A shorter memo summary

From Walter Shapiro, in The Guardian:

To summarize: in a document that the FBI called inaccurate, House Republicans claim that the Democrats had some shadowy role in a pre-election Fisa warrant against a “very low-level” Trump adviser who had already left the campaign. Compared with the Nunes memo, the never-ending, dry-hole Republican Benghazi investigations look like textbook examples of prudent congressional oversight.

To Trumpian true believers, the Nunes memo proves that the FBI and the rest of the Deep State were conspiring to throw the election to Hillary. Of course, this omits the pesky detail that on 28 October 2016, the FBI director, James Comey, announced that he was reopening the Clinton email investigation based on what had been found on Anthony Weiner’s computer.

Guess which late October event had more effect on wavering 2016 voters: Comey’s dramatic public statement raising fresh doubts about the Democratic nominee or a secret warrant against a peripheral Trump adviser?

And this: 

All this raises the question of why Nunes, the Republican majority on the House intelligence committee, Paul Ryan and Trump were so willing to go to war with the FBI over a cap-gun memo. We even have hyper-ventilating Republican congressmen shouting “treason”.

The glib answer is that this a pretext for Trump to fire Mueller and the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. But Mueller is never mentioned in the Nunes memo and Rosenstein makes only a cameo appearance. More attention is devoted to articles by journalists David Corn (Mother Jones) and Mike Isikoff (Yahoo News).

Perhaps a more convincing answer is that we have reached that alarming moment when right-wing Republicans actually believe the conspiracy theories peddled by the likes of Sean Hannity on Fox News, who claims the memo reveals an “attempted coup” against Donald Trump plotted by the “Deep State”.

 And for more Australian Right wingnut stupidity, here's Mark Lithium Latham: