Republicans have been smarting from Watergate ever since Watergate, so they have “uncovered” 10x more post-watergate “-gates” than the dems. Iran-Contragate is about the only one that stuck from Reagan onward. But they were swinging gates at the Clintons every week.
My thought is this: there are tapes, but there is nothing more to the tapes than Comey has already described of that conversation. Both as an outsider to how our government operates and as someone totally incapable of discretion, Trump believes he draws power by telling the rest of us what special things and information he has access to. This goes back to his years in business and his handling of women as trophies and has played out in all of his media interviews since the inauguration.
I suspect he already knew that the Hillary hacks had occurred when he said “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” That is, an intermediary assured him that they would be leaked in a timely manner and he just couldn’t keep a lid on it. He said this in July 2016, and Wikileaks released them in October, almost immediately after the hot mic scandal. He needed to “show his power” by calling for the thing that was already in the works. (Just a theory.)
I also think our community has gone too easy on Assange about this timing. Wikileaks was trying to tip the election, not necessarily out of spite for Hillary (though they have that) but to be important.
Having said all that, I still don’t know where we are on the Gefilte Fish.
