Washington • Sebastian Gorka was right when he told Fox News that the Nunes memo would be 100 times bigger than the offenses that kicked off the American Revolution.
When I saw that the memo from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes’ office had been released, I could not believe my eyes. I sat bolt upright in my long nightshirt and grabbed my flintlock musket. I ran to the window and threw up the sash (no, hang on, that is a different poem), hopped on my steed and went galloping off to alert my brethren.
King George had done certain things, of course, that were not to be borne, but next to this memo, I was sure, they paled.
“AWAKE, AWAKE!” I cried, clanging into Medford Square, “UP AND TO ARMS!”
“Why?” demanded the honest townsfolk.
“Remember how upset we were when King George plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns and destroyed the lives of our people?” I demanded to know. “Well, I have the Nunes memo, and compared with its contents, I can assure you, that was child’s play!”
“What does the memo say?” a townsman inquired.
“SOMETHING ABOUT CARTER PAGE!” I shouted, spurring my horse. “SOMETHING THE DEMOCRATS DID NOT WISH TO BE SEEN! On, on to Lexington!” I reined in my steed beneath the gilded weathercock. A small crowd had followed me from one town to the next with weapons in hand, but they as yet lacked direction.
“Up!” I shouted. “Up and arise, for when King George III was ‘at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny,’ he could not have hoped to compare to the information that I have here on six pieces of paper printed out from the Washington Examiner’s website!”
By the time I made it to Concord, the throng had doubled in size. “Grab your tea!” I shouted. “GRAB YOUR HORNS OF POWDER, GRAB YOUR MINUTEMEN, AND MEET ME IN THE HARBOR! THERE IS NO TIME TO WASTE!” I was somewhat mixing my metaphors, but this was to be expected in my excitement. “I have in my hand a memo that proves everything! All our worst fears are corroborated right here on this page!”
It was at this point that I got my horse under control and managed to read the memo.
“Well?” the townsfolk asked.
The memo did not say what I had expected it might. But that was probably because I did not understand the real meanings of the words involved. As is always the case with sinister multitiered conspiracies of this kind, a simple phrase such as “cheese pizza” means anything BUT cheese pizza. If properly decoded, the memo would surely say that the FBI had engaged in a devious plot to bring down a president using dodgy dossiers, not that it had been probing the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia since May 2016, when George Papadopoulos suggested that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton.
I read the whole thing aloud.
“The Strzok/Lisa Page texts also reflect extensive discussions about the investigation, orchestrating leaks to the media, and include a meeting with Deputy Director McCabe to discuss an ‘insurance’ policy against President Trump’s election,” I concluded. The throng stared at me, befuddled. Their flintlocks drooped.
“It all adds up!” I tried. “The dossier! The memo! The texts! The insurance plan!” I hoped no one would notice that I was just saying a series of debunked nouns.
“You’re just saying a series of debunked nouns,” a humble silversmith said, “as if they prove something when you just line enough of them up in a row.”
“If this is so harmless, then why didn’t the Democrats want it to be released?” I asked. I had them there.
“OK,” a townswoman said, “but even if we accept the premise that the FBI should not have used information from the Steele dossier as grounds to surveil Carter Page, a man whom the Trump campaign has repeatedly denied knowing, how is this grounds for ending the Mueller investigation?”
“Ah,” I said, “but what about the memo?”
“You just read us the memo,” the silversmith said. “We were here for it. You can’t just say ‘what about the memo?’”
“I guess I don’t see what the fuss is about,” added a blunderbuss repairman. “In fact, it sort of seems like it undercuts the argument that this was all politically motivated?”
A long silence followed. “But,” I said.
The crowd leaned in, as women have been instructed to do in the workplace.
“BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MEMO?”
I departed Concord by another way.
Alexandra Petri | The Washington Post
Alexandra Petri writes the ComPost blog, offering a lighter take on the news and opinions of the day. She is the author of “A Field Guide to Awkward Silences.” Follow her on Twitter, @petridishes.