March 31, 2019

The "SNL" cold open on the Mueller report is mostly tedious, but they did a fantastic job...

... making Robert De Niro look like Robert Mueller:



De Niro only needed to read from the "report," but he didn't do that with any comic style or even basic articulation competence. He flubbed many lines and never looked at the paper he was supposed to be reading. He was reading the teleprompter, so that's where his eyes were locked.

Meanwhile, Aidy Bryant does William Barr, but Barr isn't a person we know well enough to know whether this is a funny impersonation. The comic idea — that Barr re-interprets Mueller to Trump's advantage — is quickly understood and so obvious that the repetitions are boring.

But Alec Baldwin is there, and his Trump is delightful, so high on himself, so devilish.

94 comments:

Birkel said...

SNL?
In the era of "that's not funny" the one-loner man is king.

Nobody cares.
Even the actors involved.

But from a sociological viewpoint I understand your interest.

Quaestor said...

A fantastic job of what? Nailing their own pock-mocked hides to the church door?

Wait til devilish Trump starts indicting Obama's minions (Brennan, Clapper, Comey, et al.) then we'll see some REAL entertainment.

Quaestor said...

Is De Niro too stupid to learn his lines, or too fucking lazy?

David Begley said...

Not invincible, but innocent.

When Brennan, Comey, Hillary et alia get indicted, what skits will SNL run? Hillary in Orange?

Jersey Fled said...

I can't watch this stuff.

Wince said...

Every time De Niro has appeared on SNL he’s done a terrible job delivering his lines.

Is there no time for rehearsal? How does he do his movie lines? Has he ever done live theater?

I believe they use old fashion cue cards on SNL, probably because a skilled cue card person is better able to adapt to the exingencies of the live format.

Come to think of it, that’d be a good Trump name for De Niro.

Cue Card Bob De Niro.

Mike Sylwester said...

I heard that Robert "The FBI Whitewasher" Mueller found that Stormy Daniels -- disguised as Michael Cohen -- traveled to Prague in June 2016 to give Russian Intelligence officers money to buy more Facebook ads.

However, William Barr left that finding out of his summary.

Mr. Majestyk said...

Of all the ways they could have used the Mueller report as a basis for a comedy sketch, this has to be the most pathetic.

gilbar said...

Quaestor said... Is De Niro too stupid to learn his lines, or too fucking lazy?

Embrace the Power of the word "AND"
just because you're a movie star, doesn't mean you can do live theater

Butkus51 said...

The weekly 5 minutes of hate.

rehajm said...

One theory- De Niro snowed us all his entire career. At one time it was compelling.

rehajm said...

I believe they use old fashion cue cards on SNL, probably because a skilled cue card person is better able to adapt to the exingencies of the live format.

It’s a union thing...

michaele said...

SNL's desire to push the envelope in having a female do a male really worked when Mellissa McCarthy did Sean Spicer and that's because she really captured his almost manic desire to please the press and yet defend his boss...an impossible task. The portrayal of Barr by Aidy Bryant was just simply lame . The little we've seen of Barr is that he's a serious guy with lots of gravitas (one of Washington's favorite words). Her impersonation of him as a lightweight giggle box did the whole skit a disservice. The only line that elicited a smile was Baldwin's delivery of declaring he had read 0 pages of the report. Frankly, they'd have a waay more funny and daring skit if that had done a parody of Biden's serial nuzzling and kissing of women and young girls.

rhhardin said...

It's the message "we are not the crazy ones" to the SNL audience.

roesch/voltaire said...

The skit was an executive summary of a long investigation that managed a few insights and laughs, which is more than Barr managed. For the most part the rest of the skits were funny enough to draw me back to watch next week. And yes Di Nero just makes a cameo appreance and doesn’t brother much, the flubs are part of going live.

Rick.T. said...

Nah. My strategy for SNL is to skip watching it live and then not watch it later.

Ralph L said...

Pretty rude to make Rudy the Devil, considering he saved NYC, the city they claim to love.

Chuck said...

The actual Mueller report is going to be even more hilarious than SNL writers can imagine. At least that’s my expectation, Althouse.

Bay Area Guy said...

Hilarious! Those wacky politically-astute kids at SNL!

tim maguire said...

If Alec Baldwin did a good Trump, it was the first time. Generally speaking, the washed up actors who pretend to relevance by doing regular guest appearances on SNL suck. They make the show worse, if that’s possible.

Amadeus 48 said...

Di Nero does great on film. I wonder how many takes he gets? If he did this 25 times, one of them would be good.

But it would take a lot of talent to pull off this dud material.

MikeR said...

It would be _really_ funny if Barr would accurately summarize Mueller's findings, but they would also have a CNN commentator riffing off it, to whatever he wants to be true.

tcrosse said...

De Niro needs Joe Pesci, like Abbot needed Costello.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

Why does anyone watch this corruptocrat-democratic shit?

Matt Sablan said...

The funny thing is this basically is the left's general attempt to pretend like Mueller just screwed up.

Matt Sablan said...

The Rudy part is just... weird.

Matt Sablan said...

"The only line that elicited a smile was Baldwin's delivery of declaring he had read 0 pages of the report."

-- I thought "We're going to redact everything besides 'No' and 'collusion,'" was pretty good.

Curious George said...

Ugh.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

The left Q up to SNL to get their news.

Narayanan said...

If SNL is American institution = Court Jester, I must point out to emphasize Court is not judicial , so need not be judicious.

In such a court there are courtiers and servitors, and American delusionists = deluders and deludeds.

Phil 314 said...

When did the cold opens become realibly political? I recall a time when they focused on the weeks guest host and something about him/ her that would be funny.

SNL is past my bedtime so I don’t watch but such an unwavering approach to each show doesn’t sound very “fresh”

Narayanan said...

The little we've seen of Barr is that he's a serious guy with lots of gravitas ...

Also in the gravitational sense from what I've seen.

! Matching POTUS. !

chuck said...

My takeaway: still not worth watching. Thanks Ann.

Bob Boyd said...

SNL never fails to disappoint these days.

Yancey Ward said...

If Barr released the report tomorrow with a single word redacted, the Left would claim that one redacted word contained the key detail that is being covered up. If Barr released the report with zero redactions, the Left would claim it isn't the actual report at all. If Mueller were subpoenaed by the House, came with his own unredacted report and read it to Adam Schiff, the Left would claim it wasn't Robert Mueller at all.

Basically nothing will serve as evidence that Trump isn't a Russian agent- nothing.

stlcdr said...

A straight man trying to do comedy doesn’t work a lot of the time, especially when there’s nothing comedic about the subject to play on. Having said that, Liam Neeson in ‘life’s too short’ was hilarious: a straight man playing a straight man who wants to do comedy.

Paco Wové said...

r/V gives his review of the weekly sermon.

cronus titan said...

The tedious skit is what defeat looks like.

The more apt skit would be Maddow as Brave Sir Black Knight. Now THAT would be funny. Imagine Baldwin as Trump saying to Maddow "What are you going to do, bleed on me?"

Big Mike said...

There’s a rumor that Robert De Niro was a competent actor once. At $10 a ticket I don’t think I will be bothered to go see any of his movies.

Skeptical Voter said...

Ah Voltaire--DeNiro was just there for the dinero. And you'd have to pay me lots of dinero if you wanted me to watch SNL. Its funny bone left the station long, long ago.

Kevin said...

When the Mueller Report reads just as Bill Barr summarized it, will the actors do an opening skit about them creating a skit where Barr made it all up?

Because that's the real joke here.

Kevin said...

The actual Mueller report is going to be even more hilarious than SNL writers can imagine.

Yes, but only for Trump's supporters.

It's not going to read so funny for the Democrats and LLRs.

Kevin said...

Shorter Althouse: SNL is on NBC, which is bitterly clinging to its impeachment fantasies.

Michael Fitzgerald said...

Democrat party members are dangerously deranged. This report should have lanced the abcess of their sick irrational hatred, but if anything, the maniacs have gotten manaicer. Democrat party propagandists and talking heads fan the embers of the desperate wish that the attorney general is mischaracterizing the findings of Meullers report, and the brain dead drones and hateful progs of the democrat party get drunk with rage repeating that rubbish.
How are we supposed to live in peace with these despicable idiots? The democrat party is a disgrace, the shame of this nation, and an existential threat to the United States of America.

Unknown said...

> It's the message "we are not the crazy ones" to the SNL audience.

The cognitive dissonance is strong in these....

bagoh20 said...

SNL could be absolutely hilarious if it was just able to make fun of both sides with abandon. There is so much hilarious material that is off-limits to them that it's almost criminal for a comedy show to ignore it. Of course they would need new comedy writers and a much wider audience. Wait, isn't that the idea of a TV show? Maybe not. It seems designed now as some kind of gentle therapy for a close-minded captive group.

bagoh20 said...

"We're going to redact everything besides 'No' and 'collusion,'"

If the purpose of the investigation was actually what we were told it was, then that's the only part that is relevant, but we now know that was not the purpose. The real purpose was actually illegal, unconstitutional and unAmerican. It was using the power and resources of the federal government to attempt to alter an election, then overturn it, then as opposition research for the 2018, and 2020 elections, and they will continue to do those despicable things with it. Yep, funny stuff.

Meanwhile is anybody other than Trump and his administration doing anything about the nation's business, it's defense, it challenges, it's future?

rcocean said...

Before the moderation policy, I had a compulsion to post on every thread, even the ones where I was saying the same thing over and over again. Now, I don't have to write that SNL is lame and at a 20 year low.

Drago said...

Kevin: "Yes, but only for Trump's supporters.
It's not going to read so funny for the Democrats and LLRs."

"Democrats" vs "LLR's" is a distinction with zero actual difference.

Yancey Ward said...

There is so much in this event that SNL could have gotten true comedy that works, but you have to be willing to make fun of the Left in this particular instance, and the writers have reached the point where they can't any longer. I remember the "Bubble" skit SNL did after Trump's election- that was hilarious, but as time goes on this term, they are just failing as writers of comedy. This effort wasn't so lazy and uninspired, I would have fired them if I were the producer.

Bruce Hayden said...

Blogger Chuck said...
“The actual Mueller report is going to be even more hilarious than SNL writers can imagine. At least that’s my expectation, Althouse.”

It is going to be extremely interesting for many. One thing that a lot of people are going to be looking for is the question of when it ceased being about Russian collusion, and became primarily about Obstruction of Justice. The betting right now seems to be about August of 2017. So far, potential collusion seems to have involved the Trump Tower meeting that seems to have been a Fusion GPS operation (since they met with the Russian lawyer before and after the meeting) aided and assisted by the Obama Administration (which got her into and out of this country without a visa), and the CIA Misfyp/Downer/Halper operation run at the Trump campaign to dirty them up, and was ultimately used to open up the Crossfire Hurrricane investigation (that ultimately morphed into the Mueller investigation). Throw in the Wikileaks dump of DNC emails, which got blamed on the Russians, which was apparently orchestrated by DNI Clapper (who hand picked the forensics team that never physically investigated the DNC server, and whose FBI contingent was led by no other than Peter Strzok, who led the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, and also ended up on the Mueller team for a short time). Was there more? I think unlikely, at least of consequence. After all, Peter Strzok, in a text message to his GF Lisa Page, in early summer of 2017, before the two of them joined the Mueller team, essentially admitted that there was no there there. And, if anyone would have known that, it would have been he, who had his fingers in every pot, was a central player in every example of Trump Russian collusion, except maybe the Trump Tower meeting. The reason that summer of 2017 is picked by some is that that was when the DoJ quit renewing the FISA warrants for Carter Page. And around then was when Mueller went back to DAG Rosenstein to get his mandate broadened, since they where likely almost done with the investigation mandated in his original charge.

The Deep State in combination with the recently departed Obama Administration, had a serious problem on their hands. They had weaponized our government’s intelligence assets against Trump and his people, and he was now President. It would have been fine if Crooked Hillary had won. Easy to sweep under the carpet if her people are running things. But they weren’t going to be. When his people finally got control of the DoJ and esp the FBI, the depth of the illegality and abuse of power would ultimately come out. The suggestion is that Comey got fired essentially for lying to Trump about the fact that his Administration was being actively surveiled by Comey’s people through the Carter Page FISA warrants. Hence, I think, the switch in focus to Obstruction of Justice. And it worked for a year and a half, with the FBI in particular able to cover up what had been going on in order to protect an ongoing investigation. Trump couldn’t declassify all the stuff his people wanted him to, and he had promised to declassify, because that would be interfering with an ongoing investigation, that by then was very likely completely about his obstructing Justice. It was circular - anything done to shut down the investigation about obstruction of justice would be sold to the public as further evidence of Obstruction of Justice. OIG was also stalled, for similar reasons. What finally broke it open was the nomination, and then confirmation of Barr as AG. Up until then, DAG Rosenstein could be depended upon to keep his hands off the Mueller investigation. But Barr wouldn’t refuse himself, as Sessions foolishly had done, and appears to have immediately taken over either direct oversight of the investigation, or of Rosenstein’s oversight, and that meant that using the Mueller investigation as a cover for past FBI and DoJ lawless misbehaviors was brought to an abrupt halt.

William said...

I'm not part of their target audience, but it seemed to me to be more agitprop than satire. If it were satire, it was closer to a satire of biased SNL coverage than to satire of the President or Barr......There should be some kind of law where SNL is made to register as a lobbyist for the DNC and their show is reported as a contribution in kind to that organization.

walter said...

Rosenstein just somehow escaped mention.

So how did the SNL team do on the Smollett stuff?
An alumni chime in a tad:
---
Jussie Smollett might have been a no-show at Saturday night's NAACP Image Awards in Hollywood but that didn't stop comedian Chris Rock from blasting the "Empire" star.

"They said 'No Jussie Smollett jokes' ... What a waste of light skin. Do you know what I could do with that light skin? That curly hair? My career would be out of here! I'd be running Hollywood," said Rock, who was on hand to present the award for Outstanding Comedy Series.
He continued: "What the hell was he thinking? You're 'Jessie' from now on. You don't get the 'u' no more. That 'u' was respect. You ain't getting no respect from me!"

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/chris-rock-slams-jussie-smollett-at-naacp-awards-what-the-hell-was-he-thinking

Bay Area Guy said...

I have a skit idea for SNL -- work with me!

So, a famous Democrat VP, who's a little past the sell date (age 76), is thinking about running for President.

Now, he's a white male and a little socially awkward. He's always touching females - of any age -- really suggestively. Hilarious!

So, one time he's campaigning for this hot, big-breasted latina, who's running for LT. Governor of Nevada. While she's waiting to deliver her speech, the Famous white, male VP, kinda lurks up behind her, and starts rubbing her back, and then smelling her hair!

Ay Caramba!

And, then she loses her campaign! Hilarious!

Whaddya think? May need some work? I flew into town last week, and boy are my arms tired!

William said...

I have an idea for the cold open. They bring out an effigy of Donald Trump and all the cast members could take turns beating it with baseball bats. Here's the topper. At the end of the skit, DeNiro unzips his pants and pisses on it.....I was thinking perhaps that he could take down his pants and crap on it, but that would probably be going too far for the network censors.

Big Mike said...

@Bay Area Guy, don’t quit your day job just yet.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

Bay Area Guy - It's illegal to mock any democratic.

Inga...Allie Oop said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Inga...Allie Oop said...

“The actual Mueller report is going to be even more hilarious than SNL writers can imagine. At least that’s my expectation, Althouse.”

I suspect so, but how sad that there are still people who will continue to support such a man. Nothing will shake them loose from their cultist mentality.

Trump Cultism has been mainstreamed among them.

Achilles said...

Drago said...

"Democrats" vs "LLR's" is a distinction with zero actual difference.

They both have the same goals and same masters.

But they have different groups of people to lie to.

The thing is Democrat voters are dumb people and much easier to fool.

Look at the idiots who still think Trump colluded with Russia.

Jim at said...

If not for the weekly updates here, I wouldn't even know SNL was still on the air.

Big Mike said...

@Inga, thanks for the feeble attempt at humor, but in your shoes I wouldn’t quit my day job yet, either.

walter said...

"Cult" is more apt for the folks so blindly invested in the unraveling collusion/obstruction witch hunt.

Big Mike said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

Why Inga? you support liar Maddow and won't let go of her.

She's the big liar and fraud. Not Trump.

Kevin said...

And it worked for a year and a half, with the FBI in particular able to cover up what had been going on in order to protect an ongoing investigation.

The point was they all knew Trump HAD to be guilty of something and if the investigation went on long enough and drilled deep enough, someone would talk or some document would come out. Then they'd be in the clear as impeachment discussions would take the rest of his term.

When it didn't, they raided Cohen's office.

When that didn't produce the evidence, they put Manafort in solitary with no justification other than to force him to talk.

When that still didn't produce anything they waited a good bit of time after the midterms to release the report and shut it down.

Or you can believe Mueller nailed him, Barr is throwing away his reputation to cover for him, and it will all come out as soon as we can read the damn report.

Drago said...

Hoax dossier FanGirl Inga: "I suspect so, but how sad that there are still people who will continue to support such a man. Nothing will shake them loose from their cultist mentality."

Inga is very upset normal people no longer believe hers and LLR Chuck's collusion lies.

Tsk tsk tsk

And niw LLR Chuck and the rest of Team Dem are actually asserting Barr has misstated the findings of the report!!

LOL

Everyday Maddow must awake and shake her head in wonder at how gullible her LLR and other lefty sheep are!!

Cha-ching!!

Some of those LLR dopes even praise her as "brilliant" as she constructs and weaves ever more fantastical and intricate and hilarious conspiracies, one on top of another.

Layers and layers on non-sensical LLR Chuck labeled "brilliance"!!

It just keeps getting better and better.

Molly said...

(eaglebeak)

They should have gotten Trump to do Trump. Would have been way funnier than Baldwin.

Michael K said...

Trump Cultism has been mainstreamed among them.

Even The Nation (!) has gotten over this hoax.

Nearly three years of Russiagate’s toxic allegations have entered the American political-media elite bloodstream, and they almost certainly will reappear again and again in one form or another.

This is an exceedingly grave danger, because the real costs of Russiagate are not the estimated $25–40 million spent on the Mueller investigation but the corrosive damage it has already done to the institutions of American democracy—damage done not by an alleged “Trump-Putin axis” but by Russsigate’s perpetrators themselves.


Yes, we have our very own crazy right here,.

Drago said...

Kevin: "When it didn't, they raided Cohen's office.
When that didn't produce the evidence, they put Manafort in solitary with no justification other than to force him to talk."

Listen to John Dowds podcast interview with Byron York and then ponder this:

The hack dem/left coup team at the FBI/DOJ predated the appt of Mueller.

Their lefty team selected Mueller and the reason is obvious: Mueller is massively conflicted and thus could provide cover for the Treason Team because "republican" but would do nothing to stop Team Undo The Election shenanigans.

Most interesting, all the completely unjustified actions by Team Overthrow The President were designed to get Trump to react in a way that could be spun as obstruction, which was needed because there never was any collusion or obstruction.

It had to be manufactured.

As far as attempting to interview the President to create another 302 Notes hoax perjury ploy, Dowds discussion of how those talks with Mueller went are most enlightening.

Bilwick said...

Drago, Inga the State's Handmaid calling other people "cultists" is funny enough.

cubanbob said...

Alec Baldwin isn't bad imitating Trump. I suspect he's good at it since he has a similar type personality ( albeit a lot crazier) to Trump and I suspect deep down inside he wishes he could be Trump.

walter said...

"Cultist" on NPR!

Michel Martin speaks with Harmeet Dhillon

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

The Maddow-Strozk nexus of arrogance and fraud. That right there is the real freaking cult.

Next cult meeting scheduled for April at the Hillary lost butthurt hotel.

Gk1 said...

As reliably politically correct & tedious as this show has become, its interesting to me they won't touch the Jussie Smollett hoax story with a 10,000 foot pole or maybe do a sketch of depressed liberals ginning their hopes up for another trump scandal that will finally bring him down, only to have an Acme product explode in their faces time after time. Humor comes from the ability to say the forbidden from time to time, not mindlessly cheerlead for liberals 24/7.

Bruce Hayden said...

“Most interesting, all the completely unjustified actions by Team Overthrow The President were designed to get Trump to react in a way that could be spun as obstruction, which was needed because there never was any collusion or obstruction.”

What is interesting, if not a bit humorous, though is that it failed. They were just waiting, and trying desperately, to get him to overreact, which could be sold as Obstruction, but was really Trump just being Trump. But they inevitably failed because Trump never took the bait, no matter how attractive it was, starting with having Rosenstein justify the firing of Comey for lying to him and leaking. The firing couldn’t be Obstruction because the Deputy Attorney General had personally justified the firing for cause.

Narayanan said...

Blogger Molly said...
(eaglebeak)

They should have gotten Trump to do Trump.

They could then get him on EMOLUMENTS.

Narayanan said...

That would be funnilicious.

Jaq said...

Inga the State's Handmaid calling other people "cultists" is funny enough.

For somebody who is not a member of a cult, it’ amazing the number of facts that she is not allowed to state out loud. For instance “Hillary Clinton paid foreign spies to create the dossier while pumping the Russians for dirt on Trump."

Jaq said...

Blogger Chuck said...
The actual Mueller report is going to be even more hilarious than SNL writers can imagine. At least that’s my expectation, Althouse.


Maddow dead ender.

walter said...

Bruce Hayden said...The firing couldn’t be Obstruction because the Deputy Attorney General had personally justified the firing for cause.
-
Hey, hey, hey, hey...that's inappropriate!
Yeah..Rosenstein keeps being forgotten in all this.

chickelit said...

Cringeworthy -- like watching someone masturbate in public.

Drago said...

Bruce: "The firing couldn’t be Obstruction because the Deputy Attorney General had personally justified the firing for cause."

Quite so.

Now think about this: As the lefties and lefty-LLR's like Chuck continue their lying and obfuscating for Team Treason, Barr had been working with Mueller for up to 3 weeks PRIOR to the announcement by Mueller that his work was complete, so Barr had been preparing his summary for that period of time.

Further, Barr wouldn't let hack (and LLR Chuck fav) Rod Rosenstein skulk away after having caused all this due to his cowardice and collusion desires (a perfectly lovely combo of corrruption and incompetence which all LLR's celebrate enthusiastically), so Rosenstein is having to sit there with Barr as they go over the both aspects of the Team Overturn The Election's report with a fine tooth comb and the biggest evidence in support of Trump and his action re: Comey is.....Rosenstein's letter describing precisely why Comey had violated every policy in the book and deserved to be canned!!

LOL

What I wouldn't give to sit in the room on that one.

My hope is that Mueller is in there with Barr and Rosenstein while Mueller tries to describe why his hack lefty/dem staffers believe the firing of Comey is the ultimate evidence of obstruction of justice and then having Barr turn to Li'l quisling Rod and say, "well, whaddya think of that charge counselor?"....

LOL

Drago said...

BTW, I have no doubt that had Barr not been appointed, Mueller would have sat back and let Weismann gin up some BS excuse to indict and arrest first Don Jr, then Jared, then, when that failed to get Trump to go full pardon-mode, he would have contrived a make believe crime to indict Ivanka. This would have greatly satisfied the psycopathic need on the part of the lefties and LLR's to start tossing Trump's children in jail.

Making up fake crimes is precisely what Weismann is known for and is precisely what the Supreme Court slammed him for in a 9-0 decision in the Arthur Andersen case back in 2005.

In this case, Weissman and his lefty and LLR pals know that eventually they would be over-ruled again, but as with the Arthur Andersen case, long after the dems political needs would have been served to much celebration on the left/LLR-left.

Ted Steven's anyone?

Tom Delay?

Matt Sablan said...

Ok, serious question, which may get lost in the moderation and higher up posts: Why do people still think that there will be some silver bullet in the Mueller report that lets them hang Trump?

This is like the people who still think somehow, Clinton will face consequences for how she handled classified information. It's delusional.

narciso said...

let me try that again:


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6869857/Gangsters-links-7-7-London-bombings-stole-8billion-British-taxpayers.html

narciso said...

nothing to see here:


https://www.investigativeproject.org/7871/new-islamist-group-in-chicago-dominated-by

narciso said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Crazy World said...

Inga - Trump is your President, you are SUPPOSED to support him. It is the resistance crowd that are a cult.
Who do you support?

rcocean said...

The woman playing Barr is a complete failure. Its tough for women to play men, even for comedy, because there's nothing intrinsically funny about a smallish woman putting on a suit and pretending to be a man. There's a reason why you rarely see Women comics pretending to be men. In movies, the standard comic situation was a woman pretending to be a boy.

So, for this gender bending to get some laughs you need a good script AND a good comedic actress. Both are lacking here. All you're left with is an actress who doesn't sound or look like William Barr impersonating him. Yawn.

As for De NIro. The man is over 80. Just retire!

walter said...

SNL Smollett skit

Michael K said...

They had weaponized our government’s intelligence assets against Trump and his people,

I blame Bush for some of this. The Patriot Act empowered the "Intelligence Community" far too much. That "second opinion" on Iran's nuclear program was one evidence that the CIA was going rogue.

Trump is just a threat to the whole administrative state, including both parties. Ryan is as much a part as Schumer.

narciso said...

Ah that was Paul pillar hes the wrong way Corrigan of intelligence analysis, he largely relied on one source general asghari the one who may have given the order to blow the embassy in beirut.

Bruce Hayden said...

"Trump is just a threat to the whole administrative state, including both parties. Ryan is as much a part as Schumer."

Interesting segment tonight on Mark Levine on FNC tonight, where either Carter ot Soloman was saying that the reason that the FBI entrapped Gen Flynn in that perjury trap was that he had been one of the most successful military intelligence people in a generation, and was talking about a major reorganization of our intelligence community as Trump's National Security Advisor. That would inconvenience too many Deep Staters, so he had to be taken out. Most of us know by now that it was an intentional set up run by DD McCabe to entrap, and ultimately push out, Flynn, as NSA. MCCabe called up Flynn, told him some of his agents were coming over to the WH to meet with him informally, and, no, he didn't need an attorney present. The agents (led, as usual, by Peter Strzok) failed to tell Flynn that it was a crime to lie to them, and didn't bother to tell him that they illegally (because it wasn't properly minimized) had a copy of Flynn's talk with the Russian Ambassador, which he didn't have a copy of. And, even then, the FBI agents didn't think that Flynn's shaky memory was sketchy (while Clinton's was), or that he was lying to them. And, they were, of course, successful - Flynn was fired, then indicted by Mueller for the fake crime they created of lying to the FBI, even when he provably didn't. And no intelligence community reorganization.