(January 4, 2017)

So Trump is gunning for the CIA and other agencies for disagreeing with him? You do that and pissed off and/or worried agents begin having secret meetings with reporters…all off the record, of course. The last prez who did this was Nixon, though he never went after the institutions themselves. He just distrusted them. Too politicized, he thought, too full of JFK people. Eventually they turned on him. Deep Throat meeting Woodward in a parking garage. Now you can expect dozens of Deep Throats, revealing all of Trump’s dirty underwear. His sleazy dealings with the Russian mob, his creepy connections with Russian intelligence, and that is just for starters. Follow the money you keep hearing people say. That’s what Deep Throat said about the Nixon White House. And as with Woodward and Bernstein, the patron saints of the Washington press corps, there are Pulitzers to be had, and hundreds of reporters are already digging. Trumps hates the press, as Nixon did, and they will return the feeling, just as they did with Nixon. Now the entire “intelligence community”, as they call it, and the whole of the Fourth Estate (except Sean Hannity) are looking for blood. Trump will bleed from a thousand cuts. Once someone gets ahold of Trump’s tax returns, the game is over. They are the Holy Grail.

Hal Holbrook tattling on Nixon. Be nice to your Intelligence Community.