Interviewer Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes supplied the ignorance. He appears to have no more knowledge of what transpired during the past four years than does, say, a Whoopi Goldberg or a Kathy Griffin.

Barack Obama supplied the scare. His solution to make the right half of America as ignorant as the left would do Trotsky proud.

Pelley’s ignorance flared throughout the embarrassingly sycophantic interview, but it reached something of a crescendo with his and Obama’s elaborate discussion on the etiquette of presidential transitions.

While images played of the Obamas welcoming the Trumps to the White House, Obama blathered on about the “set of traditions” that presidents have always followed of instructing various agencies “to cooperate” with the incoming administration. The outgoing president, Obama pontificated, “owes the new president a chance to do their best.”

Pelley nodded approvingly, perhaps even unaware of what was going on behind the scenes while the always gracious Obama was greeting the brutish Donald Trump. On the very day at the very moment Trump was being inaugurated, National Security Advisor Rice sent to “self” a peculiar email. It read:

President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities “by the book.” The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.

Rice was trying to absolve Obama of signing off on the coup then underway to sabotage Trump’s presidency on the back of the Russia collusion hoax. Unfortunately for Obama, Rice proved to be just as clumsy and obvious as she was on the fateful Sunday after the terrorist assault on the Benghazi consulate when she served up the same “the video caused it” lie on five morning TV news shows.

Senators Charles Grassley and Lindsey Graham saw right through Rice’s smokescreen. “Despite your claim that President Obama repeatedly told Mr. Comey to proceed ‘by the book,’” the good senators responded to Rice upon discovering the email, “substantial questions have arisen about whether officials at the FBI, as well as at the Justice Department and the State Department, actually did proceed ‘by the book.’”

There is no “book” that justifies what the FBI’s Comey and pals did in the weeks immediately following this meeting while Obama was still president. The next day, January 6, 2017, the conspirators released the declassified version of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).

Commissioned a month earlier by Obama, the ICA was John Brennan’s way of welcoming the president-elect to Washington. Titled “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections,” the report concluded that Putin “ordered” an influence campaign, the goal of which was “to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.”

Many of the report’s assertions were made with evidence no more convincing than that which tied Putin to Trump, including some in bold face such as “Putin Ordered Campaign To Influence US Election” or the  “Influence Effort Was Boldest Yet in the US.” Lacking human intelligence in the Kremlin, the report writers had no idea what Putin did or did not order.

Neither did the media. Yet for the next three years they pounded this preposterous Hillary Clinton-DNC funded disinformation campaign as though it were real news. Watching Pelley, I am not sure he knows it wasn’t.  

Obama offered a solution to make sure all Americans remain as ignorant as the people like Pelly who produce the news. “We will have to work with media and tech companies to inform the public better and to bolster standards to separate truth from fiction.”

The timing of the 60 Minutes interview was felicitous. The day before I received a text from my friend Sundance at the influential Conservative Treehouse, saying, “Hi. We always knew there was a risk of being targeted if the left were successful. Yesterday I was notified that they [Word Press] are shutting down my website on December 2 due to ‘content.’”

“There is a sense that literally anything goes to get power,” said Obama of Trump. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a laugh line.

Jack Cashill’s new book, Unmasking Obama: The Fight to Tell the True Story of a Failed Presidency, is widely available. See also www.cashill.com.

Image: Crown