no mere statement of innocence

     If we wrote a pilot and four-episode outline for a series called, Sex Pest at a Mid-Day Racist Séance, I wonder if HBO would pick it up.  or Netflix.

     Maybe plural:

Sex Pests at a Midday Racist Séance

No, singular is better.

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     Man, I can't believe it! -- Bob Woodward's book, Fear:  Trump in the White House, is on Audible, on You Tube!  You can listen to a guy read it to you, for free!

     Now, is the whole book on there?  I don't know, I only listened to the "Part 1" video and part of the "Part 2" video, so far.  Very informative.  I was amazed.  (Oh, FYI, after the book quoted from some conversations between Trump and Steve Bannon, the "F-word" is now officially completely worn out.  None of the rest of us can say the "F-word" anymore, because it's gone, there isn't any left, they used it all up....)

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[excerpt, Fear:  Trump In The White House, by Bob Woodward.  Simon & Schuster.  September 11, 2018.]-------------------------

     Cohn and Porter worked together to derail what they believed were Trump's most impulsive and dangerous orders.  That document and others like it just disappeared.  When Trump had a draft on his desk to proofread, Cohn at times would just yank it, and the president would forget about it.  But if it was on his desk, he'd sign it.  "It's not what we did for the country," Cohn said privately.  "It's what we saved him from doing."

     It was no less than an administrative coup d'état, an undermining of the will of the president of the United States and his constitutional authority.

     In addition to coordinating policy decisions and schedules and running the paperwork for the president, Porter told an associate, "A third of my job was trying to react to some of the really dangerous ideas that he had and try to give him reasons to believe that maybe they weren't such good ideas."

     Another strategy was to delay, procrastinate, cite legal restrictions.  Lawyer Porter said, "But slow-walking things or not taking things up to him, or telling him -- rightly, not just as an excuse -- but this needs to be vetted, or we need to do more process on this, or we don't have legal counsel clearance -- that happened 10 times more frequently than taking papers from his desk.  It felt like we were walking along the edge of the cliff perpetually."

_______________________________

[excerpt, All The President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.  Simon & Schuster.  June 15, 1974] ----------------------------------

Woodward left the office about eight o'clock that Saturday night.  He knew he should have stayed later to track down James McCord.  He had not even checked the local telephone directory to see if there was a James McCord listed in Washington or its suburbs.

*       *       *

     The national staff of the Washington Post rarely covers police stories.  So, at Sussman's request, both Bernstein and Woodward returned to the office the next morning, a bright Sunday, June 18, to follow up.  An item moving on the Associated Press wire made it embarrassingly clear why McCord had deserved further checking.  According to campaign spending reports filed with the government, James McCord was the security coordinator of the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CRP).

     The two reporters stood in the middle of the newsroom and looked at each other.  What the hell do you think it means? Woodward asked.  Bernstein didn't know.

     In Los Angeles, John Mitchell,

the former U.S. Attorney General and the President's campaign manager, issued a statement:  "The person involved is the proprietor of a private security agency who was employed by our committee months ago to assist with the installation of our security system.  He has, as we understand it, a number of business clients and interests, and we have no knowledge of these relationships.  

We want to emphasize that this  man and the other people involved were not operating on either our behalf or with our consent.  There is no place in our campaign or in the electoral process for this type of activity, and we will not permit or condone it."

     In Washington, the Democratic national chairman, Lawrence F. O'Brien, said the break-in "raised the ugliest question about the integrity of the political process that I have encountered in a quarter-century of political activity.  No mere statement of innocence by Mr. Nixon's campaign manager, John Mitchell, will dispel these questions." -------------------- [end, excerpt]

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You can hear (and see) McCord's testimony on You Tube:

Type in

Watergate hearings, James McCord.

It is riveting.

-30-