The Bullfight
The bullfight over the Mueller report continues. Trump changes his mind, pulls the cape away, saying now he doesn’t want the report revealed. Barr digs in his own heels. He’ll black out anything he wants, he gestures petulantly, take as long as he wants. Like a cooperative bull in the ring, the Democrats lunge, threatening to subpoena without doing so yet. (Why exactly are they waiting?) Sources claim the report could be more damaging than Barr says, and we in the grandstand lean forward expectantly. Will the horns catch this time? What a grand political spectacle! Hemingway would be a better reporter of this action than I can possibly be.
I’m not sure this is anything more than a spectacle– though I hope I’m wrong about that. I do want the bull (should I say donkey?) to win this battle, and gore the matador. I want to cheer it on. But, looking in from the side, I’m guessing the bull is going to lose this one. What if the Democrats are chasing an empty cape, when they should be charging straight at Trump himself?
Two facts from history keep me skeptical about the value of the Mueller report, and the chances of Democrats getting to make any use of it.
First, that Robert Mueller is no friend of the truth. As FBI director he lied to Congress about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction”. He was part of W’s propaganda team, propaganda that led directly to a US war of aggression that killed at least a half-million people. Mueller is party to a war crime of the highest order, a “Crime Against Peace” in the language of the UN, and of the Nuremberg trials. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTDO-kuOGTQ)
The Democrats trust in Mueller seems foolish to me. Why don’t they subpoena him, question him under oath, and find out for themselves what he has found out?
The second historical memory I’ve only rarely seen mentioned in the endless discussions of the Barr memo is that William Barr, as AG under the first Bush, successfully thwarted the investigation into the Iran-Contra crimes, using some of the same strategies we see him using now. He’s an expert cover-up artist, brought in by Trump for that one purpose. The Democrats, in my view, are playing his game, rather than acting with decision and purpose. (https://www.npr.org/2019/01/14/684553791/william-barr-supported-pardons-in-an-earlier-d-c-witch-hunt-iran-contra)
Meanwhile, Tlaib and Green’s impeachment resolution has dropped out of sight, undoubtedly into the black hole of procedural delays. Without the support of Pelosi (who I have come to believe is deeply compromised in ways I don’t understand) and other House Democrats, their effort is doomed.
So Pelosi and her team have trapped the Dems in a vicious circle of their own making. Without an impeachment investigation, they can’t get access to the information they need to battle Trump. Without impeachment in progress, their efforts have no teeth (or horns, I guess, to stick with the bullfight metaphor). And, without that information (such as tax returns and the Mueller report) the Democrats seems to believe they can’t impeach.
WTF! to use the colloquial.
This bullshit, I mean, bullfight, will likely go on for awhile, each day reducing the Democrats chances in 2020.
That’s how it looks from the side, this morning.
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