SOURCE:
NATIONAL REVIEWURL:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/trump-rhetoric-insults-special-counsel-investigation/by Eric Felten
The president’s habit of gleefully demeaning Washington power players has hurt his effectiveness in more ways than one.
Low-Energy Jeb. Little Marco. Lyin’ Ted. Pocahontas. Crazy Bernie. Crooked Hillary. Little Rocket Man. If there is one defining characteristic of Donald Trump, candidate and president, it’s his casual, gleeful resort to insulting his opponents. It is a strategy — or perhaps just a reflex — so outside modern political norms that it has left Trump’s opponents slack-jawed and seemingly baffled as to how to respond.
But not everyone on the receiving end of Trump’s Don Rickles treatment has been thrown back on their heels. Take the recent example of former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, who has made it clear that Trump’s incontinent insults were a primary — if not the primary — reason a special counsel was appointed.
“There were a number of things that caused us to believe that we had adequate predication or adequate reason and facts to open the investigation,†McCabe told
60 Minutes. “The president had been speaking in a derogatory way about our investigative efforts for weeks, describing it as a witch hunt.†McCabe thought the president was insulting the FBI and its leadership, and he seems to have taken it personally. But not nearly as personally as he took it when Trump insulted his wife.
On May 10, 2017, the morning after Trump fired FBI director James Comey, the president put in a call to McCabe. In his book,
The Threat, McCabe recounts being taken aback at how little Trump knew of rules of the game: The president not only introduced himself as “Don,†but did so on an unsecured line. He talked about maybe coming over to the FBI building to meet and greet. He talked about having McCabe come over to the White House to meet and greet. The acting director thought these were terrible, horrible, no good, very bad ideas, but couldn’t bring himself to say so.
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