O lord yes. I never thought there was any contest.
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as a native New Yorker who’s work was in construction, Union Operating Engineer, in and around NYC for 25 years. I new exactly what the country bought into when they believed his BS. It was a moment of deep deep stomach churning nausea when he was given the job. Trump is exactly today as he has been his whole life. I just didn’t know it could get this bad for the country. But I’m definitely not surprised.
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Sorry, meant the election. We have these news stories, “Trump Did Horrible Thing,” “Trump Will Do Horrible Thing Next Week,” “Trump Doing Horrible Thing Right Now,” and we feel like we should talk about it and hold it in our minds for a while, but frankly he’s horrible all the time and maybe in a few months we can push his horrible self out the door. The horrible, in itself, isn’t news.
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I think I am blinded by the rage I have against trump. No, I hated Nixon but I didn;t want him removed by any means necessary. I knew he was logical after his fashion and if confronted with the inevitable would accede and leave…which he did. Trump? I don’t think he will leave even if shown the door by an election. It will take hand cuffs and soldiers to remove him.
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I disagree in part. First of all, what is at issue with Mueller is not his credibility, but his tactics. Mueller, like Lt. Col. Vindman, had great faith in the system, and if they worked hard and played by the rules and didn’t cheat, truth and justice would eventually prevail and they would ultimately be shown to be the good boy scouts they were. And maybe–with time–they still will be, if the country manages to survive that long.
And Mueller did, in the end, complete a report which, if incomplete because Trump & Co refused to cooperate, will be for history, one of the biggest indictments of Trump and his presidency. It was no small achievement that the Report we have (or eventually will fully have once we get the unredacted version) even was completed. But for people I am not wild about, like Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein, we wouldn’t even have what we have, as they and others ran interference for months to allow Mueller to complete what we have.
Mueller simply trusted that once he had dutifully done his part, that others–those in the Senate–would do theirs. And they were derelict in their duty. Mueller must be bitterly disappointed by so many he had once considered friends and colleagues, for abandoning him to the attacks of Barr and Trump, who knew the ultimate boy scout would never breach legal protocols and fight back and fight dirty, like they would.
With Trump’s de facto pardon of Stone, I think Mueller was probably brought past the breaking point of being the brave, tight-lipped loyal warrior and soldier. And while it may no longer matter to the impeachment, it may matter once we get to a new administration, and to history, that in the end he fought back to defend the reputation of the work he and his people had done.
And you say Mueller could have stopped this two years ago. Well we can never know what would or wouldn’t have happened, but I am increasingly convinced he couldn’t have stopped Trump, no matter what he’d said or done. Just look at the GOP Senators and Congressmen since the impeachment–from Trump’s handling of the pandemic, to the Russian paid Afghani bounty hunters, to his openly racist rhetoric–very few Republicans (who hadn’t already quit the Party before Trump took the reins) have been willing to make Trump accountable for anything. And who, other than the Senate, could have stopped Trump? Other than Courts, some of the time, the GOP-run Senate is the only entity that could hold Trump accountable, but they wouldn’t and won’t or can’t, no matter what Trump does or says. They are all too beholden to the voters of the base and the money of the billionaires and terrified of making either mad.
So yeah while we all had hoped Mueller would be Superman and rescue the country from Trump, and he didn’t–many of us were disappointed. Maybe we all expected too much from him from the outset. The fact he didn’t do so doesn’t make him a villain. If you look at Mueller’s record through the years–from Vietnam to leading US Attorney’s offices and the FBI, I think it is unfair to accuse him of no courage or strength. Compare his record to that of Trump or Barr as to who has courage or strength, Or of most other Republicans. Or most of us.
Mueller may have been tasked with the impossible, and was probably the only one alive who could have, in the end, and through his discretion of tight lips and discipline, gotten us the written indictment of Trump and his enablers we will have for the ages. The full report will eventually get out. Stone and others may be spared jail (for now), but they won’t be spared the indictment of history. I think that, in the end, Mueller will still matter and we will owe him a debt of gratitude.
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He could feasibly correct his mistakes…we shall see…
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That’s what a rule is in the DoJ, per Neal Katyal. You want to argue with him, be my guest. They might also refer to it as a regulation. Semantics. It’s a legal opinion that’s binding on all DoJ prosecutors.
There are already churchgoing folk here who’ve said their kids call them hypocrites, don’t respect them at all and refuse to go to church. I have heard “ah…it’s just a phase. She or he will outgrow it .”
But then there’s the grandkids.
A bible-banger that I happen to know (mainly cause he lives down the block and I helped his wife shovel out his car once) got really pensive when I asked how his first grandchild was. After a while he told me his firstborn, Dustin, wouldn’t allow them to see the kid. It was because they were hypocrites, pure and simple.
He was hurt. The kid will be two in October and they have NEVER seen him.
This does not sound like a phase
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In fact Trump referrred to Mueller’s testimony the next day in his infamous Ukraine shakedown phone call, saying something along the line that the investigation was ridiculous and the testimony just proved how weak Mueller was. It actively emboldened him.
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My 5- and 6-year-old grandsons do it mostly at times I perceive them feeling a little concerned or worried.
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@george_spiggott : Ask me “What’s the most important thing in comedy?”
@squirreltown: “What’s the most important thing in…
@george_spiggott: “Timing!”
@squirreltown: …comedy?”
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You mean his position on a masked Kim for her next “leaked” porn vid?
Where was THIS Robert S. Mueller, III when it really mattered:
[…But the playing field has changed. We have seen a shift from regional families with a clear structure, to flat, fluid networks with global reach. These international enterprises are more anonymous and more sophisticated. Rather than running discrete operations, on their own turf, they are running multi-national, multi-billion dollar schemes from start to finish.
We are investigating groups in Asia, Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East. And we are seeing cross-pollination between groups that historically have not worked together. Criminals who may never meet, but who share one thing in common: greed.
They may be former members of nation-state governments, security services, or the military. These individuals know who and what to target, and how best to do it. They are capitalists and entrepreneurs. But they are also master criminals who move easily between the licit and illicit worlds. And in some cases, these organizations are as forward-leaning as Fortune 500 companies.
This is not “The Sopranos,” with six guys sitting in a diner, shaking down a local business owner for $50 dollars a week. These criminal enterprises are making billions of dollars from human trafficking, health care fraud, computer intrusions, and copyright infringement. They are cornering the market on natural gas, oil, and precious metals, and selling to the highest bidder.
These crimes are not easily categorized. Nor can the damage, the dollar loss, or the ripple effects be easily calculated. It is much like a Venn diagram, where one crime intersects with another, in different jurisdictions, and with different groups.
How does this impact you? You may not recognize the source, but you will feel the effects. You might pay more for a gallon of gas. You might pay more for a luxury car from overseas. You will pay more for health care, mortgages, clothes, and food.
Yet we are concerned with more than just the financial impact. These groups may infiltrate our businesses. They may provide logistical support to hostile foreign powers. They may try to manipulate those at the highest levels of government. Indeed, these so-called “iron triangles” of organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders pose a significant national security threat…]
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There were some savvy observers that warned not to expect Mueller to save us. We had to do it by having our elected Dems hold the fort as best they can and then for us to vote Trump and as many of the GOP out of office.
And that’s the path we’re on now.
While the pandemic (and the BLM movement) have revealed the rotten nature of Trump and the GOP to even more people, making winning both the White House and the Senate easier, I firmly believe we were going to do it anyway.
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Sure the Never Trumpers would support Romney, along with a lot of independents, but the Republican base won’t. Mitt’s impeachment vote was equivalent to political suicide nationally. He’s now persona non grata. There are even large numbers of Rs in Utah pissed at Mitt over his vote. Mitt’s only hope now is that the Party crashes so bad in the next election that after a few years he’ll be begged back in. But probably wishful thinking, even for Never Trumpers. Trump has succeeded in making sure Romney is politically toxic among the party base voters for a long time. Romney might have a better shot by changing parties, but then he might not ever get re-elected in Utah.
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Well, when the ones in charge are as crooked as a country mile…
“Cut across Fatty, Fatty cut across”, that’s what Miss Lindsey said:
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I note that Roger accepted Jesus into his life a few months ago. This cleared a hurdle with the Trump base as to Roger’s incorrigibility and recidivist tendencies. Now apparently, they have swallowed it all with gusto, a deep state-battling personal-redemption story. I guess Trumpism is to political life what fried food is to nutrition.
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Yep. This nightmare vision of the Never Trumpers carrying Romney across the finish line is just an effort to imagine a future abuse to add to their past ones because some folks don’t want to say anything nice about what they’re doing at present, which is tearing Trump into pieces. Me, I’m all about the outcomes, and they’re helping us with the only one that matters.
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Amen to that.