"For the next four-to-eight years ... we're going to have Congresssional Investigation Theater again, this time aimed at the White House." Geez, the GOP never gives up!

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We Just Got a Preview of What Hillary Clinton's Presidency Will Be Like
Jason Chaffetz debuts the next stage of the endless Clinton investigation.​
By Charles P. Pierce, August 29, 2016

It's time.

It's time for us all to fire up the ol' Sno-Cat and flee broadcasting's Overlook Hotel, where my man Chuck Todd always has been the caretaker. It's time to save ourselves because, come spring, they're going to find Chuck frozen in the maze with Hugh Hewitt's glasses in his right hand. On Sunday, he and Lloyd opened the bar early and, as the ever-vigilant Driftglass explains to the waiting world, they proceeded to produce a program that was a disgrace to all American journalism back to John Peter Zenger.

The theme to the episode was "Race to the Bottom." It seems that my man Chuck Todd believes that Hillary Rodham Clinton's quoting of Donald Trump's exact words back to him in Reno did equivalent damage to democratic civility as did El Caudillo de Mar-A-Lago when he yelled, "She's a bigot!" in front of a largely white audience in Missigoddamnssippi. This is, of course, insane. If there is a race to the bottom, then He, Trump won that bad boy about six months ago.

Quick, let's get down the mountain before he kills us all!

(I would suggest that my man Chuck Todd spend the next 70-odd days on a beach somewhere far from any electronic communications device. Pick up some nice shells. Watch the tide roll in and out. Drink a little rum at sunset. Joy Reid can handle the show.)

But the real news, and therefore the House Cup, came over on CBS, where John Dickerson, ably filling the seat once occupied by onetime Burgundian bard Bob Schieffer, hosted Congressman Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, to give us a preview of what's in store for the next four to eight years.

CHAFFETZ (R), UTAH: Well, they also said there's smoke and no fire, but, as my colleague Trey Gowdy said, yes, there's a fire, in fact, it was arson. I think the public has the right to know. We certainly have been asking for these documents since 2012. And if Hillary Clinton wants to come clean, and she hasn't yet, every—most everything she said about this has turned out to be a lie. She should provide her calendar. The Associated Press has been fighting for years in the courts just to get her calendar. And she has more than calendar. But get her calendars out there. She said at her press conference about this—and I think FBI should provide the Congress, and consequently the public, an unclassified version that can be released of the report that they had.

DICKERSON: One of the things we're trying to do here is figure out whether there was something truly wrong that was done here in the relationship between the State Department and Clinton Foundation, or whether this is just kind of the way things are done in Washington. People who give lots of money get their phone calls returned a little faster, get e-mails returned. So you have said that it smells like pay-to-play in this relationship between the Clinton Foundation donors and the State Department. What evidence do you have of that?

CHAFFETZ: Well, look at The Associated Press report that came out for nearly a majority of the people who have made these major—made these major donations actually ended up getting a meeting. And if you look at the interaction between the foundation and those that worked at the State Department, at one point, they said, our boss. There's supposed to be a bright clear line. I think one of the questions the media needs to ask Hillary Clinton, was her interaction and her senior staff, was their interaction with the foundation, was that official business?

Once you cite that catastrophic AP story, you've pretty much given the game away. (And props to Brian Stelter for grilling the AP's Kathleen Carroll on that hot mess. Stelter is becoming an island of cool sanity on the Scottie Nell Hughes Network.) For the next four-to-eight years, or until the Democratic party miraculously gains control of the House of Representatives again, we're going to have Congresssional Investigation Theater again, this time aimed at the White House.

Of course, I'm sure if HRC just had a press conference, Chaffetz and his merry band of gumshoes would be satisfied and proceed to help govern the country in a sane and responsible manner. And I am the Tsar of all the Russias.

One of our two major political parties has nominated a megalomaniacal know-nothing for the highest office in the land. He is demonstrably racist, demonstrably unfit for the office, and very nearly demonstrably cuckoo bananas. That is the only story anybody should be covering, and there is no Other Side to it. Both Sides do not nominate Donald Trumps. Elite American political journalism is either unwilling or unable to accept the obvious truth of this.

If The Rules are preventing them from doing so, then The Rules are inadequate to the threat. Maybe we all should go to the beach.
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