https://twitter.com/HoarseWisperer/status/950897678640132096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FHoarseWisperer%2Fstatus%2F950897678640132096
This really is Stupid Watergate.
Also fuck the GOP for covering for this asshole.
I'd say my biggest takeaways after trudging through that and sleeping on it is:
1.) Republicans are going to try and run with some of the Bill Browder stuff because while as a whole I think the testimony actually comes out better than I expected for Simpson, you can(and I guarantee the right wing will) take it out of context and use the public's rather tenuous understanding, like they did with Uranium One, to obfuscate and rile up the base.
2.) If you are a journalism major, make sure one of your stops is in the
strategic research and intelligence field to pay back that student loan.
2.) While I wouldn't go so far as to call the Dossier now credible, getting a greater sense of GPS, Steele, the timeline of events, and the background to the Dossier's genesis and path to the FBI changes my calculus on the document a good bit. Steele basically was sub-contracted to broadly see what he can find about Trump within Russia after they hit a wall using publicly available information, primarily emphasized around business concerns. Steele goes in, starts putting his ear to the ground and starts hearing all this crazy shit from people inside the Kremlin that are still kind of treating Trump like this fringe piece of entertainment, so there is an openness to just divulging shit.
And my takeaway, whether you want to trust Steele's sources or not, Steele clearly did find them credible. If this was just a guy trying to make a quick buck by compiling gossip that as a former MI6 agent he doesn't believe in, then I ask myself why, unprovoked, does he end up on the phone with Simpson deeply concerned, feeling he needs to reach out to the FBI? When Simpson says I'm not sure, he comes back insistent and convinced its his duty to report it. That testimony explains why Republicans, who wanted to keep this testimony confidential, started the poisoning of the well with charges of Steele seeking that rich FBI money, but under even the basic application of reason and reading of this testimony that falls apart.