Griffin and Bolduc: Not a big fan
Not ready for prime time?
It doesn’t seem like it’s the best of all possible outcomes when a political candidate angling for an advantage with the Trumpy crowd gets called out by an actual newsperson (an endangered species) on Fox News.
But that is exactly what happened to one Don Bolduc, retired brigadier general, the guy who lost in the GOP Senate primary in ’20 to a guy from away with an odd name for a 65-year-old man and a name you will be forgiven for not remembering (Corky Messner, to save you a Google search).
Turns out that Fox News’ national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin had heard enough after listening to Corky’s victim wade into the war in Ukraine on a Fox show.
To sum up, DB — who soliloquized quite a bit on the show — said to help the Ukrainians “we need to get in there and we need to help them on the ground. We have columns of his troops lined up, ready to be interdicted. We need to give that kind of help to the Ukrainians, but we are just sitting back and we’re not doing anything, and we’re just saying everything is on the table.”
At another point, he said: “We have to get more stuff in there, and we have to get more combat help in there. We can do that.”
How? By “putting great technical help on the ground to organize them better, so they’re more effective.”
In other words, advisers. Vietnam anyone? So when JG appeared on the very same show a little later, the first words out of her mouth were:
“I have to respond to something your previous guest, Brigadier General Bolduc, said, because he really was way off the mark in terms of talking about what the U.S. could do on the ground.”
She went on to say that the U.S. and NATO don’t have troops on the ground in Ukraine right now due to concerns that the conflict with Russia could lead to nuclear war and/or World War III, particularly since Putin is putting his nuclear forces on high alert. She added: “The Ukrainians are very good fighters. They are a tough group of fighters. They do not need Americans to fight for them. That would cause this to spread.”
But the piéce de resistance: JG threw some real shade on the general by saying he “is not a student of history. He’s a politician. He ran for Senate in New Hampshire and failed. He’s not a military strategist, and to suggest that the U.S. would put indirect fire or special operations or CIA on the ground to give Putin any sort of excuse to broaden this conflict is extremely dangerous talk at a time like this.”
And then she dropped the mic on DB’s campaign. Since Corey Lewandowski, the ex-prez’s not-so-secret agent to recruit what CL thinks would be a more pleasing crop of candidates for the ex-prez, took the occasion to opine that DB’s remarks “disqualified him” to run for a U.S. Senate seat.
Now that really has to hurt when you’re hoping to get the GOP’s Trumpy crowd to vote for ya.
Navel-gazing time
What does it mean if a current or former New Hampshire official, elected or otherwise, admits they are or have been members of an organization that has not only talked about but attempted a violent insurrection against the USA?
You basically call upon Sergeant Schultz of “Hogan’s Heroes” to mutter, “I know nothing … nothing!” Thanks to excellent reporting by Todd Bookman and Casey McDermott of NHPR, Granite Staters found out th’other day that 297 of their fellow citizens are or were members of the Oath Keepers, including a sitting senator (Warren GOPer Bob Giuda), a former state senator and current lobbyist (Bob Clegg), a Rockingham County deputy sheriff (Craig Charest), and a part-time Barrington police officer who happens to be the former police chief of Strafford. Can you spot the common thread?
Keeper it to yourself.
BG: “I left that group years ago,” he said. “I wasn’t comfortable with the way the group was being run.”
CC: “It’s been so long, I don’t even remember. That was a long, long time ago.”
SY: “I think their motives were good, but then they started to go off the rails, I divorced myself from them.”
The NHPR piece didn’t contain a direct quote from BC, but did paraphrase him: He said a fellow lawmaker had signed him up and initially paid for his membership dues, but he never renewed.
The bottom line is that they do admit having belonged to and to various degrees regret membership in a farright, violent anti-government organization. (BTW, the claim that the Oath Keepers were somehow a different kind of organization at the beginning is a load of bull caca.)
And they apparently couldn’t have taken the time to vet the organization and its founder, Stewart Rhodes (now under indictment for seditious conspiracy), before joining in the first place?
MAKING THE ROUNDS
At some point, lawmakers are gonna have to fess up to the realization that they just don’t even like the idea of paying lip service to “local control,” since they’ve been voting against it consistently all session.
It’s fair to say that the Dem caucus in the NH House put its worst foot forward after Minority Leader Renny Cushing announced he would need to take a medical leave of absence to continue his battle against prostate cancer.
There sure is an outcry among certain GOPers against the very thought of the guv appointing Bedford attorney (and Dem) Brian Shaughnessy — who’s been the fall guy for the town’s screwed-up 2020 elections — to be a Circuit Court judge.
The clock sure is ticking as Corey Lewandowski continues his quest to find the perfect GOP Senate and guv candidates.
He said, he said: Speaker Sherm found himself in a bit of a media-spin situation th’other day after he claimed he was “profiled” when stopped while riding his motorcycle through Rye several years ago. The Rye police chief says, um, er, no — couldn’t have happened and there’s really no record of such a stop.
