While billionaire Steve Hilton suggests he's looking out for the little guy when calling for dismantling the FBI, make no mistake: He knows that would result in all kinds of privatization that would benefit the wealthy.
Host Hilton opened his all-Trumper panel on The Next Revolution last night with an attack on the FBI couched as a desire for good government:
HILTON: I’m not saying that firing [FBI Director Christopher Wray] is the right move now politically, we could probably do without the drama. But on policy grounds, it’s obvious that Christopher Wray has to go.
But that’s just the first step. After all this, I don’t think there’s any hope of restoring confidence in the FBI at all. It’s become too big, too powerful, too institutionally immune from accountability. So the real change we need is not just to fire the director of the FBI but to abolish the FBI itself. Send as many of its powers and functions as possible to state and local law enforcement. Create a new and drastically slimmed down interstate crime-fighting agency and another, separate agency for international crime. I can hear already the objections of the Washington insiders, crime respects no border, you need coordination, centralization. Absolute rubbish.
The demand for more power, more people for more money is the cry of the bureaucrats through the ages. Crime goes up, they want more resources; crime goes down, they want more resources. They demand more resources, more people, more power every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This is how we’ve ended up with our grotesque, bloated, corrupt centralized and centralizing administrative state. We need to take an axe to it and dismantling the FBI would be a great place to start.
Let’s be clear about what billionaire “populist” Hilton is up to here. State and local law enforcement often do not have the resources to duplicate the FBI’s training, forensic and other capabilities. Nor do they have the ability to fight terrorism the way the FBI does. What will happen if the bureau is abolished? State and local governments will have to contract out those capabilities. “Populist” Hilton is smart enough to know that underneath his "standing up for the little guy" schtick, he’s actually promoting a get-richer-quick scheme for fat cats.
Fortunately, even Hilton's far-right panel would not endorse Hilton’s plan.
C-List Ann Coulter aka Tomi Lahren began to applaud after Hilton finished but Red State Trumper Kira Davis pre-empted her. Davis laughed and said, “I don’t know, Steve. It seems a little drastic.” Davis let viewers know whose side she's on, though, as she continued: “I do appreciate the boldness of that proposal and I get what you’re saying and I kind of agree with you on most levels in that respect.” And, of course, she said the FBI “needs to be cleaned out.”
Translation: Trump/GOP operatives only wanted at the FBI. Though next time we have a Democratic president, I can guarantee you that this same group of Trump toadies will be screaming for checks and balances in the FBI and everywhere else in government.
Even Trump bootlicker Matt Gaetz didn’t want to go with Hilton. “There is good work being done by the FBI all over the world. In my district right now, patriotic FBI agents are trying to solve this terrorist attack where Saudi students killed and harmed my constituents. And I’m grateful for that work that’s being done on the front line.” Gaetz being Gaetz, he went on to say, “I don’t think it’s too much for us to ask the FBI to focus on terrorists, not political opponents.”
In fact, the Department of Justice’s inspector general just found that the FBI did not act out of bias, contrary to right-wing attacks. But “populist” Hilton let the lie go unchallenged to his viewers.
Even Lahren didn’t go along. She claimed there’s “a swamp within the FBI” but added, “As conservatives, I think we always want to go along with law enforcement.” She agreed with Gaetz “There are a lot of agents out there doing great work, trying to protect the American people, trying to protect our democracy. It’s just sad that some have been so inflicted with Trump-derangement syndrome and trying to meddle and trying to shape things because they don’t believe in the power of the American voter.”
Later, they all had a good laugh over Kellyanne Conway saying, “Dossier is just a fancy French term for a ‘load of crap.’”
Once again, phony-populist Hilton didn’t tell his viewers that much of the so-called Steele dossier has been proven correct. Nor did Hilton point out it was neither the basis for the “Crossfire Hurricane” Russia investigation nor the surveillance of Carter Page.
Watch Hilton go too far for the Trump lickspittles below, from the December 15, 2019 The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton.
(H/T Eyes on Fox)
No complaints from Trump and his sycophants over the FBI going after Hillary Clinton. No, nothing but chest thumping outrage and laughter at chants of “lock her up”.
As Ellen points out, the “deep state” right-wing hysteria is gaming the system. Don’t trust a judge, bureaucrat, military member or – heck – human being who’s not a dyed in the wool, hardcore right-wing ideologue willing to go to the mat for the Republican Party.
I heard some disturbing statistics about the State Department. A frightening percentage of careerists have quit or been forced out by Trump/Pompeo/Tillerson. The State Department is seeing historically low recruiting classes. This used to be one of the most prestigious agencies to work for and competition was crazy fierce to get a job there (they have the hardest civil service exam by far). No longer.
Trump is the Republican government-hating (except the military) wet dream of tearing the whole thing down. We’ve seen a variation of this theme in various GOP government shutdown efforts where they claim nobody will notice because the government doesn’t do anything. Only the Hiltons of the MAGA world are looking for a more permanent experiment in Social Darwinism, isolationism and a states rights race to the bottom.