Posted on 07/26/2019 3:04:04 AM PDT by Kaslin
The Democrats who were looking to cast Robert Mueller as the star in a TV special, "The Impeachment of Donald Trump," can probably tear up the script. They're gonna be needing a new one.
For six hours Wednesday, as three cable news networks and ABC, CBS and NBC all carried live the hearings of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, the Mueller report was thoroughly trashed.
The special counsel stood by his findings. His investigation was not a "hoax" or "witch hunt," he said. He admitted that he had found no Trump-Russia conspiracy. He denied he exonerated Trump of obstruction of justice.
All this we knew, and all of it we have heard for months.
What was new, what was dramatic, what was compelling was how the House Republicans arrived with their war paint on and ripped Mueller and his investigation to such shreds that viewers were feeling sorry for the special counsel at the end of his six hours of grilling.
The Republicans exposed him as only vaguely conversant with his own report. They revealed that he had probably not written his own statement challenging the depiction of his findings by Attorney General Bill Barr.
Mueller's staff of lawyers, Republicans showed, reads like a donors list for Hillary Clinton. The FBI contingent that started the investigation was a cabal so hateful of Trump that some had to be fired.
Republicans raised questions about the origins of the investigation, tracing it back to early 2016 when Maltese intelligence agent Joseph Mifsud leaked to a staffer of the Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos, that Russia had Clinton's emails. That and subsequent meetings have all the marks of an intel agency set-up.
Repeatedly, Republicans brought up the dossier written by British spy Christopher Steele, who fed Russian-sourced disinformation to Clinton campaign-financed intel firm, Fusion GPS, who passed it on to the FBI, which used it as evidence to justify warrants to spy on Trump's campaign.
To many in the TV audience, this was fresh and startling stuff.
Yet Mueller's response to all such allegations was that they were outside his purview and that other agencies were looking into them.
Wednesday's hearings often proved painful to watch.
Mueller, a 74-year-old decorated Marine veteran of Vietnam and a former director of the FBI, sat mumbling his dissents as one charge after another was fired at him, his associates and his investigation.
For this disaster, the Democrats are alone to blame.
Mueller had wanted to file his report and leave it to the attorney general and Congress to act, or not act, on its contents. His job was done, and he did not want to testify publicly.
Democrats, desperate for impeachment hearings, wanted him to recite for the TV cameras every charge against the president.
What Democrats hoped would be a recital of Trump's sins, Republicans turned into an adversarial proceeding that ended Mueller's public career in a humiliating spectacle lasting a full day.
Where do Democrats go from here?
Their goal from the outset has been to persuade the nation that Trump colluded with Putin's Russia to steal the 2016 election, and that the progressives are the true patriots in seeking to impeach and remove an illegitimate president and prosecute him for acts of treason.
The Republican position is that, for all his flaws and failings, Trump won the 2016 election fairly and squarely. He is our president, and the drive to impeach and remove him is an attempted constitutional coup d'etat by a "deep state" terrified that it cannot win against him in 2020.
The rival narratives are irreconcilable.
The Republican message of Wednesday: Proceed with hearings to impeach and there will be blood on the floor.
Democrats are in a hellish bind.
Should they proceed with hearings on impeachment, they will divide their party, force their presidential candidates to cease talking health care and start talking impeachment, and probably fail.
Impeachment hearings would fire up the Republican base and energize the GOP minority to prepare for combat in a Judiciary Committee where they are already celebrating having eviscerated the prosecution's star witness.
If Democrats vote impeachment in committee, they will have to take it to the House floor, where their moderates, who won in swing districts, will be forced to vote on it, splitting their own bases in the run-up to the 2020 election.
If Democrats lose the impeachment vote on the House floor, it would be a huge setback. But if they vote impeachment in the House, the trial takes place in a Senate run by Mitch McConnell.
Trump would go into the 2020 battle against a Democratic Party that failed to overthrow the president in a radical coup that it attempted because it was afraid to fight it out with the president in a free and fair election.
Where they came from!!
Yet Mueller’s response to all such allegations [about spying on the Trump campaign] was that they were outside his purview and that other agencies were looking into them.
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Other agencies BETTER be looking into them.
The ball hopefully is NOT dropped, as it was regarding Hillary’s emails.
good one
Many to jail?
No cushy retirement as the left's hero that brought down an opposition President. No book & tour. No talk show tour. A lifetime's worth of integrity and credibility destroyed, never to be regained. He and AOC have become the court jesters.
All he can expect is (well deserved) hostility and derision from the conservatives & patriots, and the left will now probably try to pretend he never existed. If his "investigation" uncovered any wrong doing it was by the Clinton campaign - something he's already taken some heat for due to his "professional disinterest" in pursuing it while being so eager to pursue anything and everything related to then candidate Trump. Well...that makes him a threat to the Clintons, and we all no what a perilous position that can be... I would not be surprised if in a few short weeks Mueller, "distraught" over his report, his "failures to the Country" and his performance on the Hill...decided to "suicide" in typical Clinton-problem way...
Hopefully .... away.
Yet Mueller’s response to all such allegations [about spying on the Trump campaign] was that they were outside his purview and that other agencies were looking into them.
BUT...20 year old back tax issues having nothing to do with RUSSIAN collusion or the Trump campaign were within his purview
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As far away as possible.
I think we FReepers need to send “attaboys” to every Republican who fought against the Democrats’ lies.
To prison..
They have what we call consequences, awaiting them.
BUT...20 year old back tax issues having nothing to do with RUSSIAN collusion or the Trump campaign were within his purview
—
yup
Dems will get back to work. They fight for every inch. While the GOP goes on vacation for six weeks.
And CNN can continue their very successful programming presentations:
NO NEWS OR FAKE NEWS. Their choice.
I was surprised to learn that the pundits at CNN were TOTALLY UNAWARE OF WHAT THE REPUBLICANS WERE ASKING. AND GERGEN SAID..”BECAUSE WE DIDN’T REPORT IT.....”
The irony...is absolutely correct.
I suppose anything is possible, but I don’t see how they go back to impeachment again. Their first vote failed huge; they have even FEWER grounds than they had then-—namely the top dog saying there was nothing.
Their problem since 2017 has been they have no issues. In 2018, it worked because neither did the Rs—the failed health care vote cost bigly, and there were still too many neverTrumpers. We aren’t quite there yet, but we have almost purged the neverTrumpers from both the House & Senate. The utter failure of the DemoKKKrats to do a damn thing will hurt them every bit as much as the failed healthcare vote hurt Rs.
Whether this will be enough to re-take the House is still up in the air, mainly because of an absence of good House candidates and because it is, after all, very early.
After Mueller Debacle, Where Do Democrats Go?
I have a suggestion.
God Bless You, pfony1.
You are so right and I am so proud to be a republican today.
“The dems are deeply concerned about this misuse of taxpayer money.”
And how much taxpayer money does President Trump take in salary?
To prison.
Unlike us FReepers, most people have no idea who Christopher Steel, Fusion GPS or any of the background about this case. Most people have no idea about Mueller’s background in the White Bulger case.
The average registered voter still gets most of their news from the networks and maybe a little off the internet. They are too busy with life, work, kids and trying to get a decent nights sleep.
Many are totally turned off by politics in general. MOST PEOPLE DO NOT READ. Not only news, they have not read a book, even a Grisham book, in years.
Many guys in may office that make six figure incomes have no idea of the real details behind this fiasco. They can probably tell you the score of last nights Red Sox/Yankees game but probably have no idea who “the Squad” is.
If you watched the recap of this Dem Disaster on Good Morning America yesterday you would think everything was OK. No indication of how bad it went. They were extremely one sided in the editing of the clips they showed. This is where my 91 year old mother gets her news. She can still see through it, but she does not have the internet.
Even a friend of mine who is fairly well informed conservative still thinks that maybe Trump did do something. However, he is sick of it and wishes the government would just take care of the real problems of the country like unchecked immigration.
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