CSI: American Carnage (Saturday, February 23, 2019)
WASHINGTON – The Times guy is nursing a Brewdog at the Off the Record late in the evening when the Post guy enters, sees him, and walks over to the table. The Post guy says, Mind? The Times guy says, Have a seat. Barkeep! Two Brewdogs. Sink the Bismarks. The Post guy says, No Mueller report next week. The Times guy says, No. I told em it wasn’t gonna happen and that it was Donald trying to goose the narrative. The Post guy says, Me too. Hope springs, you know. But not only is there no report coming next week, there’s no sentencing memo for Manafort tonight. The Times guy says, Really? Isn’t Mueller required to file by midnight? The Post guy says, Yeah. Probably he filed under seal and the judge has to figure out what parts can be made public. That’s the working theory, anyway. Probably we’ll get it in a day or two. The Times guy says, Working theory. There are so damn many working theories. The Post guy says, One thing’s not a theory – it’s getting dangerous. This guy Hasson – what an arsenal he had! Geez. They say Chris was on the kill list. Ari. Bunch of senators. Feds say Hasson intended to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country. The Times guy says, And what was Donald’s first reaction? He tweets that our reporting is false. The Times is a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! The Post guy says, False? Right. He attacks the newspapers and the reporters and says nothing about this mass killer wannabe. The Post guy continues: Hallie asked him about it today. She said, Do you think you bear any responsibility for monitoring your language when it comes to that. She was talking about incitement. The Times guy says, What was Donald’s response? The Post guy says, What do you think? He said, No, I don’t. I think my language is very nice. Then somebody asked Sarah about it and she said Donald is the model of civility. She says, I certainly don’t think that the president at any point has done anything but condemn violence – against journalists or anyone else. In fact, every single time something like this happens, the president is typically one of the first people to condemn the violence and the media is the first people to blame the president. The Times guy shakes his head. He says, Remember when Donald went out to Montana last year before the election to a rally for Greg Gianforte, the tough-guy congressman who blindsided a reporter and bodyslammed him? Remember that? Ben from the Guardian asked him about health care and Gianforte suddenly attacked him. Then he lied about it and spouted off about the fake news, and then, finally, pled guilty to assault. And, of course, won the election. The Post guy says, Yeah, I remember that. Donald goes to Gianforte’s rally and claps about the assault and says this guy is one of the most respected people in Congress. Then he goes on to praise him, as I recall. Donald tells the crowd at the rally that Gianforte’s so smart. And by the way, he says, never wrestle him. You understand that? Never. The Times guy says, That was after the Capital Gazette murders, too. The Post guy says, Yeah. Oh, by the way, you hear what Joe diGenova said earlier. The Times guy says, No. Last I heard about him Donald wanted him for the Trump legal team. The Post guy says, He did a podcast with Laura and he tells her, We are in a civil war. He says, There’re two standards of justice, one for Democrats and one for Republicans. The press is all Democrat, all liberal, all progressive, all left — they hate Republicans, they hate Trump. So the suggestion that there’s ever going to be civil discourse in this country for the foreseeable future is over. It’s not going to be. It’s going to be total war. And as I say to my friends, I do two things — I vote and I buy guns. The Times guy slumps back and says nothing.
— Saturday, Feb. 23, 2019