Those crazy nuts claiming an organized effort to undermine the administration keep finding evidence in the press.

Lisa Page has surfaced and in a lengthy Daily Beast article more fit for People Magazine the former FBI operative is setting the record straight. However what many in Washington consider to be ‘’straight’’ is something most of us could use to open a wine bottle. There is so much about Page’s reemergence that requires questioning, as the narrative being sold in this coming-back-out party is blatant in its desperate attempt at spin control.

Page insists she was inspired to come forward now as a result of offensive comments made by President Trump in reference to her. At a rally back in October, he paraphrased the transcripts of the phone messages between Page and her lover at The Bureau, Peter Strzok, to the assembled audience. Page declares what Trump did was use ”a demeaning fake orgasm’’ when he invoked her name, something that ”was really the straw that broke the camel’s back.’’ Her interpretation of this performance is curious, but to claim this as her motivation is laughable.

To grasp the shifting of blame taking place one needs to look not back to October but forward, to November 9. That is when the IG report on the actions that spurred the Russian collusion investigation is released. The folly of Page to claim this breakout performance is not an attempt to frame the impending revelations from the Inspector General is exposed by the calendar. Hard to see October’s rally getting her to jump to action when it took her over one month to sit down with writer Molly Jong-Fast. Their interview did not take place until two weeks ago, on November 18.

The Daily Beast article/spin service gets undone in quick fashion under analysis. The thrust of the piece is unraveled by one paragraph, made worse that it is the opening stanza.

It’s not often that you interview a subject who has no interest in being famous. But recently, I did just that when I sat down with Lisa Page the week before Thanksgiving in my hotel room in Washington, D.C. Page, of course, is the former FBI lawyer whose text-message exchanges with agent Peter Strzok that belittled Donald Trump and expressed fear at his possible victory became international news. They were hijacked by Trump to fuel his “deep state” conspiracy.

It is with a fair amount of amusement to allege conspiracy behind believing there is a deep state, and then go on to work on proving it correct. The case begins to be made just by the fact that Jong-Fast is the one writing this. She is an avowed leftist who toils at the proud never-Trump site The Bulwark. Her piece has been pushed by that outlet’s backer, Bill Kristol, and in the article she links to another DB article penned by the virulent anti-Trumper Rick Wilson. To think this can be looked at as an objective presentation is already laughable.

The claim that Trump somehow ”hijacked’’ the narrative of the contents of the Page-Strzok texts is to ignore the content therein, but just look at how Jong-Fast frames the delivery. Page had merely ‘’belittled Donald Trump’’, and she had simply ‘’expressed fear’’ according to Molly. Except, of course, for Page’s own words.

In one of the infamous text exchanges, she declares ‘’Trump should go F himself.’’ Another time we saw her assessment ‘’God, Trump is a loathsome human.’’ Page and Strzok had plotted to set things up in the Russia investigation ahead of the election, to serve as what they described was an ‘’insurance policy’’ in the unlikely occurrence, at the time, of a Trump victory. In the week before the election Strzok, in vulgar fashion, asked what had happened to the country, in referencing Trump, and Page responded with, ‘’I don’t know. But we’ll get it back.’’ In another exchange Page says to her paramour, ‘’Maybe you’re meant to stay where you are because you’re meant to protect the country from that menace.’’ That ‘’menace’’ is Trump.

But today we are to look at Page as an unfairly put-upon target of a nefarious president. Page is just a naif in all of this, you see. Jong-Fast uses all manner of defensive language to describe the former FBI lawyer. Page has ‘’been through the MAGA meat-grinder’’, and ‘’subjected to the president’s abuse’’, while painting her as a ‘’victim’’. Bearing in mind she and her lover repeatedly used crude insults and pledged to wrest the country away from Trump well before his supposed attacks on Page today.

One other indicator on how this is all a pretext to blunt the effects of the upcoming report is Jong-Fast insisting that Page has already been exonerated by the report — before it has been released. The New York Times has already done some advanced spin, as it supposedly got its hands on a leaked copy of the report. The attempt to massage the details is rather glaring. The Times attempts to boldly declare there was no FB spy ring attempting to infiltrate the Trump campaign but look at the way it needs to interpret things to make that claim.

While the FBI is acknowledged as using an informant and an undercover agent to meet with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, the agency did not give any direction for the informant to infiltrate the campaign. That is quite the distinction. Also, the Times claims Inspector George Horowitz declares there was no political motivation in the attempts at getting a wiretap on Carter Page. This, after years of stating that suggesting the FBI was wiretapping anyone was a grand conspiracy.

The Times even acknowledges Horowitz is supposed to call out the unprofessional way the Bureau obtained the wiretap. The paper announces one lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, was found to have altered a document related to the wiretap application. But there is supposedly no political motivations, and nothing noteworthy to question about these questionable actions.

Lisa Page meanwhile is insistent that she is innocent. ‘’I don’t engage in any sort of partisan politicking at all. But having an opinion and sharing that opinion publicly or privately with another person is squarely within the permissible bounds of the Hatch Act. It’s in the regs.’’ Yet as Sarah Lee detailed this morning, Page has already come under fire professionally from Horowitz for these texts and her involvement in the early Russia investigation. For her and Molly Jong-Fast to now claim the same man has somehow exonerated her in an as-yet unreleased report is laughable. It is also illustrative.

The Page interview and the NY Times leaked report, go so far to show the press in willing spin control and narrative massaging. To have Jong-Fast say Page received clearance from the man who has already condemned her actions and the Times to insist there is no political subterfuge while describing political subterfuge is pure gaslighting.

Most ridiculous of all is the press insistence that deep state activities are the work of conspiratorial fantasies, as it engages in the very acts that substantiate the claim. The very fact that they participate in reframing an Inspector General’s report ahead of its release shows where the allegiance of an unbiased media complex resides.