There is more palace intrigue/russia investigation crossover stuff but first a handy recap of the Rob Porter situation:
Alexandra Erin
@alexandraerin
Okay. So. This Porter thing. There's a reason that this is the scandal that's sticking the best so far.
Well, no.
There are reasons. There are no rules to this stuff, only factors and cause
First, I kind of hate that word, "scandal". It's so broad and it covers everything from war crimes to high treason to a tan suit in the oval office.
But that's part of the point.
The media doesn't cover stuff based strictly on importance, but also on "how it plays".
And Porter's case is sort of sitting at the perfect intersection of Palace Intrigue, Salacious Crumbs, Government Corruption, and Age of Trump. It could be Kelly's downfall! It involves intimate partner violence! There was a cover up! This is normal now!
Horserace journalism plus titillation equals = pro wrestling journalism. Or maybe reality TV journalism. And the Porter scandal is that, but with actual consequences and implications thrown in.
It's also somewhere between a clip show and a crossover event. All the other scandals keep popping up in relation to it.
Let me interrupt this stream of metaphors and get with the specifics.
At the crux of this all is Rob Porter's aborted security clearance. The White House said his background check was in process, but the FBI has since made it clear that the process was completed.
Trying to figure out how to parse a White House statement that's at odds with reality to find the "exact words interpretation" that makes it technically true, like they're wishmaster genies or contract-writing devils is usually a fool's errand.
That's a den of straight-up liars.
Buuuut I think we've got a kernel of truth(iness) in the White House's interpretation. The FBI considered the process completed but the White House hadn't accepted the answer and didn't realize a bossman-style "Well, what are we going to do about that?:" would not change it.
So the file was open at the White House, but going nowhere.
Now, there was a story (I think in the Post? I read it on my phone, which is currently updating its software) about how Kushner's little security clearance problem has become everybody's problem. If you raise a question about Joe Nobody's clearance, it's a double standard.
So nobody's saying anything about anybody's security clearance, because nobody wants to be the one who raises the possibility to the Loser King that his loser crown prince might have to stop reading him the morning report.
So it literally didn't matter what the FBI told them or what information they passed along later. There is no process in the Trump White House for dealing with someone's security clearance problems because the official unofficial stance is eyes down, keep moving.
Now, Kelly has shown a perfect willingness to blatantly lie to protect Donald Trump and the regime, since the days of the first Muslim ban (when he contradicted everyone else to say that they all been fully briefed and completely involved in drafting it.) It's just what he does.
But he's doing it in a magnifying fish bowl environment now, and about sillier (in the sense that Rob Porter was not worth protecting, not that domestic violence is silly) and more sensationalist things.
The White House "strategy", such as it is, in cases like this is for everybody to say whatever they think needs to be said in each given situation to deflect, obfuscate, and basically make the question go away.
It inevitably turns into a game of hot potato.
And the last person to have lied definitively before the truth comes out is the one holding the potato. In this case, it's Kelly. It might not have mattered, but he was already heading towards a breaking point with Trump.
Never mind that Kelly didn't do anything except what Trump would have wanted him to do (deny, lie, defend Porter). Never mind that Trump kept defending Porter after Kelly changed his tune. Kelly's the one who caused the embarrassment...
...by making the statements that were immediately contradicted, and he's the one who can be fired.
Kelly hasn't been fired, yet, and Trump is very slow and very reluctant to fire anybody (part of why the response had to be to defend Porter). I know, I know, he's famous for firing people... on TV. Most of the people "fired" by his White House were forced out.
Some by Kelly!
When Kelly is gone, I'm going to celebrate, because the most corrupt Trump crony he can install in that seat is going to be far, far worse at actually getting things done than Kelly was.
Anyway,t he Porter scandal has stuck around in large part because it plays into the existing narrative of Kelly being on the bubble, and it is fed by and feeds back into the story about Kushner's security clearance, and for one other big reason.
And that is... well, it's the same thing as the Kushner clearance thing, where no one wants to bring up security issues since they're all avoiding the elephant in the room.
The more people chased out of the West Wing on domestic or sexual violence, the bigger Trump's elephant is
And people aren't really doing any substantive writing about that in the mainstream press. It's almost like the shape of the Rob Porter story is filling the space around it. But I think this is giving it weight and moment, sticking power in the public eye, that it wouldn't have.
Now, there's more going on, too. (There's always more going on.) There's the "feud" between the FBI and the White House being fed by it. There's the fact that it took everybody in the GOP outside the White House by surprise (and they likely resent the scramble it put on them).
Donald Trump's statement today, which was way more about how much he resents being forced to condemn domestic violence than about condemning domestic violence or putting forward a new position on Porter himself, is not likely to lay matter to rest but extend it.