Tulsi Gabbard’s failure to distract from Epstein saga is no flop

Only one week after Tulsi Gabbard in her role as director of national intelligence attempted to please her boss with the unprecedented demand that former President Barack Obama must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law Donald Trump all but deflated Gabbard s obvious diversionary ploy He admitted to the press on Friday that due to a Supreme Court development he himself brought Obama has immunity and it supposedly helps him a lot It s almost enough to make you feel sorry for Tulsi Gabbard except there is scant evidence anyone in the media took her states seriously in the first place For weeks now Trump has been unusually unable to shake the stench of a bad news story He s tried rebranding a Trump specialty to no avail He s tried playing along But this has all only served to draw more attention to the controversy P eople should really focus on how well the country s doing or they should focus on the fact that Barack Hussein Obama led a coup Trump virtually begged the press who peppered him with questions on Friday about the scenario of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein before the president left the White House for Scotland For weeks now Trump has been unusually unable to shake the stench of a bad news story He s tried rebranding a Trump specialty to no avail He s tried playing along ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony on the matter and even sending Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche who formerly served as Trump s criminal attorney down to Florida this week for two days of interviews with Epstein s jailed accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell But this has all only served to draw more attention to the disgrace The story Republicans hoped would quietly fade is growing louder by the hour Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer D-N Y noted on the Senate floor this week The controversy all kicked off in early June when a scorned Elon Musk who had lately resigned as head of the so-called Department of Establishment Efficiency took to his X platform to air out Trump s dirty laundry with the now-deleted claim that the president was in the Epstein files After weeks of MAGA outrage House Speaker Mike Johnson R-La sent lawmakers home early this week for a month-long break after selected Republicans joined with Democrats to vote for the constituents release of the Epstein files Then days after Trump filed a lawsuit against the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal for its reporting on the president s alleged involvement with Epstein the paper continued undeterred This week the Journal shared that Trump was informed by Bondi in May that his name appeared multiple times in the Epstein documents The embarrassment s torrent of media coverage has proved too much for Gabbard s big reveal which turned out to be little more than rewarmed files of a previously disclosed House assessment into referendum meddling by Russia to compete Related The Epstein files give MAGA a post-Trump future Presumably the embattled Gabbard whose standing has been weakened in Trump s White House according to the New York Times is eager to get back in the notoriously thin-skinned president s good graces So at first blush it makes sense that she is now baselessly alleging Obama conspired to undermine the legitimacy of Trump s voting process After all the former president is certainly nothing if not red meat for Donald Trump But Pam Bondi who has ascertained herself similarly in Trump s and congressional Republicans hot seat for her inept handling of the Epstein files already directed the FBI several weeks ago to open a grand conspiracy situation related to the assessment into Russian interference in an balloting held nearly a decade ago Her move leaves this obvious attempt to rehash Russiagate too stale for even Fox News to hype Americans should beware of Gabbard s dangerous distraction with revisionist history of voting process read an op-ed published by FoxNews com on July the same day Gabbard appeared in the White House briefing room to promote her declassification of a summary prepared by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence back in While her alleges failed to gain top billing on any of Fox News services Gabbard appeared on at least two Fox shows on Wednesday to tout her declares She revealed on Jesse Watters Primetime that deep state obstacles worked to ensure her findings did not see the light of day Want more sharp takes on politics Sign up for our free newsletter Standing Room Only written by Amanda Marcotte now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts But it doesn t seem the media is buying it There have been two investigations ordered by Republicans each resulting in no convictions Even Secretary of State Marco Rubio while serving as a Florida senator and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee explained We have revealed irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling Gabbard s declares of an anti-Trump conspiracy are not supported by declassified documents an Associated Press headline read The Wall Street Journal continuing its streak of reporting facts that undercut the Trump administration s latest maintains quoted Susan Miller the CIA s director of counterintelligence in who disclosed There was absolutely no pressure on my company by the White House or by our director in favor of a particular outcome CNN s Kaitlin Collins directly confronted Gabbard about her motivations The director batted away the question with a non-answer The evidence and the intelligence that has been declassified and disclosed is irrefutable We need your help to stay independent Subscribe at present to advocacy Sophia Tesfaye s journalism Still Gabbard s boss appears to be pleased She s like hotter than everybody She s the hottest one in the room right now Trump publicly praised Gabbard before later undermining her work We re very proud of you Tulsi Trump s apparent satisfaction with Gabbard despite no evidence that she s helped push Epstein off the front pages is a sign her diversionary tactics may be working in a less apparent way Consider that House Republicans this week introduced a bill that would designate workers who use any discretion in their job function as independent contractors effectively making millions of workers vulnerable to being stripped of basic labor protections Or that the president signed an executive order making it easier to force homeless Americans into institutions Or that there is forward movement on the Trump-led effort in red states to redistrict congressional maps in favor of Republicans None of these actions received the attention and scrutiny they deserve For Trump and his radical agenda that s a win The Epstein genie is out of the bottle Rupert Murdoch and his reporters are making sure that the embarrassment doesn t drop from the front pages with scoop after scoop at the Wall Street Journal But that doesn t mean Tulsi Gabbard s distraction event has been a flop Read more about this topic Trump s threats against Obama are very real and dangerous MAGA melts down Dems exult as Epstein files evaporate Tulsi Gabbard grows to become Donald Trump s greater part dangerous attack dog The post Tulsi Gabbard s failure to distract from Epstein saga is no flop appeared first on Salon com