Challenged on his statement about Rob Reiner, Trump explained, "Well, I wasn't a fan of his at all.... I was not a fan of Rob Reiner at all, in any way, shape, or form."

Let’s be clear about something.

Trump wrote this morning that what happened to Rob Reiner and his wife Michele was a very sad thing and may they rest in peace.

He didn’t celebrate his death.

He did say how he felt about the man who hated him with every ounce of his being… pic.twitter.com/wdSuwjWDQr

— RealAF Patriot (@RealAF_Patriot) December 15, 2025

The full quote: "Well, I wasn't a fan of his at all. He was a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned. He said — he knew it was false, in fact it’s the exact opposite — that I was a friend of Russia, controlled by Russia. The Russia hoax — he was one of the people behind it. I think he hurt himself, career-wise. He became like a deranged person. Trump derangement syndrome. So I was not a fan of Rob Reiner at all, in any way, shape, or form. I thought he was very bad for our country."

Compare that to his earlier statement, and you'll see that a big difference is the omission of a reverent acknowledgment of the profundity of death. The original statement begins and ends with what we would expect from a decent and conventional reaction: "A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood.... May Rob and Michele rest in peace!" It's the stuff in the middle that was the problem. Notice the multiple elements to this filling. I'll color code them:

"Trump just wants the media to cover the story."

I'm reading "Getting media to cover Obamagate/Crazy Like A Fox Trump did it again with a fake but accurate video" by Don Surber, at Substack.

The media refused this weekend to cover the story of the century, in which Obama personally helped create and promote Russiagate which tied the first presidency of Donald Trump up in knots for years and also served as a cover story for Obama using the FBI to spy on Trump....

President Trump knows beating the media better than anyone. He did what no one would ever believe possible when he forced Disney’s ABC to admit it lied about him, He collected legal fees and a $15 million donation to the Trump Presidential Library. He also collected $16 million for the library from CBS for making Kamala Harris sound intelligent in a heavily edited 60 Minutes story. You’re gonna need a bigger library. Trump forced NBC to give him equal time for Kamala’s appearance on Saturday Night Live. His time was on Sunday Night Football, which has 10 times the audience.

The media wants the Obamagate story to go away, but Trump figured out a way to make them admit there is a story. He posted an AI video of Obama being arrested. This is his post on Truth Social....

"This is firing the F.B.I. director.... It is extremely dangerous to have a change in an F.B.I. director just after a change in administration."

Said an anonymous "law enforcement official," quoted in "Trump Says He Will Nominate Kash Patel to Run F.B.I./President-elect Donald J. Trump turned to a firebrand loyalist to become director of the bureau, which he sees as part of a ‘deep state’ conspiracy against him" (NYT).

Mr. Patel laid out his vision for wreaking vengeance on the F.B.I. and Justice Department in a book, “Government Gangsters,” calling for clearing out the top ranks of the bureau, which he called “a threat to the people.” He also wrote a children’s book, “The Plot Against the King,” telling through fantasy the story of the investigations into Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign’s possible ties to Russians.... 

In planning to remove Mr. Wray from atop the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, Mr. Trump would be echoing one of the most defining acts of his first term, his dismissal of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director as investigations of Trump associates began to heat up. That act led to the appointment of the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who spent nearly two years examining the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia....

ADDED:

Do you guys even understand how amazing this Kash appointment is?!

Let me remind you pic.twitter.com/nLo4aIFuDF

— Defender of the Republic 🇺🇸 (@realdefender45) December 1, 2024

AND:

🧵 of MSNBC Meltdowns tonight over Kash Patel 🤣

“The most dangerous nominee we’ve seen yet to our democracy” pic.twitter.com/QRhzfFUNOT

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 1, 2024

PLUS:

This is Kash Patel, Trump's nominee for FBI Director. The Deep State is f*cked. pic.twitter.com/cejy7hhioP

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 1, 2024

"I mean, like, what I think probably happened on January 6th where they withheld the police presence? If something happens, well, this will sink Trump forever."

"I mean, Pelosi, her people knew about this. They knew about possible plans to breach the Capitol. And according to J. Michael Waller, there was not one law enforcement officer present on the west side of the Capitol. How can that possibly be? But of course, the Senate Committee, they didn't investigate that. The House January 6th committee obviously didn't investigate that. I mean, those were also just whitewashes, committees designed to not get to the truth, but to cover up what probably happened. Okay. To get Trump. So I completely understand the suspicion that's out there. It's legitimate suspicion, and that's why this has to be fully investigated. I'm not going to rest until we uncover things. "

Said Senator Ron Johnson (text and audio at Real Clear Politics), asked about the assassination attempt.

"And let's face it, I uncovered an awful lot. I know firsthand how corrupt the FBI's investigation was. I've been a target of their corruption - the recipient of unsolicited briefings where they talked about being a target of Russian disinformation to try and obviously sabotage the revelation of the Hunter Biden laptop. But it kind of worked because we didn't take possession that when it was first offered to us. We went to the FBI to find out what they knew about it. They wouldn't tell us for weeks until the computer shop guy turned it over to Rudy Giuliani's attorney. The rest is history. So, no, these guys know what they're doing. They pre-sabotaged the Hunter Biden laptop. They completely, it was a complete corruption of the Russian collusion hoax. And by the way, has the Washington Post, have these guys given back the Pulitzer Prizes they earned or won for a complete false story, the narrative they promoted that put America in political turmoil, that it's still present to this day. I mean, where's the mea culpas in the media? You'll never get it. Because they're active advocates for the left themselves. That's the problem. Trump is not up against Kamala Harris. He's up against the leftist media."

"You might think journalists would want to get to the bottom of how they were duped so that they could repair the reputational damage to themselves and their industry. Apparently not."

Writes Marc A. Thiessen in "The Durham report is a damning indictment of the FBI — and the media" (WaPo).

It was the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee that funded the Steele dossier, which relied on a Russian with suspected ties to Russian intelligence. The FBI then included the dossier as part of the materials it used to investigate Trump, paralyzing our country, undermining a newly elected president for two years while costing tens of millions of dollars — all over what ended up being a conspiracy theory.

ADDED: Let me carp about copy editing. This sentence — which I put in the post headline — is miswritten: "You might think journalists would want to get to the bottom of how they were duped so that they could repair the reputational damage to themselves and their industry." The phrase "they were duped so that they could repair" needs rewriting, because journalists were not duped so they could repair their reputation. They should "want to... repair the reputational damage." You might think columnists would want to see these double meanings and eliminate them. Apparently not.

My spellcheck is questioning the word "reputational." It is a real word, but it's an ugly and unnecessary word. Why write "reputational damage" when you could write "damaged reputation"? "Damaged reputation" looks more natural, and it's more accurate, because the thing to be repaired is the reputation, not the damage. You could leave out "damage[d]" altogether. It's redundant. You can't repair what's not damaged.

"The FBI lacked 'any actual evidence of collusion' between the Trump campaign and Russia when it violated its standards and jumped over several steps..."

"... to initiate a full investigation, including probes into four members of the Trump campaign. The pretext for the probe -- a random conversation between unpaid Trump adviser George Papadopoulos and an Australian diplomat -- was so flimsy that FBI agents complained it was 'thin' and British intelligence was incredulous. The FBI opened the probe without doing interviews, using any 'standard analytical tools,' or conducting intelligence reviews -- which would have shown that not a single U.S. agency had evidence of collusion...."

From "Why the Durham Report Matters/It is a damning account of the corruption of the FBI and its accomplices" by The Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal.

"John H. Durham... accused the F.B.I. of having 'discounted or willfully ignored material information' that countered the narrative of collusion between Donald J. Trump and Russia..."

"... in a final report made public on Monday. Mr. Durham’s 306-page report revealed little substantial new information about the inquiry, known as Crossfire Hurricane, and it failed to produce the kinds of blockbuster revelations accusing the bureau of politically motivated misconduct that former President Donald J. Trump and his allies suggested Mr. Durham would uncover. Instead, the report — released without substantive comment or any redactions by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland — largely recounted previously exposed flaws in the inquiry, while concluding that the F.B.I. suffered from confirmation bias and a 'lack of analytical rigor' as it pursued leads about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia. 'An objective and honest assessment of these strands of information should have caused the F.B.I. to question not only the predication for Crossfire Hurricane, but also to reflect on whether the F.B.I. was being manipulated for political or other purposes,' he wrote. 'Unfortunately, it did not.'"

From "Durham Finds Fault With F.B.I. Over Russia Inquiry/The special counsel’s final report nevertheless did not produce blockbuster revelations of politically motivated misconduct, as Donald J. Trump and his allies had suggested it would" (NYT).

"Those 51 intel agents that signed a letter that said the Hunter Biden information was all wrong, was Russia collusion, many of them have a security clearance."

"We’re going to bring them before a committee. I’m going to have them have a hearing​,​ bring them and subpoena them before a committee. Why did they sign it? Why did they lie to the American public?... Why did you use the reputation that America was able to give to you … but use it for a political purpose and lie to the American public?"

Said Kevin McCarthy, the likely Speaker of the House, come January, quoted in the NY Post.

"Now Mr. Durham appears to be winding down his three-year inquiry without anything close to the results Mr. Trump was seeking."

"The grand jury that Mr. Durham has recently used to hear evidence has expired, and while he could convene another, there are currently no plans to do so, three people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Durham and his team are working to complete a final report by the end of the year, they said, and one of the lead prosecutors on his team is leaving for a job with a prominent law firm. Over the course of his inquiry, Mr. Durham has developed cases against two people accused of lying to the F.B.I. in relation to outside efforts to investigate purported Trump-Russia ties, but he has not charged any conspiracy or put any high-level officials on trial. The recent developments suggest that the chances of any more indictments are remote...."

The NYT reports.

"Ex-Clinton campaign lawyer Sussmann not guilty in Trump-Russia trial."

 The NY Post reports. 

The verdict came midway through the second day of deliberations following a two-week-long trial on a single count of making false statements to a federal agent. Prosecutors unsuccessfully sought to prove that Sussmann deliberately lied to then-FBI general counsel James Baker by claiming not to be acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign and an Internet executive when the two met in 2016.

I haven't used my "Hillary's in trouble" tag in a while.

...Of course, Clinton has pushed for state and corporate censorship while demanding a “global reckoning” with those who spread disinformation. Yet, while her campaign lawyer could be convicted, the Clintons have long avoided any personal "reckoning" in a long line of scandals.

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 21, 2022

"Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign paid an internet company to 'infiltrate' servers at Trump Tower and the White House in order to link Donald Trump to Russia, a bombshell new legal filing alleges...."

"Special Counsel John Durham filed a motion related to potential conflicts of interests in connection with the case of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who is charged with lying to the feds.... Sussmann allegedly told the FBI he was not working on behalf of Clinton when he presented the agency with documents that supposedly linked the Trump Organization to a Kremlin-tied bank two months before the election.... Durham’s motion reportedly alleged Sussmann 'had assembled and conveyed the allegations to the FBI on behalf of at least two specific clients, including a technology executive (Tech Executive 1) at a U.S.-based internet company (Internet Company 1) and the Clinton campaign.' Records showed he 'repeatedly billed the Clinton Campaign for his work on the Russian Bank-1 allegations,' which involved an investigative firm, a tech executive, cyber researchers and numerous employees at internet companies, the motion reportedly stated."

The NY Post reports.

ADDED:

Another one for the “Trump was right” jar.

pic.twitter.com/N0y4Skk2GK

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) February 13, 2022

"By appointing Durham as a Special Counsel, Barr contradicted news reports before the election that Durham was frustrated and found nothing of significance...."

"Under the Justice Department regulations, Barr had to find (and Durham apparently agreed) that there is need for additional criminal investigation and '[t]hat investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney's Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances.' He must also find the appointment in the public interest.... Presumably, the conflict is not in the current administration since it would have required an earlier appointment. The conflict would seem to be found in the upcoming Biden administration...The list of the names of people falling within that mandate is a who’s who of Washington from Hillary Clinton to James Comey to . . . yes . . . Joe Biden.... From a political perspective, the move is so elegantly lethal that it would make Machiavelli green with envy.... Durham['s] replacement or the termination of his investigation would be viewed as an obstructive act. Indeed, when Trump even suggested such a course of action, he was accused of obstruction by a host of Democratic politicians and legal experts.... Moreover, with the Mueller report, virtually every Democratic leader demanded that the report be released with no or few redactions. The Trump administration waived most executive privileges and released most of the report.... The Durham appointment will now force Democrats to answer why they do not support the same public release of the report so that voters can 'draw our own conclusions.'"

Writes Jonathan Turley in "Making John Durham a special counsel will cause problems for Biden/Now Democrats' Trump administration arguments will come back to haunt them" (USA Today).

"Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Tuesday declassified notes of former CIA Director John Brennan showing that he briefed former President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s alleged 'plan'..."

"... to tie then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia as 'a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.' My interest in this story is not simply the serious underlying allegation but the lack of coverage by major networks or media outlets.... [T]he responses from Clinton allies have not addressed the substance of the document before simply dismissed any inquiries.... If these notes have been fabricated or misrepresented, it would show a breathtaking effort to lie to the voters before the election. If these notes are genuine, it would indicate that the FBI was aware of an effort by the Democratic presidential candidate to tag Trump with a Russian collusion scandal. We know that Clinton’s campaign funded the Steele dossier and that Steele shopped the dossier with the media to try to generate coverage to influence the election.... It seems that journalism is suspended until the election when reporters might be allowed a modicum of curiosity into such stories."

Writes Jonathan Turley. 

"A New York Times reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for his role perpetrating the Russia collusion hoax was tasked with framing the news that a former top FBI lawyer was to plead guilty..."

"... to deliberately fabricating evidence against a Donald Trump campaign affiliate targeted in the Russia probe. The resulting article is a case study in how to write propaganda. Adam Goldman broke, and cushioned, the news that former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was to plead guilty to fabricating evidence in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application to spy on Trump campaign affiliate Carter Page. His job was to present the news as something other than an indictment of the FBI’s handling of the Russia collusion hoax, to signal to other media that they should move on from the story as quickly as possible, and to hide his own newspaper’s multi-year participation in the Russia collusion hoax.... The 434-page Horowitz report identified major abuses by the FBI that violated Page’s civil liberties....  Here’s how Goldman puts it: 'Republicans have seized on a narrow aspect of the inquiry — the investigation into Mr. Page — in a long-running quest to undermine it.'... FISA abuse was never a 'narrow aspect' of the inquiry and everyone should have 'seized' on it because lying to a FISA court and violating an American’s civil liberties are evil."

Writes Mollie Ziegler Hemingway at The Federalist. Much more at the link.

"[Igor] Danchenko’s identity is noteworthy because it further calls into question the credibility of the [Steele] dossier."

"By turning to Mr. Danchenko as his primary source to gather possible dirt on Mr. Trump involving Russia, Mr. Steele was relying not on someone with a history of working with Russian intelligence operatives or bringing to light their covert activities but instead a researcher focused on analyzing business and political risks in Russia.... Born in Ukraine, Mr. Danchenko, 42, [a resident of the United States] is a Russian-trained lawyer who earned degrees at the University of Louisville and Georgetown University.... He was a senior research analyst from 2005 to 2010 at the Brookings Institution....

"Roger Stone is a victim of the Russia Hoax that the Left and its allies in the media perpetuated for years in an attempt to undermine the Trump Presidency."

So reads the official White House statement about the commutation of the Stone sentence. I know — from my very slight dabbling in radio and TV news last night and this morning — that this issue is getting talked to death. It's the outrage of the day, blotting out whatever was the outrage of the day before, and soon to be blotted out by the next outrage. So I don't think my time is well used listening to any of that. If I know they're talking, I already know what they are saying — more or less. But I do think it's worth looking at the details of what the White House put in an official statement in this case. Most official statements are in bland officialese, though it can be interesting to try to read between the lines or just to translate it into plain English.

But this official statement is written in the style of Trump's rally rhetoric. Let's continue (the boldface is mine):

"President Trump commuted the sentence of his longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. on seven felony crimes on Friday..."

"... according to the White House, using the power of his office to help a former campaign adviser days before Mr. Stone was to report to a federal prison to serve a 40-month term. Mr. Stone, 67, a longtime Republican operative convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation into Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, has been openly lobbying for clemency, maintaining that he could die in prison and emphasizing that he had stayed loyal to the president rather than help investigators. 'He knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him,' Mr. Stone told the journalist Howard Fineman on Friday before the announcement. 'It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn’t.' Mr. Trump has long argued that Mr. Stone was persecuted and lashed out at the prosecutors, the judge and even the jury forewoman in his case. The real villains, he argued, were former President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., whom he has falsely accused of spying on his campaign, as well as the people who investigated his associates, including the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey."

The NYT reports.

About those newly declassified Flynn transcripts...

At The Federalist, from Sean Davis: "Declassified Flynn Transcripts Contradict Key Mueller Claims Against Flynn/Newly released declassified transcripts of call transcripts and summaries between Flynn and Kislyak contradict key claims made against Flynn by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller." ("Although Obama officials claimed via leaks to the press that Flynn, a decorated combat veteran and retired three-star Army general, was illegally operating as a secret Russian agent, the transcripts show that Flynn’s primary focus throughout his conversations with Kislyak was ensuring that Russia and the U.S. could work together to defeat Islamist terrorist [sic] and the growing influence of ISIS throughout the Middle East. Obama officials never explained how working with international partners to defeat ISIS constituted a federal crime.")

At NY Magazine, from Jonathan Chait: "New Transcript Shows Trump Adviser Michael Flynn Colluding With Russia in 2016." ("Flynn’s discussions with Kislyak were not part of a criminal conspiracy. They were, however, part of a secret channel of communications, the premise of which was that the two parties had a secret common interest against the United States government. One word that might describe this relationship would be 'collusion.'")

At the NYT, from Julian E. Barnes, Adam Goldman and Nicholas Fandos: "Flynn Discussed Sanctions at Length With Russian Diplomat, Transcripts Show/The former national security adviser now says he does not remember those discussions as he fights a criminal charge he had previously pleaded guilty to" ("Critics of the Trump administration seized on the transcripts’ discussions as evidence that Mr. Flynn was undermining existing Obama administration foreign policy. They argued that the Constitution allows for only one president at a time and that if an incoming administration begins foreign policy negotiations before taking office, it confuses the issue of who holds power.... Conservatives have said that Mr. Flynn did nothing wrong and that it was in the public interest for him to represent the views of the incoming administration.")

"Republicans have seized on the document as potential evidence that the outgoing president had ordered the FBI to spy on the new administration..."

"... as Trump has alleged. And they have raised questions about the 'unusual' nature of Rice memorializing the conversation in an email to herself, suggesting that in warning Comey to proceed 'by the book,' Obama was implying that top law enforcement officials had done the opposite. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Rice said it shows the Obama administration handled the Flynn situation appropriately. The email, most of which was already declassified, describes a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting that followed up on an intelligence briefing about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Attendees included then-President Barack Obama; Comey; Sally Yates, who was the acting attorney general; Vice President Joe Biden; and Rice, who was Flynn's predecessor in the job. The email, which memorialized the meeting two weeks after it happened, said Obama wanted to be sure 'every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities "by the book."' 'The president stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective,' the email continued. 'He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.'"

From "Trump administration declassifies full Susan Rice email sent on Inauguration Day/The email describes a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting about Michael Flynn and Russian interference in the 2016 election" (Politico).

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