No one will ever mistake Donald Trump for Machiavelli,?? ?? ?? but the current president probably thinks of himself as a political magician.
On Thursday, just after the U.S. Senate had unveiled their draft of the American Health Care Act, aka "Trumpcare," the Tangerine Dream in the White House decided it was a great time to throw the internet into a tizzy.
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...whether there are "tapes" or recordings of my conversations with James Comey, but I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2017
This is, to put it bluntly, absurd as f*ck given just a scant six weeks ago, Trump decided to dangle the possibility of "tapes" as a means to threaten fired FBI director James Comey should he decide to testify in front of a congressional intelligence committee.
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Comey testified anyway and we all know about his reaction to the possibility of tapes.
Well, at least Trump has finally learned to thread his damn Twitter tantrums.
Meanwhile, Trump and his staff have been teasing out that Trump would announce whether or not he really had the tapes at an undefined future date, like a casting announcement for The Apprentice.
Lo and behold, that announcement just oh-so-happened to come on the same day (even the same afternoon news cycle) as the Senate's health care bill draft, which proposes deep cuts to Medicaid and is already coming under fire. The controversy has led to speculation there may not be enough GOP support to get it through.
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Trump has weaponized his Twitter feed and other announcements as a means of distraction in the past, even as people argue in circles over whether or not he's smart enough to even grasp the idea of a distraction.
But, this time, it might backfire on him because he's trying to distract from something people care deeply about (health care) and a bill that's extremely unpopular. And there's a lot in the Senate version that will prove unpopular, including tax cuts for the rich and the end of Planned Parenthood's funding.
Trump, though, doesn't want us talking about that and the timing was so painfully obvious.
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He wants us obsessing over, well, I guess his attempt to intimidate a witness in a federal investigation instead of the possibility of GOP senators going against and defeating the bill whose House passage was met with a Rose Garden celebration (before he later called it "mean").
It's probably a given he doesn't want anyone to remember his campaign promise on Medicaid, one that is chucked right out the window with this new bill.
Nor does he want us watching these videos of protesters, some in wheelchairs, being hauled out of the Senate building for protesting at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office.
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These are the people -- the living, breathing human beings -- that would be directly affected by the health care bill's passage.
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But if that small group of opposing GOP senators, led by Sen. Rand Paul, do defect, and the media can keep it's eye on the health care ball without getting swept away in "RUSSIA COMEY TAPES COMEY RUSSIA," no amount of smoke and mirrors and Twitter tantrums from the Tweeter-in-Chief will distract from the AHCA's failure, which would be a black eye on Trump's presidency.
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