Pierce: For starters, Trump went out of his way

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Pierce: For starters, Trump went out of his way to talk about Russian hookers.

Bonus points for "Mustache of Righteousness."

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics...a-hookers/

On the train to D.C., and it's already been an eventful Jim Comey Eve. On Wednesday afternoon, in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, and Mike Rogers, an admiral and the head of the National Security Agency, threw up an embarrassing stonewall and did so in costume—Rogers as John Ehrlichman, and Coats as Bartleby the Scrivener.

The latter got crossways with Senator Angus King, Independent of Maine, and the Mustache of Righteousness was having none of Coats's foolishness...

By the end of it, Coats looked as though he might accidentally confess to the Lindbergh kidnapping. For his part, Rogers pretty much told the committee to go whistle up an alley. King was right. There was no legal reason for Coats and Rogers to refuse to answer the committee's questions. Had they been a couple of hippie lawyers, they'd have been hauled away in irons and charged with contempt of Congress, which both of them displayed in abundance.

Then, later on Wednesday afternoon, the committee released the opening statement that Comey plans to deliver when he appears before the committee on Thursday in what already has become a media spectacle somewhere between the Bobby Riggs-Billie Jean King tennis match and the OJ trial.

This was a particularly shrewd move by Comey, since none of us knew whether the president* would wake up early Thursday morning screaming "Executive privilege!" and demanding a polonium-tipped umbrella.

The statement was pure Comey: straightforward with a touch of the dramatist to it, clear enough to show that the president* was asking everyone except Diamond and Silk to shut down the Russia investigation, and loaded with juicy details...

This is the President* of the United States explaining to the director of the FBI, unbidden, that he had not been involved with hookers in Russia. Thursday should be a show and a half. At the moment, Comey's statement—and the earlier stonewalling—is being spun as some sort of "vindication" for the White House, although it's hard to see why.

When asked about the president*'s clear desire that the Russia investigation be 86'd, the president*'s defenders essentially argue that, what did we all expect?

The guy never had been president before. I think that defense needs work. I also think it's not smart to bring up hookers with the director of the FBI if he hasn't asked about them.

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