Bill Shine, the former senior executive vice president of programming at Fox News Channel who was poached away from the network to serve as Donald Trump’s communications director, has tendered his resignation to the administration, which the President has accepted, according to multiple news reports today.
The possibilities behind Shine’s departure are purely speculative at this point, although some have pointed out that Trump complained that Shine had not been able to get much “good press” for him lately. But the almost lateral move that Shine is making — into a role as a senior advisor for Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign — brings up a potential reason that not many are discussing.
Certainly, Shine has been the subject of much media scrutiny over his handling of numerous sexual harassment fiascos at Fox. And that experience in covering up the misdeeds of abusers caused critics to call Trump’s motivation behind hiring him as comms chief into question — was there something in-house that Trump needed Shine to deal with using that specific experience?
But I personally am led to a different conclusion, and it’s one related to another big story in the news less than a week ago: The list of names of those who received document requests from the House Judiciary Committee for their Russia probe, which appears to be culminating in a possible obstruction of justice case against Donald Trump.
On that first list at number 8 is a name you may be familiar with — Brad Parscale. He was the “digital director” of Trump’s 2016 campaign and last February, Trump named Parscale the campaign manager for his reelection effort in 2020.
The odds of Parscale being given essentially a summons for information by Congress that could incriminate President Trump, then a new “senior advisor” to the 2020 campaign being named just four days later is astronomically unlikely. It could be that Shine is merely being brought onto the campaign for his cable news experience — but then it could also be that Trump and all of his associates’ phone calls, meetings, emails, and secret text messages with Russian oligarchs, bankers, lawyers, and mobsters were all about the weather in Moscow, too.
Featured image via screen capture
