While reading Greg Sargent in WaPo’s The Plum Line, I began to wonder. But first, Sargent’s summation:
To be clear, the fact that Republicans strong-armed the release of the Comey memos in the first place, and the fact that they promptly leaked, both set bad precedents when it comes to political interference in ongoing investigations. But now that it did happen, there’s no way to argue that this outcome is vindicating for Trump. The opposite is true.
And this echos other publication asserting the leaked memos absolve Trump of nothing, despite his protestations.
But will the Trump supporters ever even see analyses such as Sargent’s? I’d bet, at most, a plugged nickel Fox News will be publishing along these lines, so we can be fairly sure that your typical Trump supporter, who reads Trump’s tweets and consumes right wing media devoted to Trump, will never see this sort of analysis. Like much of the American public, they depend on their news organizations and associated opinion pieces for their world view, perhaps even moreso than your average American.
So these analyses are rather like preaching to the choir. For the punditry, it’s a shocking and stunning blow TO the Trump Administration, and in fact to the conservative movement as a whole, as it repeatedly demonstrates incompetency and third rate amateurism, or, alternatively but doubtfully, an amazing level of deception against the Trump movement.
But for Trump supporters? The only impact will be confusion for those who engage with non-Trump supporters or media, as their mother’s milk will clash with the outside world. And they’ll just shake their heads and keep on sucking.
