Commentary
Rep. Liz Cheney—evidently prepping a presidential campaign, even though soundly defeated in the congressional primary in her semi-home state of Wyoming—actually does have a beef against Donald Trump.
Trump did single out her father as the primary instigator of the Iraq War when, although the then-vice president had tremendous influence, virtually all of Washington was then behind what proved to be a fiasco.
Nevertheless, Liz—suffering from one of the more obviously unresolved Electra complexes of recent times—blew that all out of proportion to such a degree that she will undoubtedly go to her grave inveighing against Trump as if he were some American combination of Ivan the Terrible and Genghis Khan.
She will be so self-righteous about it that she will go on boring us forever with pompous speeches comparing herself to the likes of Abraham Lincoln, as she did the night of her predicted disastrous loss in Wyoming.
For Mike Pence, however, his continued betrayals of Trump aren’t motivated by anything nearly as psychologically complicated as Liz’s issues. It’s just that ordinary—but oh-so-powerful—cocktail of ambition and envy so masterfully dramatized by Shakespeare in “Macbeth,” but obviously existed thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of years before the Bard of Avon.
So when we read the following, as quoted by The Epoch Times, observations by the former vice president about the Mar-a-Lago break-in, we should remember we are listening to someone entranced by his own considerably less-imaginative version of Macbeth’s witches.
“‘I also want to remind my fellow Republicans, we can hold the attorney general accountable for the decision he made without attacking the rank-and-file law enforcement personnel at the FBI,’ Pence said during an event at St. Anselm College.”
“‘The Republican Party is the party of law and order,’ Pence stated, according to The Associated Press. ‘Our party stands with the men and women who stand on the thin blue line at the federal and state and local level, and these attacks on the FBI must stop. Calls to defund the FBI are just as wrong as calls to defund the police.’”
Translation: Hold on. Maybe these raiding FBI agents will come up with something that will finally derail that man that stands in my way from sitting in the Oval Office.
Or, as those witches would have it:
“First Witch: When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Second Witch: When the hurly-burly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won.
Third Witch: That will be ere the set of sun.
First Witch: Where the place?
Second Witch: Upon the heath.
Third Witch: There to meet with Macbeth.”
Or should we call him “Macpence”? But kidding aside, the minor utterings of a soon-to-be-forgotten politician contain two interesting questions very much exploring:
1. Just how corrupt is the FBI and should it be preserved or essentially honored in the manner that Pence implied? Some, like Sean Hannity, have been insisting for years now that the FBI’s problems are all at the top. Get rid of those high-level miscreants and everything will be fine.
I am skeptical, as was Victor Davis Hanson in a riveting interview the leading conservative pundit did with Jan Jekielek for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” series. In it, Victor, who is convinced—for good reason—the agency has gone rogue, recognized that a form of pollution had occurred over years within the FBI.
It wasn’t just the leadership, but the many below them who stood by and did nothing while our national law enforcement agency descended into politically biased lawlessness, such as the obvious corruption of the Russia probe.
Victor recommended disbanding the agency altogether and sending those who could still verifiably be trusted and had the requisite expertise to other agencies such as Homeland Security. Unlike Pence, he clearly wanted to defund the FBI.
2. The second question hidden under Pence’s self-serving political blather is yet more important. What indeed was the FBI after in their willy-nilly, pre-dawn raid of Mar-a-Lago with Trump absent? It’s becoming increasingly clear that it was the material about Russiagate (Spygate here) that either was declassified or Trump thought was declassified—something as president he had every right to do and, you would assume, material that the public has every right to know at this point.
It would seem evident, considering the unprecedented nature of the break-in that would almost automatically get substantial pushback, this material looks extremely bad for the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the most important Democratic politicians.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
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