Go ahead, make my..

Back in the bad old days of Bush 43 chasing ghosts in Iraq to make himself relevant or something over the horrors of 9/11, We the People had our own dose of comic relief by way of Saddam Hussein’s chief political spokeshead / advisor, nicknamed Baghdad Bob. Without attempting to illustrate my intent, simply put the name out there and you’ll get a good dose of comedy, if nothing else.

Seems like every president or world leader has a version of Baghdad Bob within their administrations, if for no other reason than to deflect probing questions far off into the ether; positive, negative, or in-between.

During Obama’s years of ultimate failure, one of his ‘Baghdad Bob’s’ (he had more than a few – Gropey Joe Bite Me comes to mind as another) was one Ben Rhodes, who is today’s featured personage.

All Rhodes lead to Obama .. Ben Rhodes with Nicholas Ballasy

There are two versions of the same story at hand, the deepest of which belongs to the genius ‘sundance’ and the crew over at Conservative Treehouse, with a lighter version on hand from Monica Showalter in today’s American Thinker. But first…

As Thomas E. Ricks described May 6, 2016 right in the middle of the election campaign:

The profile of one Ben Rhodes running in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine is not unsympathetic, which makes it all the more devastating. Perhaps the key sentence is this: “His lack of conventional real-world experience of the kind that normally precedes responsibility for the fate of nations — like military or diplomatic service, or even a master’s degree in international relations, rather than creative writing — is still startling.”

From which I segue` into the Monica Showalter piece: ‘With the Walls closing in on Obama, Ben Rhodes weaves a sticky narrative web’…

Now that the Mueller report is out, effectively exonerating President Trump of colluding with the Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton, the Trump administration has begun investigations as to the origins of the phony Steele dossier and the illegal surveillance of his campaign. It’s a trail that’s unlikely to lead anywhere but to the office of embittered President Obama, and independent reporter Nicholas Ballasy got a chance to ask the Obama administration’s former deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, [where] he thought this investigation would eventually lead.

His response was about what you might expect — nowhere Obama might be, along with a string of “narratives,” so fake that if you weren’t suspicious Obama knew anything about the abuses of power going on, you would be after hearing Rhodes.

There he is, in all his twerpy glory, situated between two bottles of screwtop wine, using the teenage girl’s favorite word “like” as a particle, and perhaps most significantly, blinking his eyes every time he insists that the Obama administration knew nothing about the Steele dossier or the effort to spy on the Trump campaign, even as Ballasy shows admirable restraint in not belting the guy across the table.

It’s interesting that he starts the interview confidently dismissive, but then, seemingly getting into his cups, gets more emphatic and detailed, repeating all sorts of defensive denials, even as the reporter was quite gentle on him.

Read to completion in link down below…

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Then there’s this from ‘sundance’ and the crew in their opener: Former Obama Advisor Ben Rhodes ‘We Didn’t Know Anything’…

Former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama, Ben Rhodes, says any investigation of prior administration “will find nothing” that shows former President Obama or White House staff had any “involvement” in the origins of the surveillance of Trump campaign and Russia collusion investigation.

Prior to March 9th, 2016, the Obama-era political surveillance and spy operations consisted of using the FBI and NSA database to track/monitor their opposition. However, once the NSA compliance officer began initiating an internal review of who was accessing the system, the CIA and FBI moved to create ex post facto justification for their endeavors. [Full Backstory] Everything after March 9, 2016, became a cover-story.

Looking at White House engagement in the last half of 2016, The War Economy has done some excellent research on this period to contrast the reference of Ben Rhodes:

Full story in down below link (extensive, so settle in!) …

There’s gotta be something here on Russia .. Putin promised me

More from Thomas E. Ricks: ‘I expect cynicism in Washington. But it usually is combined with a lot of knowledge — as with, say, Henry Kissinger. To be cynical and ignorant and to spin those two things into a virtue? That’s industrial-strength hubris. Kind of like what got us into Iraq, in fact.’

‘Rhodes and others around Obama keep on talking about doing all this novel thinking, playing from a new playbook, bucking the establishment thinking. But if that is the case, why have they given so much foreign policy power to two career hacks who never have had an original thought? I mean, of course, Joe Biden and John Kerry. I guess the answer can only be that those two are puppets, and (as in Biden’s case) are given losing propositions like Iraq to handle.’

‘Fact check: Obama’s hasn’t been an original foreign policy as much as it has been a politicized foreign policy. And this Rhodes guy reminds me of the Kennedy smart guys who helped get us into the Vietnam War. Does he know how awful he sounds? Kind of like McGeorge Bundy meets Lee Atwater.[end]’

And on that note, time for today’s MAGA Pill – President Donald J. Trump – MAGA!

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Monica Showalter: Ben Rhodes weaves a sticky narrative web

Conservative Treehouse: Ben Rhodes We Didn’t Know Anything

Thomas E. Ricks: Ben Rhodes profile Obama foreign policy Guru