Yesterday’s headlines were appalling. To read them one might think that the full Mueller Report had been published instead of a letter by a partisan Attorney General determined to carry water for his president*. I don’t know about you but I feel like W.C, Fields in the poster above. The Barr letter felt like a brick to the head. Ouch.
For the moment, the MSM seems to have fallen for the Barr gambit. The Insult Comedian’s laughable claim of “total exoneration” is being accepted at face value by a press corps that knows that he’s a liar. One would have hoped that they’d learned something after years of exposure to Trumpian mendacity but he’s an experienced flim-flam man.
Team Trump is engaged in its own version of March madness. They’re in a full-court press to suppress the publication of the full Mueller Report. If it “totally exonerates” Trump, what are they afraid of? The truth, that’s what they’re afraid of. Just because criminal conspiracy may not have been proven, that does not mean that ethical and political offenses were not committed. They clearly were. At the very least, Team Trump turned a blind eye to Russian interference in the 2016 election. They could have reported the approaches to the FBI but did not.
As to Barr’s decision to make a determination on the obstruction of justice issue, the MSM’s reaction has been simultaneously supine and confused. Just because a cover-up occurred in broad daylight does not make it less offensive. One would hope that the MSM’s herd instinct would not kick in at this crucial point but the best that can be hoped for is that an all out stampede can be averted.
Too many people placed too many eggs in the Mueller probe basket. I was guilty of it myself at times. Criminal conspiracy is damned difficult to prove. Last Sunday was easily the best day for Donald Trump in months. Now is not the time to give up, it’s time for the House to engage in its own full court press to obtain the full report. Stop the madness.
Team Trump’s spin is as predictable as it is dastardly. The bad news is that it’s working so far. The good news is that they’ve already overplayed their hand with threats of retaliation. It’s what they do. Nuance and subtlety are not characteristics of Trumpism.
The entire Trump regime is a shell game and Bill Barr is the latest in a long line of con artists. They’ve been down for a while but they’re pushing hard right now because they believe in the adage attributed to PT Barnum: never give a sucker an even break. They’ve played millions of voters for fools and now they’re working on the MSM, which should know better. But as long as people like Chuck Todd occupy positions of influence, the shell game will continue.
It’s time for the suckers to fight back and never give the Trumpers an even break. They confuse fairness with weakness. Don’t give them an opening. Be relentless.
As an old guy who remembers Watergate, the Barr letter is like the Nixon White House transcripts of the tapes, which gave us the term “expletive deleted”. In a few weeks/months, we’ll get a ‘redacted’ version of the Mueller report, similar to the versions of the tapes that the Nixon White House later distributed, that had the 18-1/2 minute gap.
MSM — fool you once, shame on the Republicans; fool you twice — you’ll always get fooled again!
Yes, this is what the press does. “Look, a squirrel!” And that’s the most important thing until another bright shiny comes along. The full report Mueller submitted to Barr is reported to be 300 pages long, and I saw one comment that Judge Napolatino of Fox News said several times that it was 700 pages! Just making sure it contains no grand jury information will take a week or so, and then practically every damned agency in the government will have to be consulted to verify that it does not reveal any “sensitive” information, so it’s going to be like pulling teeth to get it out, but I’m sure Congressman Schiff and Nancy Smash will. 300 pages, I’m pretty sure there’s some nuance in there that will suggest fruitful lines of investigation.
Really good balanced, comprehensive summary of the matter. Thanks.