The narrative the resistance needs to sell in the Ukraine saga is straightforward: A sitting president abused his foreign policy powers to advance his personal political interests. Despite three years of constant media attention to the Mueller report and the now-debunked theory that President Trump colluded with Russia in 2016, support for impeachment remained anemic. The Ukraine saga offers Trump’s detractors a new opportunity in the only court that matters for impeachment: that of public opinion.
Yet somehow, the Left just can’t let go of its debunked Russia conspiracy theory. And to its detriment, rather than focusing all its fire at Trump’s real corruption, or at his smearing of his appointees who tried to keep him from it, it is instead heralding the most corrupt smear merchants of the Russia saga.
In a wordy screed posted late on Sunday, Lisa Page — the FBI lawyer infamous for trading anti-Trump text messages with her married lover FBI agent Peter Strzok — spoke at length about a lot of things that no one cares about. Writer Molly Jong-Fast pays little heed to the substance of Republican or Justice Department concerns about Page’s flagrant unprofessionalism and how it threatened the Mueller probe. She pays a lot of attention to Page luxuriating in her own manufactured victimhood.
“She is convinced that she’s followed the rules,” Jong-Fast wrote of Page’s Strzok texts. “She is, after all, a lawyer and knows that she is a restricted employee under the Hatch Act and can’t engage in partisan political activity.”
Page may think that her exchange with Strzok, which included the notion that they would “stop” Trump’s election, was not “too political.” The inspector general thinks differently.
“We found that the conduct of these five FBI employees brought discredit to themselves, sowed doubt about the FBI’s handling of the Midyear investigation, and impacted the reputation of the FBI,” the inspector general wrote in 2018 of Page and pals. “Moreover, the damage caused by their actions extends far beyond the scope of the Midyear investigation and goes to the heart of the FBI’s reputation for neutral factfinding and political independence. We were deeply troubled by text messages exchanged between Strzok and Page that potentially indicated or created the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations.”
So naturally, Jong-Fast chooses to overlook the actual reason Page ever became a household name. In Jong-Fast’s telling, Page is just another public servant such as Fiona Hill, a Trump appointee of unimpeachable character, or Marie Yovanovitch, a consummate career diplomat who was undermined by a president. Think of Page as anything but what she really is — an unelected bureaucrat seeking, from behind the levers of power, to undermine a private citizen running for president. In other words, in a world filled with men and women of honor who have taken Trump to task, the Left is choosing to extol Page, someone whose actions destroyed public trust in her agency and helped create the modern mythos of the “deep state”
It almost makes sense. Trump’s 2016 chants of “lock her up” and apparent refusal to apologize or fess up to his adultery and abuse allegations seemed unprecedented for a politician, at least as a matter of public performance. But now Democrats are openly campaigning on prosecuting the president. Maybe, just maybe, their concerns about this were never sincere to begin with.
And if Katie Hill, a former congresswoman credibly accused of initiating an emotionally abusive romantic relationship with her subordinate, can become a Trump foil modeled after his own vices, then why can’t Page? The Left is doubling down on its effort to beat Trump to the bottom in a descent from decency.
It’s no wonder Joe Biden can effectively run on being a doddering old guy you can trust not to cheat on his wife or abuse his power. Many are fed up with Trump’s disregard for decency. But as the Left lionize Page and Hill, they provide no alternative.
Lisa Page is not your hero. If you think she is, then it’s not Trump’s destruction of decorum that you’re opposing.
