Colin Powell lies down with snakes and wonders why he got bit

A year ago Colin Powell stated that he is still a Republican and was remaining a Republican only to annoy conservatives:

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell joked that he identifies as a Republican to annoy the GOP’s right-wing.

“Yes, I’m still a Republican,” he said about his party affiliation during the Washington Ideas Forum in Washington, D.C., according to the Daily Mail.

“I want to continue to be a Republican because it annoys them,” Powell quipped to host Walter Isaacson.

For a guy who is supposed to be fairly intelligent Powell is mentally lax in conflating legal and illegal immigration:

“I think most Republicans understand that we need immigration, we are an immigrant nation [and that] it is in our best interest to do it,” he said.

“But there are pockets of intolerance within the Republican Party [and] the Republican Party had better figure out how to defeat that.”

But then Powell decided that he wanted to lay down with the snakes. He’s hinted at endorsing hillary clinton and has made disparaging remarks about Donald Trump. Now those snakes are biting him. Powell was a great help to hillary in teaching her how to circumvent the rules about secure emails:

Powell’s response warns Clinton’s about some of the pitfalls of using email, but also appears to indicate that he defied instructions from security experts not to use such devices in State’s offices designated to handle classified information and conversations.

“DS [diplomatic security] would not allow them into the secure spaces, especially up your way,” Powell wrote. “When I asked why not they gave me all kinds of nonsense about how they gave out signals and could be read by spies, etc….I had numerous meetings with them. We even opened one up for them to try to explain to me why it was more dangerous than say, a remote control for one of the many tvs in the suite. Or something embedded in my shoe heel. They never satisfied me and NSA/CIA wouldn’t back off. So, we just went about our business and stopped asking.”

He was helping her avoid those nasty FOIA thingies:

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell told Hillary Clinton at the start of her tenure at the State Department that he used a personal computer to conduct government business and took steps to ensure his digital correspondence wasn’t “going through the State Department servers.”

An email exchange released by House Democrats on Wednesday night reveals new details of Mr. Powell’s candid advice to his successor for avoiding State Department computer systems and the scrutiny they bring due to federal records preservation and disclosure laws.

As she found the walls closing in on her, Clinton was quick to point to Powell as her source of inspiration for her actions:

Pressed by the F.B.I. about her email practices at the State Department,Hillary Clinton told investigators that former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had advised her to use a personal email account.

The account is included in the notes the Federal Bureau of Investigation handed over to Congress on Tuesday, relaying in detail the three-and-a-half-hour interview with Mrs. Clinton in early July that led to the decision by James B. Comey, the bureau’s director, not to pursue criminal charges against her.

Separately, in a 2009 email exchange that also emerged during the F.B.I. questioning, Mrs. Clinton, who had already decided to use private email,asked Mr. Powell about his email practices when he was the nation’s top diplomat under George W. Bush, according to a person with direct knowledge of Mr. Powell’s appearance in the documents, who would not speak for attribution.

Powell is the author of a book entitled “It Worked for Me”

Clinton told the FBI that Powell told her to use private email. Powell claimed to have no memory of the conversation (No memory? Where have I heard that before?). Then Powell began to complain that Clinton was trying to pin the use of a private server on him. Now even more entertaining emails have been disclosed. Seems that Powell tried to prevent clinton from scapegoating him:

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell attempted to discourage Hillary Clinton and her team from using him as a scapegoat for her private email server problems, according to newly leaked emails from Powell’s Gmail account.

“Sad thing,” Powell wrote to one confidant, “HRC could have killed this two years ago by merely telling everyone honestly what she had done and not tie me to it.”

“I told her staff three times not to try that gambit. I had to throw a mini tantrum at a Hampton’s party to get their attention. She keeps tripping into these ‘character’ minefields,” Powell lamented. He noted that he had tried to settle the matter by meeting with Clinton aide Cheryl Mills in August.

Then Powell finally realizes that things are really FUBAR’ed in a communication with a democrat donor:

“They are going to dick up the legitimate and necessary use of emails with friggin record rules. I saw email more like a telephone than a cable machine … I had a secure State.gov machine.”

And he makes some observations:

“Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris,” Powell added. “I told you about the gig I lost at a university because she so overcharged them they came under heat and couldn’t [pay] any fees for awhile. I should send her a bill.”

And they both noted that hillary was not well:

“On HD tv she doesn’t look good,” Powell wrote in one message. “She is working herself to death … She will turn 70 her first year in office.”

Leeds replied twelve minutes later. “Sheldon Whitehouse, who is a huge Clinton supporter said they were both giving speeches at the same event a few months back and she could barely climb the podium steps,” Leeds wrote, referencing Rhode Island’s junior senator.

I hope Powell is enjoying his new left wing celebrity. He’s earned it and along the way he’s soiled his reputation. Meanwhile we’ll hope that Powell officially becomes a democrat.

Just to annoy him.

DrJohn

DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.

DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.

Except for liberals being foolish.