came out; her name is Michelle Obama. 

                Michelle Obama is watching the news and Washington polarize itself and the Democrats humiliate themselves.  She has tried to stay out of it but she feels that they need her help.  She tells her husband, “Why don’t they just stick to what’s always work?  Cry racism.  They’re making themselves look bad by these fake allegations that can be disproven.  Nobody can definitively prove that they’re not racist so just hit him with that.”

                “They tried that.”

                “So, they’ve tried making up things too and that failed.  Yet, they keep doing that.”

                “It’s a sensitive time now, I can’t get involved.  Trump has already made it a personal mission to destroy my legacy and he’s doing a good job reversing all my economic policies.  He even renegotiated the Iran deal and that was the one I was most proud of.  He couldn’t completely eradicate the Affordable Care Act but he took the teeth out of it by eliminating the individual mandate.  I guess I’ll take what I can get though.”

                “No, absolutely not.  You may not be able to get involved, but I can.”

 Barack knows there’s no stopping his wife when she’s made up her mind so he doesn’t even try it.  Michelle Obama then calls a press conference and plays the race card to perfection.  She expresses that “White people are running away from black people when they come to their neighborhoods” this is ironic because Obama herself moved out of her gentrified neighborhood to move to the predominantly white Martha’s Vineyard so she did the same thing.   Later, she pronounced, “Maybe if I show and do the work as a human, then maybe I can pick away the scabs of your racism.  I can’t stop you from hating black people so this is all I can do.”

                Social media was a buzz attacking her for this speech.  Candace Owens’ Blexit movement and all its participants took to twitter to attack Michelle for her hypocrisy.  More and more blacks were coming out against the Democrats but not enough to not rely on the black vote in elections.  An open challenge is made by Dan Bongino and his near 300,000 followers for any black person to go to a Trump rally and see what happens..  It would prove Michelle Obama wrong.  Some conservatives hope that if black people do take up this offer, they only take into account what happens inside the rally.  This is because outside the rally, Antifa and other liberal protestors attack black people who go to Trump rallies calling them ‘race traitor’ and “black white supremacists’ among other things. 

                Barack knew that his wife’s press conference would be criticized so he tried to take the pressure off her by calling a Democrat Congresswoman named Debbie Wasserman Schultz to parrot the racism charge.  Debbie is a pale white woman but that never stopped Democrats before and it certainly didn’t stop her.  Barack also called the chairmen of the Democratic committee to back her up since Republicans have felt the need to defend themselves lately.  Debbie specifically attacks Republican congressman Ken Cuccinelli for being a racist that doesn’t let anyone that doesn’t look or speak like Caucasian Americans have a voice in America.  As she is speaking, Cucchinelli blurts out “That’s false and she’s being defamatory.”

                Schultz whines and complains that she’s not being defamatory and wants to finish.  The chairman scolds Cucchinelli and says the time is Schultz and he’ll get a chance to respond.  Schultz continues on uninterrupted and when it’s time for Ken to respond, the chairman doesn’t let him.  It had the desired effect, the conservatives confirmed that the deck is stacked against Republicans because the Democrats don’t play by the rules and the Democrats got to get their racist licks in.  The story didn’t seem to be too popular with the general public though. 

                Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren is leading the Democrat nominees to become the Democrat to challenge Donald Trump in the 2020 election.  She is frustrated because the news has been all about impeachment and these fake scandals and what President Trump said today that nobody is paying attention that there’s a Democrat primary going on.  She knows she needs to do something to get into the news cycle.  Lately, even Democrats have attacked her Medicare for All plan.  AOC tried to revive Bernie Sanders’ campaign but he didn’t steal enough votes from Warren for her to drop out of the lead.  She wants to attack the president so she looks at the latest job numbers from October.  The estimates were that there would be a decline from September so she may be able to use that to hammer Trump.  It turns out that 128,000 jobs were created in October 2019, which beat expectations.  She sighs and tells her staffer that revealed the information, “Don’t worry, our liberal finance organizations will force them to revise the numbers later like we did with the growth rate and the September job numbers.”

                The fiscal year ended in September 2019 and the growth rate was at 1.9%.  That is far off the 3% that Trump had flirted with the previous year.  Then again, it was over 3% but then liberal finance agencies revised it to under 3% to avoid giving Trump the win.  The one thing that does give her hope is that the national debt is still out of control.  Despite record revenues from Trump’s tax cuts, cutting red tape and anti-regulatory measures by President Trump, congress had still managed to spend more money than they made to make the debt worse.  It isn’t a hard thing to do; all you need to do is threaten military spending cuts and Trump allows you to spend whatever you wants as long as you help the military too. 

                She opens the Wall Street Journal and sees an article entitled, “America is Hiring.”  It confirms that given the increase in demand in labor for manufacturing and construction jobs, wages are going up on labor.  Warren is baffled by this because she has no idea how economics works.  People often get sensitive when economists compare them to products but the laws of economics don’t care about people’s feelings.  There is only a finite amount of people that can work.  That makes them, like anything else, a scarce resource.  With the unemployment rate being at its lowers point in decades, you have a lower supply of workers since people are employed.  Warren sees that unemployment did go up 0.1% but now that the GM strike was over, that may go back down.  With the decreased supply in the work force, combined with the increase demand since red tape had been slashed and employers had more money from the lower corporate and income tax rates, they were building and expanding more.  Simple economics tells you that when you have increased demand and decreased supply, the price will rise.  That is why wages in the blue collar sector have been going up at expedient rates.”

                It is unclear if Warren realizes from the report that she’s looking at that America pays over a trillion dollars a year on Health Care.  It is by far the largest expense for the government as the entire spending is around 3.5 Trillion so Health Care alone makes up approximately 32% of the American budget.  It does give her an idea though.  She figured out how she’s going to get the news focused on her.  If President Trump can release the transcript when nobody thought he would and Nancy Pelosi can call a vote when nobody thought she would then Warren can release her price tag for her Medicare for All programs because nobody thinks she will.  She releases the details of her government takeover of healthcare with a price tag of $ 52 trillion over 10 years.  Presumably, Warren missed the bottom line of the economy report to realize that the US economy is worth 20 Trillion dollars.  This is less than half of her price tag. In fact, it’s closer to three times the entire US economy than it is to twice as much. 

                As people look at this plan they are horrified.  Suddenly, Bernie Sanders’ $ 34 Trillion plan doesn’t sound so bad.  Independent financial companies have released what it would take to pay for Sanders plan and that was economically impossible.  Basically, even if every billionaire gave up everything they owned, it would only fund it for three years as they are combined to be worth around  $8.2 Trillion.  With Warren’s plan, all the billionaires combined couldn’t even cover two years of the plan.  Yet, she still claims that the middle class won’t see a tax increase.  Just as how she made Bernie Sanders’ ridiculous unaffordable plan not seem as bad compared to hers, she’s about to tell a lie that even Adam Schiff would be in awe of.  She claims that charging your employer the $ 9 Trillion tax will have no effect on employees whatsoever.  As if nobody can figure out that if employers are giving all their money to the government, then they have no more money to pay their employees.  If this plan passes, then Warren can be sure that the job growth numbers won’t be so favorable. 

                It is a dangerous time in the last great hope for the world; America.  Unlike any time before, if Warren wins the nomination then the 2020 election could make or break America.  When she does that, everyone will blame Donald Trump just like they blamed Bush for Obama’s horrendous economy.  Not only if Democrats win the presidency in 2020 but if they keep the house, it’ll prove that the American public is grossly ignorant, misinformed or gullible.  There is no saving grace to what the Democrats in congress have done with power.  All they proved is that power corrupts Democrats so you can’t let these Democrats have power.  If the party goes back to its more moderate form of more than a decade ago, then there is hope for bipartisan cooperation.  If the Democrats keep electing people like Schiff, AOC and the rest of the squad, then the country is doomed.  Trump had two years with a Republican house and couldn’t help the deficit.  Maybe that’s because people didn’t know he knew what he was doing yet.  Now, there’s no doubt and 94% of Republicans support him.  Maybe if they get a second chance, the one thing that Trump has been unable to do, curb the deficit, can be done.  Time will tell.