Episode #117 of the Countdown podcast is up.
A-Block
- (1:56) SPECIAL COMMENT: I do not believe Joe Biden and/or his team mishandled any classified documents. Unfortunately, it’s clear Joe Biden and/or his team mishandled the messaging, the process, and the narrative. If you have to tell seven different stories in two weeks, it begins to matter less and less that you were totally cooperative and proactive and invited the feds to search, and it begins to look more and more like that oldest of presidential story templates: It no longer looks like what the president said it was.
- Happily there are several things the president can still did to regain the narrative and smash the undeserved gift his team handed the inquisition-happy Republicans and the pudding-brained American political-media complex so desperate for a Democratic scandal that Peter Baker actually wrote a piece in The New York Times comparing Biden’s papers to Clinton-Lewinsky! And he better do them TODAY.
Keith suggests the following:
- Allow Merrick Garland to investigate the Biden documents. This would break the precedent that a sitting President is never investigated, and would also break the unwritten precedent that a former President is never investigated, either. And if Garland decides not to do it, Biden comes out looking better.
- Bring the suits against Jim Jordan and James Comer into the spotlight.
B-Block
C-Block
- (32:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Talk about White Houses trying to control the narrative: in 2004 George W. Bush’s people were (a) convinced I was on their side, (b) knew I was only interviewing Iraq War critic Ambassador Joe Wilson in order to savage him, (c) decided to help me by emailing all their talking points, but (d) couldn't figure out how to spell my name [hence the title of this story]. Hilarity ensued, and all they wound up doing was revealing to me all of “their” people at NBC News.
Well, that’s awl the damaje for nou. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.